Top 10 Xero budgeting add-on software for better financial planning

Xero has established itself as a go-to cloud-based accounting platform for small and medium-sized enterprises, delivering essential capabilities such as automated invoice generation, expense monitoring, banking integrations, and fundamental financial reporting. Its user-friendly design and seamless connectivity with various business tools have positioned it as an attractive option for organizations seeking to optimize their accounting workflows and gain clearer insights into financial operations.

Despite these strengths, Xero’s built-in budgeting tools fall short of meeting the demands of most expanding businesses. While the platform allows users to develop basic budgets through available templates and track performance against established targets, these native features remain quite rudimentary. 

Organizations requiring sophisticated departmental budget allocation, comprehensive scenario analysis, dynamic rolling forecasts, or complex driver-based financial models will quickly discover that Xero’s standard budgeting capabilities cannot accommodate such requirements.

This gap creates a compelling need for specialized budgeting extensions. These purpose-built solutions establish direct connections with Xero, enabling businesses to maintain their current accounting infrastructure while incorporating the advanced financial planning tools that their growth trajectory demands.

This comprehensive guide examines the 10 leading budgeting add-ons that offer native Xero integration: Drivetrain, Datarails, Cube, Vena, Mosaic, Planful, Pigment, Jirav, Budgyt, and Fathom. Each solution brings distinct advantages to the table, capable of evolving a basic Xero implementation into a robust financial planning ecosystem.

Using Xero for budgeting

Xero’s native Budget Manager delivers adequate functionality for basic budgeting requirements. The platform enables users to establish budget templates, allocate amounts across accounts and time periods, upload budgets from existing spreadsheets, and generate fundamental variance reports that highlight discrepancies between actual results and planned figures.

The system maintains direct integration with live Xero data, ensuring budget monitoring reflects real-time information as financial transactions are processed through the platform. This continuous data connection removes the need for manual entry while providing current figures for variance analysis without requiring reconciliation between disparate systems.

The Budget Manager proves most effective for smaller organizations requiring uncomplicated, single-scenario budget planning. Teams can work collaboratively on budget development and share access to unified dashboards, facilitating cross-departmental coordination. 

The interface caters to users without extensive accounting backgrounds, allowing business owners and department leaders to construct and oversee budgets without specialized financial knowledge. Template import functionality accelerates budget development, while automated data synchronization from accounting transactions reduces time typically spent on manual maintenance.

Nevertheless, Xero’s budgeting functionality presents significant constraints as organizational complexity increases. Users remain restricted to elementary summary reports without access to multiple scenario development, rolling forecast capabilities, or driver-based models that connect budgets to operational metrics.

The platform lacks departmental segmentation for granular cost center analysis, workflow automation for approval processes, and sophisticated analytics beyond elementary variance reporting. 

Specialized third-party budgeting solutions address these limitations by establishing connections with existing Xero data while delivering advanced planning capabilities, including multi-scenario modeling, collaborative workflow management, and extensive reporting functionality that surpasses Xero’s standard offerings.

Top 10 Xero budgeting add-ons  

Drivetrain

Price: $$
Best for: Mid-market and Enterprises

Drivetrain offers an AI-enhanced financial planning solution that turbocharges budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes far beyond Xero’s standard capabilities. The platform seamlessly aggregates data from Xero and additional business systems, including CRM, HRIS, and more than 800 other platforms, establishing a unified foundation for sophisticated financial modeling. AI-powered data transformations help users prep their data for modeling within seconds using natural language prompts, and the AI Modeler can build baseline models with the click of a button.  

Drivetrain distinguishes itself through its emphasis on dynamic planning approaches rather than fixed annual budgets. Organizations can develop rolling forecasts and execute unlimited scenario evaluations to respond rapidly to evolving market conditions.

The platform demonstrates particular strength in operational planning by linking financial projections with workforce planning, sales pipeline intelligence, and various business metrics that fall outside Xero’s scope. This approach generates comprehensive financial models that extend well beyond simple budget-to-actual comparisons. 

Drivetrain’s automated workflow capabilities and real-time collaboration tools enable expanding organizations to scale their financial planning and analysis operations without becoming overwhelmed by spreadsheet management, making it especially beneficial for companies that have exceeded Xero’s fundamental budgeting functionality while preferring to maintain their existing accounting infrastructure. 

