The CFO tech stack in 2025: what 253 finance leaders are actually using

What finance automation tools are industry leaders actually using? Not what vendors claim is popular, and not what shows up in analyst quadrants, but the platforms real CFOs, Heads of Finance, and FP&A leads reach for every day. CFO Connect surveyed 253 finance leaders to find out, and the results provide a detailed, size-segmented picture of how modern finance stacks are built. This article brings together the key findings on the best CFO tools across every major category: cloud accounting, ERP, FP&A software, spend management, billing, payroll, and AI.

What the 2025 report tells us

Oracle NetSuite leads both cloud accounting and ERP for the second consecutive year. Spendesk retains its position as the dominant spend management tool for SMB and mid-market companies. Stripe remains the most widely adopted billing platform.

Beneath that stability, three shifts stand out from the Top CFO Tools Report 2025:

• AI adoption has surged.

  56% of finance leaders now use AI-powered tools in their work, up from 31% in 2024 and just 17% in 2023. In under three years, AI has moved from a niche experiment to standard operating practice.

• FP&A remains fragmented.

  61% of respondents rely on spreadsheets as their primary planning tool, and a further 10% have no dedicated system at all. Despite a growing range of purpose-built tools, the market has not consolidated.

• Billing and AR is the most competitive category.

  Six entirely new entrants appeared on the 2025 list compared with 2024, reflecting both the complexity of modern revenue models and the wide variety of approaches companies take to collections.

The survey covered companies from under 20 employees to over 1,000, across revenue bands from sub-€1M to more than €500M, giving a genuinely cross-sectional view of tool adoption at every stage of growth.

Cloud accounting and ERP: the stable core of every finance stack

Cloud accounting tools by company size

NetSuite leads the overall cloud accounting rankings at 18% adoption, according to the Top CFO Tools Report 2025. QuickBooks rose to second place at 16%, gaining three positions versus 2024. Xero holds third at 10%, having dropped one position as QuickBooks gained ground. Pennylane and Odoo both entered the rankings for the first time in 2025, at 7% and 5% respectively.

Size shapes tool choice significantly in this category. Among companies with fewer than 50 employees, QuickBooks (18%) leads Xero (14%) and Pennylane (9%). For 50 to 249 FTEs, NetSuite takes the lead at 22%, followed by QuickBooks (17%) and Sage (12%). By 250 to 499 FTEs, NetSuite's dominance is pronounced at 44%, with Workday a distant second at 7%. Above 500 employees, NetSuite (39%) and SAP (17%) account for the majority of responses.

For finance leaders asking which tools are best for automating month-end closing, the answer varies by stage. QuickBooks and Xero excel at smaller scale through bank feed automation, reconciliation, and broad app integrations. One respondent, a Financial Director at a 250 to 499 headcount company, summarised NetSuite's appeal: "Good for multi-location and multi-country accounting. And good integrations with other tools."

[INTERNAL-LINK: CFO Connect preferential NetSuite pricing page]

ERP systems: from scale-up to enterprise

ERP adoption is high across the board, with only 29% of companies running without one. That gap is concentrated in the smallest businesses: 38% of companies below 50 employees have no ERP. Above 250 employees, the number drops to near zero. Only one respondent above that threshold reported operating without an ERP, relying instead on a custom data setup built around BigQuery. Three respondents noted they use custom in-house ERPs, all with fewer than 250 employees.

Source: Top CFO Tools Report 2025, 253 respondents.

Can you integrate multiple accounting automation tools with your existing system? In practice, the leading platforms are built for it. NetSuite's modular architecture allows companies to add ERP capabilities on top of their accounting foundation without switching vendors. Dynamics 365 integrates natively with Excel, Teams, and Power BI. Odoo connects its accounting module to sales, HR, inventory, and project management through a single open-source platform. A Portfolio Director at a 500 to 999 FTE business confirmed this in practice: "Integrates well. Can be used across regions and covers a range of processes." A CFO at a micro-business described Odoo in similar terms: "Easy to understand. Very flexible, scalable and inexpensive." For Dynamics 365, a Financial Director noted: "Flexibility, (and) is the most compatible with many other external software."

The integration story also underpins NetSuite's position as a platform companies grow into. Many start with the cloud accounting module and graduate to full ERP functionality without rebuilding their data or supplier integrations.

