How to Choose the Best Financial Reporting Software for 2026
Overview: What to Look For When Evaluating Financial Reporting Software
Now more than ever, choosing the right financial reporting software is critical for the success of your business. Without an effective financial reporting tool, your business will struggle to scale or adapt to the ever-changing regulatory requirements. Worse yet, you risk your data lagging or becoming inaccurate when it matters most for your decision-making. In short, without the proper financial reporting software, you risk losing your team’s precious time to a process that could be streamlined easily.
| Feature | Why It Matters | Benefit |
| Integration with Existing Systems | Less manual entry | Increases accuracy and prompts quicker decision-making |
| Automation | Reduces the opportunity for human error and saves time | Allows for fewer delays and more reliable reports |
| Ease of Use & Customization | Fosters accessibility across all departments | Boosts productivity and cross-department collaboration |
| Data Visualization | Improves understanding of complex financial data | Creates stronger, more approachable presentations |
| Scalability & Support | Grows with your business | Reliably high performance over time |
As we continue to move further into a landscape dominated by AI automation and integration, knowing how to not only collect but also effectively utilize data has become more important than ever before. Because of wide-scale AI adoption, opportunities to distinguish your company from your competitors are becoming more challenging. In turn, this means that proper reporting is becoming even more critical. If financial data is reported incorrectly, it could mean the difference between making a choice that advances your business or causes it to fall behind.
Choosing the best financial reporting software is now a mission-critical responsibility, acting as the gatekeeper between your company’s ability to make strategic decisions, become more efficient, and reduce financial risk. Thinking your team is in need of an upgrade, but don’t know where to start? Here are some key features to look for in your next financial reporting software to not just make reporting easier, but transform it into your greatest asset:
Key Features of the Best Financial Reporting Tools
The best financial reporting tools will integrate with existing systems and automate report generation. It should also be easy to customize, have user-friendly visualizations and dashboards, and scale with your business. Ensuring your financial reporting software incorporates these features will set your team up for success when preparing financial statements.
Integration With Existing Systems
Integration with existing systems allows your financial reporting tool to pull data from your existing platforms automatically.
- Why It Matters: An effective financial reporting tool that integrates into an existing system will save time and reduce errors that typically stem from manual data entry.Â
- Key Benefit: With the knowledge that your financial reporting software is pulling data from all of your ERP tools, your team can spend its energy evaluating the data being pulled to make strategic business decisions, instead of second-guessing it.
Automated Report Generation
With pre-selected criteria and date ranges, a beneficial financial reporting software can generate automated reports for your team.
- Why It Matters: Similar to the former, automated reporting reduces the likelihood of human error, allowing your team to increase the accuracy of your analyses.Â
- Key Benefit: When your financial reporting software can pull data automatically, your team can meet more of their deadlines with fewer delays and greater reliability.
Ease of Use and Customization
Customized, easy-to-use dashboards and visualizations allow for a variety of team members across your organization to interact with your financial reporting data.
- Why It Matters: Your data will not just be seen by finance professionals, but will change hands with your stakeholders and other teams depending on need. For this reason, your software must be customizable for multiple technical skill sets and uses.
- Key Benefit: With an easy-to-use interface, members of your company will rely less on your finance or IT team to generate and edit reports. In turn, your company’s productivity will increase as knowledge is shared across your organization.
User-Friendly Visualizations and Dashboards
A financial reporting software with user-friendly visualizations and dashboards will be able to generate clear charts, graphs, and tables for use in your reports.
- Why It Matters: Complex data visualizations and dashboards can divert your team towards spending unnecessary time understanding the minutiae of what charts mean.Â
- Key Benefit: Interactive reports can help your team more easily identify trends, track your KPI progress, and communicate your successes to leadership or stakeholders. With clearer visualizations, you can spend less time explaining and more time problem-solving together.
Support and Scalability
A good financial reporting tool will allow for scalability to grow with your business, as well as offer expert technical assistance as necessary.