Core FP&A capabilities

• Sophisticated scenario planning featuring unlimited what-if modeling and comparative analysis tools
• Automated data integration from Xero and supplementary business systems into consolidated forecasts
• Rolling forecasts and ongoing planning cycles with regular updates beyond annual reviews
• Multi-entity consolidation spanning subsidiaries, various currencies, and diverse accounting frameworks
• Operational planning connectivity that links workforce strategies and sales intelligence to financial projections
• Executive-level variance reporting and trend analysis with live data feeds from Xero systems.
• Drive AI offers powerful features to accelerate budgeting including AI-powered data transformation, automated financial model creation, and machine-learning based anomaly detection across revenue, spend, and headcount.

Datarails

Price: $$
Best for: Small to Mid-market

Datarails is an Excel-native FP&A platform that leverages Excel’s native functionality for modeling, analysis, and reporting. As a Xero budgeting add-on, Datarails can provide robust automation and analytical capabilities to the budgeting features in Xero’s native Budget Manager, while allowing finance teams to maintain their familiar Excel workflows. 

Integrating Datarails with Xero establishes a direct connection, automatically importing current data and removing the manual data entry burdens and version management challenges that typically complicate spreadsheet-based budget processes.

This approach allows teams to gain advanced insights without switching platforms. However, the heavy dependence on Excel may be limiting for organizations that want to transition away from spreadsheet-based FP&A for their budgeting and other finance workflows. While establishing a direct connection between Datarails and Xero is fairly straightforward, on the FP&A side, its capabilities for handling highly complex multi-entity or departmental planning may lag behind more robust platforms, and its advanced reporting options may require additional customization effort.

Core FP&A capabilities

• Excel-based interface featuring automated Xero data integration with real-time updates
• AI-driven financial intelligence through conversational queries and trend evaluation
• Multi-scenario modeling and what-if analysis tools that surpass Xero's static budget framework
• Customizable dashboard solutions combining Xero actual data with advanced planning analytics
• Complete version management and audit documentation for budget oversight
• Enterprise-level security protocols and detailed user permissions for collaborative planning initiatives

Cube

Price: $$
Best for: Small to Mid-market

Cube is tightly integrated with Excel and Google Sheets with much of its workflow designed around spreadsheet integration. Finance teams can work with Cube in a web interface or within the spreadsheet environment they already comprehend.

As a Xero budgeting add-on, Cube can provide an intermediary solution between Xero’s fundamental budgeting tools and more comprehensive mid-market and enterprise FP&A platforms, giving finance teams access to features like multi-scenario planning, rolling forecasts, and automated data consolidation. 

The platform establishes direct connections with Xero and additional business systems to automatically refresh spreadsheet models with current data, removing the manual copy-paste procedures that generate errors and waste valuable time. 

Organizations whose needs have outgrown Xero’s static budget framework are not yet prepared for more complex enterprise solutions, may find Cube a good solution for enhancing their budgeting capabilities. However, compared to enterprise-focused solutions, the platform’s simplicity also means fewer features for highly customized modeling and other FP&A capabilities that might be needed as the business grows. For example, its multi-dimensional modeling capabilities are limited to only eight dimensions, and its scalability is subject to all the same limitations as Excel. 

Core FP&A capabilities

• Spreadsheet-based environment supporting Excel and Google Sheets integration with automated Xero data synchronization
• Multi-scenario planning and sensitivity analysis tools that exceed Xero's single-scenario constraints
• Rolling forecast functionality with continuous reforecasting driven by live actual data from multiple sources
• Collaborative workflow management, including permissions, approval processes, and stakeholder input coordination
• Complete audit documentation and version control systems for transparent, compliant budgeting operations
• Custom dashboard development and advanced reporting capabilities that surpass Xero's elementary variance analysis

Vena

Price: $$-$$$
Best for: Mid-market

Vena is another Excel-native FP&A software that merges Excel’s established flexibility with enterprise-level database functionality to power organizational budgeting approaches that extend well beyond Xero’s fundamental capabilities. 