As Sam Levy, Senior Vice President at Oracle NetSuite, puts it: "AI is redefining what's possible for finance teams, and ERP systems are at the center of this transformation. At NetSuite, we're dedicated to helping organizations harness intelligent automation, real-time data, and seamless integration."

Best FP&A software in 2025: a market still finding its feet

The FP&A category is the most striking finding in the report. When surveyed about their planning tools, 61% of respondents named spreadsheets as their primary system. A further 10% said they use nothing at all. That means 71% of finance leaders run planning and forecasting without purpose-built FP&A tools.

Among dedicated platforms, Pigment leads at 6% overall, up one position from 2024. Anaplan follows at 3%, alongside Abacum at 3%. Workday Adaptive Planning grew from 4% to 7% year over year (across respondents where the denominator shifts by size), and new entrant Causal entered the rankings immediately in fifth place at 2%. The wider field includes individual mentions of QAware, Syft, Unit4, and Domo.

For companies under 50 employees, 68% use spreadsheets and 12% have no system at all, with Pigment and Causal each capturing 3%. At 50 to 249 FTEs, Abacum leads dedicated tools at 5% while spreadsheets hold 64%. For teams looking for the best fp&a software at this stage, both Abacum and Pigment offer native integrations with accounting tools like NetSuite, QuickBooks, and Salesforce, enabling fast data consolidation without manual exports.

The picture changes materially above 250 employees. At 250 to 499 FTEs, Pigment rises to 15%, Workday to 7%, and Datarails to 7%, while spreadsheets remain at 59%. At 500+ FTEs, the market finally diversifies: Anaplan leads at 26%, Pigment holds 21%, and spreadsheets drop to 26%. Workday holds 4% in that segment.

For those actively evaluating fp&a tools, the user experience data from the survey is instructive. A Head of Finance at a 20 to 49 FTE company described Pigment as "most capable, intuitive, collaborative; best design of all of the tools I've worked with to date." A CFO reviewing Abacum noted "a mix of easy to learn/use and sophisticated features," a combination that addresses one of the common objections to moving off spreadsheets entirely.

The best fp&a software question remains genuinely open at most size segments. The fragmentation here is not a sign of market immaturity so much as genuine variance in what finance teams need: some want driver-based modelling with departmental collaboration, others want a spreadsheet-familiar interface with better version control. The data from 253 respondents shows no single platform has yet solved this across the board.

Finance automation in action: spend management and billing

Spend management tools

Spendesk is the clear leader in spend management for SMB and mid-market companies, with 20% overall adoption in the Top CFO Tools Report 2025. Its position is particularly strong in the 250 to 499 FTE band, where it captures 33%. Even among the smallest companies (below 50 FTEs), it holds 20%. For companies above 500 employees, SAP Concur takes over at 26%, while Spendesk captures 9% in that segment.

Finance automation in spend management has advanced rapidly. Leading platforms now categorise transactions automatically, enforce approval workflows, assign spend to budgets, and flag anomalies without manual intervention. One CFO using Spendesk highlighted the operational specifics: "We love the validation circuits, information for users of their invoice's status, and budget monitoring." Budget monitoring was called out by multiple respondents as a differentiator: it is not standard functionality across most expense tracking tools.

Pauline Babel, CFO at Spendesk, frames the broader shift: "AI-driven spend control is no longer a futuristic promise, it's now a core expectation for finance teams. The fact that more than half of finance leaders already rely on AI for daily work shows how quickly the landscape is evolving. We're seeing AI move beyond basic expense policing, towards predictive insights that empower managers to take real ownership of their budgets."

Beyond Spendesk, Expensify (6% overall) is the most widely used pure expense tool, particularly at smaller companies: a Head of Finance described it as "easy on the budget. Easy to use," which captures the product positioning well. SAP Concur (5% overall) serves larger enterprises through its depth in travel and expense compliance and its native integrations with SAP's wider ERP suite.

Billing and accounts receivable

The billing and AR category saw more change than any other in 2025, with six new entrants on the list versus 2024. That reflects the competitive intensity of the category and the wide variety of approaches companies take: many handle AR through their accounting platform or ERP rather than a dedicated tool.

Source: Top CFO Tools Report 2025, 253 respondents.

Stripe's position is durable across revenue bands: 18% at sub-€10M AR, 12% at €10M to €100M, and 20% at €100M to €500M. Only at €500M and above does Dynamics 365 (18%) overtake it, with Sage Intacct and SAP also appearing at that level. One CFO confirmed why incumbency matters here: "It's the market standard. Transitioning to another tool would be difficult."

