Top 5 Financial Reporting Tools for Accounting Firms (Ranked)

Hey, I'm Isaac from opserv.co, and in this video I'll show you the 5 best financial reporting tools for accounting firms. We're gonna be showing them automation power, their accuracy, their ROI, so you can deliver client-ready insights in minutes rather than hours. Please note that these are all apps that I, I know at least one firm that's on them and has had a good experience. And with that, let's get into it. So let's start with Fathom. Fathom's been like the go-to tool for many firms to have a clean, visually appealing management report without having to build them from scratch in Excel. It integrates with Xero and QuickBooks, which are the primary integrations, although I believe some— it has some others, like with MyBill for our Aussie and New Zealand peeps in the room. And it effectively allows you to pull that financial data into some customized dashboards and customized KPIs. The person I know that runs their firm with Fathom, their accounting firm serves agencies, and they have a very easy almost like ranked or prioritized list of KPIs that they show those clients on a regular basis. So I know this is a tool that can do the job. They also target accounting firms. And as you can see, they have specific features for accounting firms for you to be able to see the various companies you have available and have some level of visibility and dashboards into all of them from one place. This is the ranked set of metrics I was talking about that effectively allows you to see a very easy way if you're on track or not for specific and key metrics. Of your business. And this could be very helpful to drive advisory conversations with your clients. Their pricing is not the most affordable. So depending on your particular use case, your particular circumstances, we're talking about $28 per company. This is per company pricing. I don't think they have an unlimited company pricing, which is something that some of the alternatives we'll talk today will have. So we're talking here as little as $12 per company if you had more than 50 of them. The second option I have for you is Sift Analytics. If you manage clients with multiple entities, Sift can be a good option. And also if you're on Xero in particular, although it has a QuickBooks integration, this platform is worth noting that was acquired by Xero. So I'd be somewhat wary about their QuickBooks integration moving forward. I do know that their Sift integration, their Xero integration has been very good and it's been embedded into the product and Rightfully so. They'll continue to invest in that integration. As you can see, you can create a report for cost dashboards and consolidations similar to what we saw earlier. You can put simple reports in place here comparing month to month, comparing products. You have a variety of reports you can put together very easily. Allows you to consolidate when you have, as I mentioned earlier, a company or a client with multiple entities, whether that is geographically or otherwise. It has a little bit more integrations than actually many others. For example, QuickBooks Desktop. Not that I would expect many people to be on that platform, but it has that available. It has Sage as well, and it has a couple of other things. I don't necessarily believe that they have a robust SAP integration based on our experience, but they do have some integration capabilities that are a little bit better than some of the platforms we were talking about today. So their pricing is quite interesting. I like that they have effectively a way for you to either pay monthly, and this will be the 3 prices you pay per entity. You could pay monthly— sorry, you could pay monthly but committing to an annual, which is not actually as common in the SaaS space. I think that should be more common, so you get a little bit of a discount there, or you can just pay yearly. It's also worth noting, I've been talking to their team, that for more than 20 entities, you effectively get up to a 50% discount. So the prices you're seeing here could be half if you have more than 20 entities, essentially, at least as of this recording. Third, let's talk about Spotlight Reporting. So this is for firms really leaning into advisory services. So it combines KPIs and forecasting, but also has some component of scenario planning and combines that into one ecosystem. It's not really more of a static report. You can sit down with a client and show them a lot of like what-if types of projections. And as you can see in the banner here on their homepage, they're incorporating some AI features like the example of having an executive summary, almost like a commentary on the report that comes from AI that can be actually very useful. They have snagged a few big firms, right? Like some of the Big 4. So there's some credibility there. I'd say that compared to Sift, Spotlight brand and design, it looks a little bit more professional. So it's probably somewhere between the 2 apps we've talked about, Sift and Fathom. I like Fathom a little bit better cuz it kind of like prioritizes, makes things very simple, like green or red, which for business owners, kind of what they wanna see ultimately to make a decision. But this one is also, it's, it's apparent that they've invested a lot on the design component. And you can download some sample reports from the website if you wish. Let's talk about their pricing though. Okay. This is one that's not particularly affordable, but as you can see, you have up to $1,000 a month for 75 organizations. If you do the math to attempt to compare them to what we are, what we were