The platform uses Excel as its primary interface while maintaining centralized data management, automated workflow processes, and comprehensive audit documentation behind the scenes. Finance teams operate within customized Excel templates that automatically synchronize with Xero and additional business systems, removing the manual data collection and version management challenges that commonly affect spreadsheet-based budgeting operations.

The platform accommodates both driver-based and zero-based budgeting approaches that significantly exceed Xero’s static budget comparison capabilities and provides scenario modeling and enhanced analytical tools. 

Similar to other Excel-native Xero budgeting add-ons, Vena’s heavy reliance on Excel, along with its highly templated workflows, can hamper teams that want to pursue more advanced financial modeling and forecasting. Another consideration is that while integrating with Vena may be relatively easy, leveraging its advanced workflow features may require careful setup

Core FP&A capabilities

• Excel-based template systems with automated Xero data synchronization and centralized database oversight
• Complete workflow automation encompassing approval processes, collaboration tools, and detailed audit documentation
• Advanced scenario modeling and driver-based budgeting features with real-time modification capabilities
• Collaborative budgeting frameworks enabling multi-departmental participation within controlled workflows
• Custom reporting and analytics featuring permissioned dashboards that surpass Xero's standard reporting options
• Zero-based and driver-based budgeting methodologies supported by flexible template administration.

Mosaic

Price: $$
‍Best for: Small and Mid-market

Mosaic connects with Xero and other business tools to create a single view of both financial and operational data, solving the problem of having information scattered across different systems. Mosaic’s real-time capabilities do require tight system integrations, though, which can be challenging for companies with siloed or legacy data. 

For companies using Xero, Mosaic provides a number of planning features that growing businesses require. The platform works with all three financial statements, keeps data updated in real time, lets you run different planning scenarios, and creates custom dashboards that give you much more insight than Xero’s basic reports.

Mosaic offers good features for collaborative budgeting. With Mosaic, finance maintains overall control while department managers can handle their own budget areas. However, its range of out-of-the-box templates is narrower than other Xero budgeting add-ons covered here, and deeper customization may be limited. Another consideration is implementation, as Mosaic comes with a fair bit of setup complexity that can overwhelm non-technical finance teams that need to configure multiple data connections. Its AI features are also somewhat limited compared to some of the other platforms covered here. 

Core FP&A capabilities

• Department-level budgeting with automated workflows and approval tracking
• Live data feeds from Xero and other systems for integrated financial planning
• Multiple scenario planning and modeling with comparison tools
• Full financial statement budgeting, including cash flow and balance sheet forecasts
• Staff planning and expense allocation with granular department templates
• Custom dashboards and performance tracking with detailed variance analysis and trend monitoring

Planful

Price: $$-$$$
Best for: Mid-market and Enterprise 

Planful platform integrates Xero’s data with operational and workforce intelligence to establish a unified business planning system that extends beyond elementary budget-to-actual comparisons. 

As a Xero budgeting add-on, Planful can significantly extend the native budgeting capabilities in Xero Budget Manager by enabling department leaders across various business units to contribute budget submissions through role-specific dashboards while preserving centralized oversight and audit documentation. It also provides for continuous planning cycles with rolling forecasts, automated consolidations across multiple subsidiaries or currencies, and advanced scenario modeling. 

For larger finance teams, Planful’s enterprise-level features may meet their needs for Xero budgeting add-on. However, small teams may find the platform’s feature set more than they need. Another important consideration is implementation. A Planful implementation can be a very costly affair, as getting Planful set up for full-feature access often requires additional training and implementation consultant support due its inherent complexity and steep learning curve. Modeling is limited on only eight dimensions, and any advanced customization for unique dimensions or business logic can add even more time to project timelines.

Core FP&A capabilities

• Enterprise-level consolidation featuring multi-entity and multi-currency budget administration
• Continuous planning cycles incorporating rolling forecasts and automated workflow approvals
• Advanced scenario modeling with AI-enhanced anomaly detection and variance analysis
• Cross-departmental collaboration through role-specific dashboards and departmental contribution systems
• Complete audit documentation and governance controls supporting regulatory compliance requirements
• Interactive custom dashboard solutions with drill-through analytics surpass Xero's standard reporting capabilities

Pigment

Price: $$-$$$
Best for: Mid-market to Enterprise

Pigment offers modeling and governance capabilities that go way beyond what Xero can do for budgeting. Unlike Xero’s simple, straightforward budget, Pigment supports a multi-dimensional approach to budgeting, allowing businesses to plan by cost center, product, region, or any other budget driver. 