For SaaS companies with complex subscription models, Chargebee handles recurring billing, revenue recognition, and dunning automation. Maxio targets B2B SaaS with ASC 606 compliance and integrated metrics for MRR, churn, and deferred revenue. One Financial Director was direct: "We love Maxio for revenue recognition."

Sidharth Kakkar, CEO at Subscript, captures the integration imperative: "More SaaS finance teams are realizing this: even the most complex business models deserve simple, flexible tools. You shouldn't be building invoices by hand or managing rev rec in massive spreadsheets. When your ERP, CRM, billing, and reporting systems actually talk to each other, finance has the time and visibility to contribute more meaningfully as a partner to the business."

Payroll, HR, and business intelligence: the rest of your stack

Payroll and HR systems

HRIS adoption is near-universal. Only 8% of companies in the survey operate without a dedicated payroll or HR system, the lowest "none" response of any category. The market is fragmented by geography and stage: no single platform exceeds 13% overall adoption, and Personio (13%), BambooHR (10%), HiBob (10%), and Payfit (9%) hold the top four positions.

Geography shapes tool choice more in this category than any other. Personio leads in Germany and is expanding across Europe. Payfit is a leading French platform. HiBob is London-based. BambooHR and Gusto are American. As companies grow, Workday dominates: among 500+ FTE companies, it captures 25%, well ahead of BambooHR (13%) and HiBob (8%). Below 50 employees, Personio leads at 18%.

A CFO using BambooHR gave a clear-eyed summary: "Great interface, and easy to use. Integrates into our tech stack." For HiBob, one CFO highlighted what matters at the integration layer: "Intuitive interface, modularity, automated workflows and decent integrations to contracts and access management systems." On Personio, a Financial Director was equally direct: "Strong all-rounder. We started using it for payroll, and it's great!"

Michiel Boere, CFO at Remote, addresses the fragmentation challenge head-on: "This report makes clear that payroll and HR systems are essential infrastructure. The market is fragmented, often forcing companies to use multiple platforms to manage their global workforce. We solve that challenge by providing a single platform for all your needs, helping CFOs reduce the number of tools. Our platform saves cost in your HR stack, cuts time spent on manual payroll by up to 80%, and supports your workforce in over 200 countries with 90%+ customer satisfaction."

Business intelligence and financial reporting

BI tool usage correlates directly with company scale in the Top CFO Tools Report 2025. Among companies below €10M in annual revenue, 46% rely solely on spreadsheets for reporting, and 7% have no system at all. That figure drops to 34% spreadsheet-only at €10M to €100M AR, 13% at €100M to €500M, and just 9% above €500M. No company with more than €100M in annual revenue reported having no BI tool at all.

Microsoft Power BI leads overall at 22% adoption, and its share grows with scale: 26% at €10M to €100M AR, 33% at €100M to €500M, and 64% among the largest companies. One Finance Manager captured the practical value: "I'm a huge lover of Power BI! It's a nice way to automate processes." Its native integrations with Excel, Teams, and Azure make it particularly natural for companies already in the Microsoft ecosystem.

Looker (7% overall) serves tech-forward finance teams working in Google Cloud environments. A Financial Director described it as offering "a good balance of power/flexibility with usability," while Tableau (6%) remains the preferred choice for rich visualisations and cross-functional dashboards. One Financial Director called it "top in class for analysis and data visualisation." Metabase entered the 2025 rankings for the first time at 6%, the only new entrant in this category.

AI in the finance industry: from experiment to mainstream

The pace of change in AI adoption is the standout year-on-year finding. In 2023, 17% of finance leaders used AI tools in their work. In 2024, that rose to 31%. By 2025, the majority of respondents are now AI users: 56% yes, 44% no.

AI in the finance industry is still predominantly delivered through generalist large language models rather than purpose-built finance applications. Among respondents who named specific tools, ChatGPT leads at 35%. Gemini and Copilot each appear at 11%. Perplexity captures 5%, Claude 3%, and both Dust (agentic AI) and Workday appear at 2%.

AI in accounting and finance is being applied primarily to tasks that sit adjacent to core financial work: preparing financial presentations, meeting notes and workshop preparation, reporting assistance and data analysis, industry research, data sourcing and document retrieval, improving internal financial communication, consistency checks for legal documents, writing and verifying contracts, and help in negotiations. One Financial Controller at a 50 to 249 FTE company described the practical impact: "The biggest value is knowledge. If I have doubts, it's now 10x faster to solve them."