- Why It Matters: As your business grows, so too will your reporting needs. With more data and more complex visualizations, your financial reporting software will need to scale with you for you to keep meeting demand.Â
- Key Benefit: A scalable financial reporting tool will also provide expert assistance should you encounter any issues with functionality, complex reporting requirements, or shifting team size. With the right tool, your team can stay productive even as it grows.
Ensuring your financial reporting solution includes the above features will not only reduce the time your team spends on preparing statements, but also allow for more of your company to collaborate on strategic decisions.
Types of Financial Reporting Tools
With a better understanding of what to look for in a financial reporting tool, it’s now time to sort through what types of tools you could potentially choose. Again, there are a multitude of options you could choose from, but here are a few of the main categories you will likely encounter:
ERP for Financial Reporting
Large-scale corporations typically rely on ERPs as the core system through which their core business operates. While an ERP can be useful to congregate data, you have likely encountered how much of a struggle reporting can be with the ERP alone. Using an ERP-integrated financial reporting tool can ensure that you don’t miss any valuable insights that may have gotten lost by using your ERP alone. For more customizable dashboards and digestible visualizations, Jet Reports and Wands for Oracle flawlessly integrate with your existing Microsoft Dynamics and Oracle ERP software.
Excel-Based Financial Reporting Tools
If your team prefers to keep using the spreadsheets you have become accustomed to, you will likely find yourself selecting an Excel add-in that allows you to keep using your sheets while still accessing valuable ERP data. Using an Excel add-in can allow for a quicker transition and minimize outside IT involvement. Connecting to over 140 data sources, Spreadsheet Server from insightsoftware can enable your team to make critical decisions with less time wasted on migrating data.
BI and Analytics Financial Reporting Tools
For even more detailed analysis on key business performance metrics at a large scale, your team will likely turn to a BI and analytics platform. Platforms like these can transform your data into dashboards, interactive graphs, and automated reports, which can assist your team in taking data-backed decisions in real time. Jet Analytics and Angles for SAP/Oracle by insightsoftware utilize powerful BI analytics to help your business stay one step ahead of its competitors.
How to Choose the Best Financial Reporting Tool For Your Team
Sifting through the myriad of financial reporting software out there can feel overwhelming, even when you know what types of tools exist. To make your decision easier, here are a few questions you can ask yourself before making your final selection:
- How big is my team? Depending on the size of your team, your financial reporting software needs may vary. Be sure to choose a solution that can match your needs at each stage, such as insightsoftware’s Spreadsheet Server.
- Does this tool meet my current needs while leaving room for my future needs? Ideally, your reporting tools should grow with your business rather than hold it back. Insightsoftware’s tool Angles for SAP can scale seamlessly while supporting your growing data sources and migrating systems.
- Will other members of my company be able to use this tool, outside of my team? For intuitive tools with a focus on self-service, turn to Spreadsheet Server. These tools allow each of your departments to easily engage with your data.
- How much flexibility do I have in customizing the reports and dashboards? Reporting needs change over time, with each organization team varying in its preferences. Look to Jet Reports or Angles for SAP for flexibility in customizing your reports, dashboards, and KPIs.
- Will this tool automate our financial reporting processes? Automating your report process can save your team time while improving accuracy. Insightsoftware’s Angles for SAP and Spreadsheet Server can automate the data pulls and report generation that would otherwise take your team hours, leaving you with more time to strategize.
After researching online and asking yourself these questions, explore any ratings or reviews you can find. Once you have a list of candidates, reach out to the vendors for a consultation. Finally, schedule a demo so that you can try the tool hands-on.
As you continue your search, consider tools from insightsoftware. Whether for enterprise reporting or financial reporting, each of our products brings data to life, uncovering insights that would have proved elusive otherwise.
Remember, reporting can be your greatest asset that distinguishes you from your competition or your weakest link that makes you susceptible to it. Decide for yourself if reporting tools from insightsoftware set your company up for sustained success. Contact us to ask questions, request information, schedule a consultation, or arrange a demonstration.