Teams can establish direct connections between budgets and business drivers such as workforce levels or sales volume, generating models that automatically adapt as foundational assumptions evolve.

Pigment maintains automatic synchronization with Xero data while facilitating what-if scenario evaluations, collaborative workflow oversight, and custom dashboard creation that delivers more comprehensive insights than Xero’s fundamental variance reporting.

There are a few potentially important considerations to keep in mind when evaluating Pigment as a Xero budgeting add-on. One is price. Pigment’s pricing is the highest of all the Xero budgeting add-ons we’ve included in this guide. Its formula logic comes with a steep learning curve, and its advanced modeling requires a lot of setup.

Core FP&A capabilities

• Multi-dimensional planning spanning cost centers, products, and geographic regions with real-time scenario modeling
• Collaborative workflow oversight featuring complete audit documentation and detailed permission management
• Driver-based budgeting that connects financial results to operational metrics and business variables
• No-code model development with automated data refresh from Xero and additional business systems
• Advanced visualization tools and custom dashboard creation for stakeholder-specific reporting and analysis
• Dynamic scenario evaluation with unlimited what-if modeling capabilities surpasses Xero's static framework

Jirav

Price: $$
Best for: Small to Mid-market

Jirav is best suited for growing small to medium-sized businesses that want to move past using spreadsheets for budgeting but don’t want the hassle of complex enterprise-level financial planning software. It offers ready-made templates that make advanced budgeting and forecasting accessible even for teams without a lot of financial planning experience. 

While integrating Jirav with less common business systems can be tricky, integrating with Xero is fairly straightforward. Connecting other business systems to Jirav allows automated data consolidation, making departmental budgeting much easier. It also helps Xero users connect their budgets to real-world business drivers like how many people they employ, how much they sell, or how many new customers they get.  

Jirav offers rolling forecasts that help maintain plan relevance throughout annual cycles. The platform’s dashboards and workforce tools offer much better insights than Xero’s basic reports. However, Jirav’s template-driven approach may not be suitable for very complex businesses with unusual structures or highly customized planning needs. Its feature set, while accessible, can be less comprehensive compared to larger, more configurable platforms.

Core FP&A capabilities

• Pre-configured templates featuring automated departmental budgeting and multi-entity consolidation
• Driver-based modeling connecting financial forecasts to operational business indicators
• Rolling forecast functionality with continuous planning updates surpasses Xero's static annual methodology
• Integrated workforce planning linking hiring strategies to headcount and expense projection
• Real-time dashboard solutions with visual analytics and trend monitoring capabilities
• Collaborative workflow systems incorporating approval processes and audit documentation for structured budgeting

Budgyt

Price: $$
‍Best for: Small to Mid-market 

Budgyt is a cloud-based planning platform that eliminates spreadsheet-related inefficiencies through structured, collaborative budgeting processes that substantially surpass Xero's fundamental capabilities. It’s well-suited for businesses looking to transition from spreadsheet-based FP&A to a more robust solution.

The platform can handle multi-departmental and multi-entity budget administration for businesses that manage multiple locations, franchise operations, or departmental frameworks that exceed Xero’s budgeting capacity. When integrated, Budgyt’s template system and detailed permission management allow finance teams to establish standardized budgeting procedures.

Budgyt transforms elementary budget monitoring into comprehensive financial planning for Xero users through scenario modeling, approval workflows, and analytics that deliver far more detailed insights than Xero’s summary reporting capabilities. 

The platform's integration ecosystem is narrower than competitors, which may be an issue for organizations using specialized business applications. The learning curve can also be surprisingly steeper than expected for teams transitioning from spreadsheets.

Core FP&A capabilities

• Multi-departmental and multi-entity budgeting featuring detailed segmentation and consolidation tools
• Unlimited scenario development and comparison capabilities for thorough what-if planning analysis
• Organized workflow administration with role-based permissions and hierarchical approval mechanisms
• Interactive dashboard solutions and custom analytics surpassing Xero's elementary variance reporting
• Adaptable template systems with automated import/export functionality for accelerated budget cycles
• Real-time variance analysis incorporating synchronized budget-to-actual monitoring and exception reporting

Fathom 

Price: $-$$
Best for: Small to Mid-market 

Fathom’s interactive budget development tool enables teams to construct scenarios, evaluate multiple budget iterations, and modify assumptions dynamically, which together represent a substantial advancement over Xero’s static budgeting methodology. 