There is meaningful divergence by company size. Among companies with more than 250 employees, AI use is almost entirely concentrated in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, and Perplexity. Smaller companies show broader experimentation: Rillet, Langdock, Relevance, Fireflies, and Qokoon all appear, alongside AI capabilities embedded in Xero, Abacum, TrueRev, NetSuite, and Spendesk. Larger organisations appear slower to adopt new tools, likely because established procurement processes and organisational habits create friction.

Generative AI in finance is beginning to surface inside core platform features rather than as standalone tools, a shift that may accelerate as ERP, FP&A, and spend management vendors deepen their native AI integrations. CFO Connect's State of AI in Finance 2025 report covers this in depth, with 85% of CFOs reporting optimism about the efficiency gains AI could bring to their teams. [INTERNAL-LINK: State of AI in Finance 2025 report]

Which best CFO tools come first? The 90-day blueprint

For the first time, the 2025 report asked finance leaders which tools they set up in the first 90 days of a new role. The results reveal what is genuinely urgent versus what can wait.

By category, spend management and ERP tied as the most commonly prioritised tool types, each cited by 19% of respondents. Cloud accounting followed at 13%, business intelligence at 11%, and FP&A at 10%. Billing and AR (6%) and payroll and HR (4%) were cited less frequently, likely because those systems are more often inherited than replaced.

By specific tool, Oracle NetSuite was the most commonly named platform at 13%, followed by Spendesk at 10%, Microsoft Power BI at 5%, and DATEV, TrueRev, Payfit, and Odoo each at 2%.

The logic is clear. Getting costs under control is the most pressing need in a new role. That means installing a spend management platform early. Once that is in place, bookkeeping and financial control follow: QuickBooks or Xero for smaller companies, NetSuite or a comparable ERP for larger ones. Several finance leaders also mentioned tools outside the traditional finance category in their first 90 days: Notion and Slack for communication, Salesforce for CRM visibility, and TravelPerk for travel management.

The categories ranked as most urgent reflect a consistent priority: visibility first. Finance leaders want to know where money is going (spend management), how the business is structured (ERP), and how performance is tracking (BI), before turning to planning, billing infrastructure, or payroll.

Frequently asked questions

What features should I look for in accounting automation software?

Based on the Top CFO Tools Report 2025, finance leaders consistently value: automated bank feeds and reconciliation to reduce manual close work, multi-entity and multi-currency support as companies grow across geographies, native integrations with ERP and spend management platforms, real-time financial reporting, and fast onboarding that non-finance team members can actually use. Xero and QuickBooks excel on the first two at smaller scale. NetSuite adds the multi-entity and compliance layer as complexity grows.

What features should I look for in FP&A software for your business?

The survey data points to four differentiators that drive adoption at growth-stage companies: native integrations with your accounting system and CRM (to avoid manual exports), scenario modelling capability beyond what spreadsheets offer, real-time collaboration including for non-finance stakeholders such as department heads, and an interface intuitive enough to reduce the pull back to spreadsheets. Pigment leads on collaborative planning. Abacum balances spreadsheet familiarity with automation. Anaplan scales best for 500+ FTE organisations with complex, multi-variable modelling needs.

What are the best online platforms for financial reporting and intelligence?

Microsoft Power BI is the most widely adopted reporting platform among the 253 surveyed finance leaders, with particular strength at larger companies (64% adoption above €500M in annual revenue). Tableau serves finance teams that prioritise rich visual analytics. Looker is the preferred choice for teams working in Google Cloud environments, offering strong governance and self-serve reporting. Metabase is a practical entry point for teams below €10M AR looking for something beyond spreadsheets. All four integrate with major cloud accounting and ERP systems.

Which tools are best for automated reconciliation and payment processing?

The report shows that most finance teams handle reconciliation through their core accounting or ERP platform rather than a standalone product. NetSuite, Dynamics 365, Xero, and QuickBooks all include native bank reconciliation. For billing-specific automation, Stripe handles reconciliation for digital-first businesses. Chargebee and Maxio provide more specialised reconciliation workflows for subscription revenue, including automated dunning and revenue recognition compliance.

The Top CFO Tools Report 2025 surveyed 253 finance leaders across company sizes from under 20 to over 1,000 employees, and revenue bands from below €1M to above €500M.