Top 13 'Burn-Rate-Busting' Financial Planning Tools to try for startups - Goh Ling Yong
Pouring your heart, soul, and savings into a startup is an exhilarating ride. You’re building something from nothing, solving problems, and chasing a massive vision. But amid the hustle of product development and customer acquisition, there’s a quiet, relentless countdown happening in your bank account: the burn rate. It’s the speed at which your company is spending its capital, and if you’re not watching it like a hawk, it can ground your dream before it ever truly takes flight.
Managing your burn rate isn’t just about cutting costs; it's about financial clarity. It’s knowing exactly where every dollar is going, forecasting future expenses with confidence, and making strategic decisions based on data, not gut feelings. Flying blind is one of the fastest ways to fail. The good news? You don't have to navigate this financial fog alone. We're living in a golden age of software designed to give founders superpowers of financial foresight.
These tools are your co-pilots, turning messy spreadsheets and gut-check guesses into a clear, actionable dashboard for your business's financial health. They can help you extend your runway, justify your next funding round, and sleep a little better at night. From comprehensive planning platforms to specialized cash flow forecasters, we’ve rounded up 13 of the best burn-rate-busting tools that can transform how you manage your startup’s finances.
1. Cube
Cube is a modern Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) platform that cleverly bridges the gap between powerful, complex financial software and the spreadsheets that finance teams know and love. Instead of forcing you to abandon Excel or Google Sheets, Cube plugs directly into them, acting as a single source of truth that pulls in real-time data from your accounting, CRM, and HR systems.
This approach is a game-changer for lean startup teams. You get the flexibility and familiarity of a spreadsheet interface, but with the power of automated data consolidation, version control, and collaborative planning. It eliminates the soul-crushing work of manually copying and pasting data, which is not only tedious but also a huge source of errors. As Goh Ling Yong often advises founders, automating low-value tasks like data entry frees you up to focus on high-value strategic analysis.
- Pro Tip: Use Cube’s scenario planning capabilities to model different hiring plans. Create a "Conservative Plan" (hiring only essential roles), a "Target Plan" (your ideal hiring roadmap), and an "Aggressive Plan" (if you secure funding sooner than expected). You can instantly see how each scenario impacts your cash runway, helping you make informed decisions about team growth.
2. Jirav
Jirav is built from the ground up for small and mid-sized businesses, making it an excellent fit for startups ready to graduate from basic spreadsheets. It excels at creating a comprehensive, three-way financial model (P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow) that’s dynamic and easy to understand. It integrates with your accounting software to provide a rolling forecast that’s always up-to-date.
Where Jirav really shines for startups is in its powerful forecasting and dashboarding features. You can build customized dashboards for different stakeholders—one for the executive team focused on runway and burn, another for investors showing key SaaS metrics, and another for department heads to track their budget vs. actuals. This turns financial data into a compelling story that everyone in the company can understand.
- Example: Let's say you're a SaaS startup. You can connect Jirav to your QuickBooks and Stripe accounts. From there, you can build a forecast that models new monthly recurring revenue (MRR) based on your sales pipeline in Salesforce, while also projecting churn rate and headcount costs. This gives you a holistic view of your business's future financial state.
3. QuickBooks Online
You can't have a list of financial tools without the industry giant. QuickBooks Online (QBO) is often the first "real" accounting software a startup adopts, and for good reason. It’s the foundational layer for your financial stack, handling everything from invoicing and expense tracking to payroll and bank reconciliation. It is the system of record for what has already happened financially.
While not a dedicated FP&A tool, QBO offers robust reporting and basic budgeting features that are crucial for controlling your burn rate. You can run detailed Profit & Loss reports, track expenses by category, and create simple budgets to compare your planned spending against actuals. Getting your QBO setup right from day one is one of the most important things a new founder can do.
- Pro Tip: Use the "Projects" feature in QBO to track the profitability of specific initiatives. For example, if you run a marketing campaign, you can tag all associated income and expenses to that project. This allows you to see a mini-P&L for the campaign and determine its ROI, helping you allocate future marketing spend more effectively.
4. Xero
Xero is QuickBooks's biggest competitor and a favorite among modern, tech-savvy startups, particularly those with international operations. It's known for its beautiful, user-friendly interface that makes accounting feel less like a chore. Like QBO, it’s a comprehensive accounting platform that serves as the bedrock of your financial data.