Integrating Fathom with Xero allows organizations requiring capabilities beyond elementary variance reporting to keep their core accounting system while gaining features like dynamic dashboards, customizable KPIs, and trend analysis. However, its focus on summary metrics and dashboards makes it less suitable for advanced owner-specific modeling or highly customized workflows. 

Project-driven teams may find their templates less adaptable than those of other FP&A solutions. But for teams needing presentation and benchmarking capabilities and scenario modeling with easy consolidation, Fathom provides an efficient and accessible solution. 

Fathom probably isn’t going to be well-suited, though, for large organizations, regulated industries, or businesses needing rigorous workflow capabilities, advanced modeling or customizations, or deep integrations with wider systems. 

Core FP&A capabilities

• Interactive budget development featuring real-time scenario planning and assumption modification tools
• Multi-entity consolidation with automated reporting across franchise or subsidiary frameworks
• Visual performance dashboards incorporating customizable KPIs and color-coded variance analysis
• Advanced trend analysis and outlier detection supporting proactive financial oversight
• Goal management systems connecting budgets to strategic business objectives and progress tracking
• Presentation-ready reporting with branded export capabilities and embedded insights for stakeholder communication

Choosing the best budgeting add-on software for Xero

While Xero’s standard budgeting capabilities serve basic financial planning requirements, growing organizations often need more advanced functionality to accommodate increasing operational complexity. This evolution to strategic financial planning becomes critical when organizations find that they need multi-scenario modeling, interdepartmental collaboration, rolling forecasts, or advanced analytics that exceed Xero’s basic variance reporting capabilities. 

This is when specialized budgeting extensions become indispensable. Accounting software is a core part of every organization’s financial management tech software stack, making it critical for those that rely on Xero for their accounting infrastructure to find a Xero add-in that offers the FP&A capabilities modern finance teams require.

At a high level, there are six main things you need to think about when evaluating FP&A solutions to extend the capabilities of your core accounting software:

1. Native integration with Xero: This isn’t an issue with any of the Xero budgeting add-ons we’ve covered in this guide. They all provide the necessary data connectors. 
2. Other integrations: Easy integration with all the business systems you need for FP&A, including CRM, HRIS, billing systems, is key to effectively leveraging it for strategic finance.
3. Features and capabilities: The software you choose should reflect the features you need now, but also in the near future. While not comprehensive, this guide provides a lot of useful information on features and capabilities that will help you narrow down your choices. But it will be important to put together a comprehensive list that you can use as you begin discussions with vendors. 
4. Implementation: FP&A software supports more strategic finance. In particular, AI-powered FP&A solutions offer a competitive edge, but only to the extent they’re able to leverage them fully and effectively. Implementation complexity and its associated costs are a key differentiator among FP&A solutions. Finding a balance between a platform that is sophisticated enough for your needs and one that you can get up and running quickly is the goal.  
5. Ease of use: Choosing the most sophisticated platform in the world is a waste of time, money, and morale if your teams can’t use it. When you start talking to vendors, bring your use cases and plenty of questions about onboarding and resources available to help speed adoption. 
6. Scalability: Business is anything but static. And the growth that brought you here is likely going to continue. Consider the scalability of any solution you’re considering. Choosing one that can grow with your changing needs will ensure you don’t end up looking for a new solution again two years from now. 

Fast-growing companies prepared to advance their financial planning beyond Xero’s elementary tools will find that Drivetrain provides an optimal combination of capability and accessibility. 

The platform’s intuitive interface minimizes learning curve requirements while delivering enterprise-level features, including multi-dimensional modeling, automated data consolidation, and dynamic reporting functionality. Through native integrations with Xero and hundreds of additional business systems, Drivetrain scales effectively with growing enterprises, enabling finance teams to transition from reactive reporting to proactive strategic planning approaches.

Book your demo today to see Drivetrain can transform Xero budgeting for a comprehensive financial management and planning platform.