discussing before, you are talking about $13 per organization, give or take. They might have some volume pricing beyond that, but it's very comparable to Fathom from that per entity pricing perspective. Next, let's talk about Joyn. So Joyn deserves a spot here for its affordability. And for its ease of use, I think this is probably a tool that I would categorize as like the best budget option, and you'll see why in a second. It's perfect for small to mid firms that want consolidation without the learning curve of enterprise tools. You can connect multiple entities, do intercompany eliminations like you can with others, and generate professional PDF reports automatically. As I mentioned, it costs a fraction of what other tools have in place, and similarly, they've been in the space for a while. You can see a lot of Good star ratings both in the Xero App Store, in the QuickBooks App Store, and in other review platforms. Love to see. Interestingly enough, yesterday they launched a Zapier integration, which is a good thing in my book. I wouldn't expect it to be as robust as we typically need, but that's good news. If I go to pricing, you'll notice that for some reason they have too many package options, but the big unlock here that I want to emphasize is unlimited entities. We are currently evaluating a financial reporting tool for a New Zealand firm that has like annual, what they call annual accounts. It's like the year-end financials and they do that for about 1,000 clients. Even at $12 a month or even at $5 a month, which you might kind of get some discount pricing, it's gonna be incredibly expensive. So this is one of the only options really in the market that I see as viable when you have like hundreds of entities, especially if you're doing more like a yearly pricing and some sort of compliance service where you're not charging them monthly. And this is one of the only options that can become affordable from that perspective. Last but not least, let's talk about GACon. Okay, although GACon's not, you know, specifically like a financial reporting tool directly, it really started more of as a 2-way data push and pull from QuickBooks. It's grown to have some financial reporting components, although primarily living within the Google Sheets or Excel system. That's kind of like a good thing and a bad thing. If you've ever tried to put a report together, it's not like it's going to look as pretty as some of the ones we've seen. Also, their app, I should mention, from my perspective, is not as intuitive and aesthetically pleasing as some of the ones we've talked about today. But for what it does, so just pushing and pulling data from Google Sheets, and if then you can take that data and through formulas and charts within Excel or Google Sheets put your reports together, it can be a good option and something that we've actually done for a few firms. Similarly, many reviews. All the tools I'm talking about today have been vetted and we know people that are happy with it. As I mentioned earlier in the video, syncing in real time. I should mention that this is again, not just the reporting data. Many clients have used this for, for example, pushing journal entries or pushing bills or invoices. So it can really be a key component of your workflows or streamlining workflows across the entire finance function. They have a little bit of a demo on their website where you can see how it works. It is a Google Sheets extension that you just go ahead and install and you can start to pull specific reports. They have a variety of reports, some of which you can customize, some of which are already there available for you. And you have some capabilities to customize, which I really like that you can say, hey, which accounts do I want to see? Which accounts I do not want to see? Do I want to compare the last 12 months? Do I want to just show year data as well? You have many options which can be overwhelming for some people and not as intuitive, but also very helpful when you want the customizability. And you can see here just an example of what that might look like. Moving into pricing, this is another company that's, is more on the affordable side. I would say it's probably somewhere in between the joints that will have unlimited companies, but more affordable than the LifeFlows and sorry, the Fathoms and the Spotlight Reporting as for Sif Analytics we talked about earlier. Namely, again, if you do the math here as you go up, And up, you're talking about $450 a month for 250. It can get up to like just a couple of dollars per company, although I believe their kind of normal pricing is about 10. But it kind of like scales down from there, which can be very helpful again for the firms with a high volume of clients. We've worked with it enough that we know there's some quirks about it. We've told, we've been told by some customers they don't like the fact that, for example, if you as one user connect a client to Google Sheets, if someone else wants wants to connect it, they have to almost like break your connection. So there's some user management challenges that we've heard, but most of the people that use G-Account that we know really like it, and we've actually recommended it partially for, for a few firms. Now the truth is that your financial reporting tool can be a very high-leverage component of your accounting firm, but the one system you want to make sure you nail, which is your accounting practice management system— I have a video where I rank 25 systems that are in the market from best to worst. So you may want to check out that video next. I'll see you in the next one. And until then, stay efficient.