Xero offers strong features for bank reconciliation, invoicing, and expense claims. Its vast ecosystem of over 1,000 third-party app integrations is a major advantage. This means you can easily connect it to other tools on this list, like Float for cash flow forecasting or Ramp for expense management, creating a seamless and powerful financial technology stack.
- Example: Set up bank rules in Xero to automatically categorize recurring transactions. For instance, you can create a rule that every time a transaction from "Amazon Web Services" comes through, it’s automatically coded to your "Cloud Hosting" expense account. This can save hours of manual data entry each month.
5. Ramp
Ramp is more than just a corporate card; it's a "spend management" platform designed to help you spend less. This is a crucial mindset shift for burn-rate-conscious founders. Ramp provides corporate cards (both physical and virtual) with built-in spending controls, automates expense reporting, and handles bill payments, all on one platform.
The platform’s magic is its proactive approach to saving money. Ramp's software analyzes your spending and identifies areas of waste, such as duplicate subscriptions, redundant software licenses, or opportunities to get better pricing on contracts. It's like having an automated cost-cutting expert on your team, constantly looking for ways to extend your runway.
- Pro Tip: Create virtual cards in Ramp for each specific vendor or subscription (e.g., one for HubSpot, one for Slack, one for AWS). You can set spending limits and expiration dates on each card, giving you granular control and preventing surprise overages. If a vendor has a security breach, you only need to cancel that one card, not your primary one.
6. Brex
Brex is another leader in the financial operating system space, catering specifically to the needs of startups and tech companies. It started with a corporate card tailored for founders (often without a personal guarantee) and has since expanded to include cash management, expense tracking, and bill pay, all integrated into a single, sleek dashboard.
Brex's system streamlines the entire expense management process. Employees can make a purchase, and the Brex app will automatically text or email them to submit a receipt. This eliminates the need for manual expense reports and gives finance leaders real-time visibility into company-wide spending as it happens, not a month later.
- Example: Use Brex's cash management account, Brex Business Account, which offers competitive yields on your idle cash. For startups that have just raised a round of funding, this allows you to earn a return on your capital while it's waiting to be deployed, effectively reducing your net burn rate.
7. Float
If cash flow is your number one concern (and for most early-stage startups, it is), Float is a tool you need to look at. Float is a dedicated cash flow forecasting tool that plugs directly into Xero, QuickBooks Online, or FreeAgent. It pulls your actual financial data and uses it to create an accurate, visual, and up-to-the-minute projection of your future cash position.
Unlike spreadsheet-based forecasting, Float is always live. When an invoice gets paid in Xero, your cash forecast in Float updates instantly. This real-time visibility is critical for making confident decisions. You can clearly see the impact of a late-paying client or a large upcoming expense on your bank balance weeks or months in advance, giving you time to react.
- Pro Tip: Use Float's scenario planning to model the cash impact of hiring a new employee. You can input their salary, taxes, and benefits costs and see exactly how that new recurring expense affects your cash runway over the next 6-12 months. This helps answer the critical question: "Can we really afford this hire right now?"
8. Baremetrics
For any SaaS or subscription-based startup, understanding your key metrics is non-negotiable. Baremetrics is a subscription analytics platform that sits on top of your payment processor (like Stripe, Braintree, or Recurly) and gives you deep insights into your revenue with zero setup.
Baremetrics automatically calculates and visualizes all the metrics that VCs care about: MRR, churn rate, lifetime value (LTV), customer acquisition cost (CAC), and more. It goes beyond the surface-level data, allowing you to segment your customers to see which pricing plans are most profitable or which marketing channels bring in the most valuable users. This data is essential for both optimizing your business and for telling a compelling story to investors.
- Example: Use the "Cancellation Insights" feature to understand why customers are churning. When a customer cancels, Baremetrics can automatically survey them. Analyzing this feedback can reveal product gaps or pricing issues, giving you actionable data to reduce future churn and protect your revenue.
9. Bill.com
As your startup grows, managing accounts payable (paying your bills) and accounts receivable (getting paid) becomes a major administrative headache. Bill.com automates this entire workflow, saving you time, reducing the risk of human error, and improving your cash flow by streamlining payments.
With Bill.com, you can have invoices sent to a dedicated email address, where the platform’s AI will automatically read the details like the vendor, amount, and due date. You can then set up automated approval workflows (e.g., any invoice over $1,000 needs manager approval) and pay vendors via ACH or check directly from the platform. It creates a clear audit trail and gives you a single place to see all your outstanding payables and receivables.
- Pro Tip: Sync Bill.com with your accounting software (like QBO or Xero). When you pay a bill in Bill.com, the transaction is automatically recorded and reconciled in your accounting system. This eliminates double data entry and ensures your books are always accurate and up-to-date.
10. Carta
Financial planning for a startup isn't just about cash; it's also about equity. Your capitalization table (cap table)—the record of who owns what percentage of your company—is one of your most critical financial documents. Managing it on a spreadsheet is a recipe for disaster. Carta is the industry standard for cap table management and valuation software.
Carta digitizes your equity, allowing you to issue stock options to employees, track vesting schedules, and model out fundraising rounds with ease. When it comes time to raise money, having a clean, professional cap table on Carta signals to investors that you are organized and serious. The platform also provides 409A valuations, which are necessary for issuing stock options compliantly.
- Example: Before your next funding round, use Carta's "Round Modeling" tool. You can input the proposed investment amount and valuation to see exactly how it will dilute the ownership stakes of existing founders, employees, and investors. This transparency is crucial for making informed decisions during negotiations.
11. Stripe Billing & Revenue Recognition
If you're a SaaS company, chances are you're already using Stripe for payment processing. But many founders overlook the powerful financial planning tools built right into the Stripe ecosystem. Stripe Billing is a robust solution for managing recurring subscriptions, creating different pricing tiers, and automating invoicing.
Even more powerful is Stripe Revenue Recognition. This tool helps you comply with accounting standards like ASC 606 by automatically deferring and recognizing revenue over the life of a customer's contract. This might sound technical, but it’s crucial for producing accurate financial statements that investors can trust. It automates a complex process that would otherwise require hours of spreadsheet work.
- Pro Tip: Use Stripe Billing’s dunning management features. "Dunning" is the process of communicating with customers to collect overdue payments. Stripe can automatically retry failed payments and send customizable email reminders to customers with expired cards, helping you recover revenue that might otherwise be lost to involuntary churn.
12. Pulse
Sometimes, you just need a simple, high-level view of your cash flow without the complexity of a full FP&A suite. Pulse is a straightforward web app that provides a visual, calendar-based view of your income and expenses. It's designed for small business owners and founders who aren't financial experts.
You manually input your projected income and recurring expenses, and Pulse creates a simple chart showing your cash position over time. It's incredibly useful for quick "what-if" analysis. What happens if that big client pays 30 days late? What if we have to buy new laptops for the team next month? You can add and move these items on the timeline and instantly see the impact on your bank balance.
- Example: If you're a project-based business (like a creative agency or consultancy), you can map out each project's revenue and major costs on the Pulse timeline. This helps you visualize cash flow peaks and troughs, so you know when you might need to tap into a line of credit or chase down overdue invoices more aggressively.
13. Datarails
Similar to Cube, Datarails is an FP&A platform that enhances rather than replaces Excel. It’s designed for finance professionals who want to maintain their existing models and workflows but need to automate the painful process of data consolidation and reporting.
Datarails connects to all your disparate data sources—from your ERP and CRM to HR systems and other databases—and centralizes the data. You can then continue to work in your native Excel environment, but with the added benefits of real-time data, drill-down capabilities, and version control. It's a powerful way to level up your startup's financial planning without a massive implementation project. Here at the Goh Ling Yong blog, we find this "Excel-native" approach is often the fastest path to value for lean teams.
- Pro Tip: Use Datarails to automate your monthly budget vs. actuals variance analysis. The system can automatically pull in actuals from your accounting system and compare them to the budget you built in Excel, highlighting the biggest variances. You can then drill down into the underlying transactions to understand why you were over or under budget, all without ever leaving your spreadsheet.
Your Runway is a Strategic Asset—Protect It
Choosing the right financial planning tool isn't about finding a single magic bullet. It's about building a "stack" that gives you a 360-degree view of your business's financial health—from day-to-day spending and cash flow to long-term strategic forecasting.
The tools on this list are more than just software; they are instruments of clarity. They automate the mundane so you can focus on the meaningful. They replace guesswork with data-driven confidence. By embracing this technology, you're not just managing your burn rate—you're turning your financial runway into a strategic asset, giving you the time and insight needed to build a truly enduring company.
What tools are you using to manage your startup's finances? Share your favorites and any burn-rate-busting tips in the comments below
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
Stay updated with the latest posts and insights by following on your favorite platform!