20 Best Project Accounting Software For Budget Control In 2025

Puzzle.io is AI-native accounting software built for startups and small businesses. While its primary focus is automating bookkeeping, it also includes financial tracking and reporting features that support project accounting, helping you monitor budgets, expenses, and cash flow as your projects progress.

Why I picked Puzzle.io: I included Puzzle.io on this list because of its real-time financial visibility paired with built-in burn rate and runway analysis. As project costs shift, you can monitor cash activity across projects and adjust spending before issues arise. Its double-entry accounting system supports both cash and accrual accounting, which makes it flexible for projects that require more detailed revenue and expense tracking. For startups managing limited funding or multiple client projects, this level of reporting can help maintain financial control at every stage.

While this platform is designed with startups in mind, it offers project-level reporting tools that would work for any small business looking to simplify financial management without juggling multiple disconnected systems. You can track project spending, monitor financial health, and collaborate easily with external bookkeepers when needed.

Puzzle.io Standout Features and Integrations

Standout features include automated revenue recognition to help align project income with work completed, variance analysis to flag unexpected shifts in expenses, and concierge onboarding to guide your team through setup.

Integrations include Ramp, Brex, Mercury, Every, Meow, Rippling, Gusto, Deel, Central, Stripe, Bill.com, Runway, and Causal.

FreshBooks is cloud-based accounting software built to help small businesses manage invoices, expenses, time tracking, and projects.

Why I picked FreshBooks: I picked FreshBooks because it has built-in tools to help you stay on top of project budgets, timelines, and profitability. You can assign staff to specific projects, track time against billable hours, and monitor how much time is being spent on each task. This lets you compare actual vs. estimated hours in real-time, so you can adjust before costs get out of hand. 

FreshBooks also gives you financial reporting tailored to projects, including profit and loss statements by client or project. You can create custom reports to understand how your business is doing at a granular level, whether by revenue stream, project type, or team performance. 

FreshBooks Standout Features and Integrations

Standout features include project collaboration tools that let your team and your clients work together within FreshBooks, so files, updates, and feedback stay in one place. You can also set up project estimates and convert them into invoices in just a few clicks, which helps you maintain a consistent workflow from quoting to billing. 

Integrations include Gusto, HubSpot, Square, FundBox, Google Sheets, PayPal, Mailchimp, WooCommerce, Airtable, Stripe, and Expensify.

Teamwork is a project accounting software offering complete budget and operations control and powerful project management in one place. Because of its versatility, this software is ideal for collaborative project management, especially for teams working on complex projects that require extensive coordination and communication.

Why I picked Teamwork: This platform excels in fostering project operation control and collaboration with its intuitive interface and robust communication tools.

But what really impressed me about this platform is the capacity to optimize recurring revenue from retainers by tracking time, rates, and money spent. This enables project managers or accountants to balance budget fluctuations. You can also use it to monitor profit margins by monitoring project, client, and retainer performance to data-driven decisions.

Teamwork Standout Features and Integrations

Standout features include time tracking and a Gantt chart for workflow management to support project planning. Users can also benefit from file sharing and document management for easy information exchange and collaboration.

Integrations include Slack, MS Teams, Hubspot, Skyvia, Atarim, Feedbucket, Parallax, Stripe, Bybrand, Integrately, Pabbly, and Import2. You can also use Teamwork API to integrate Teamwork with the tools you love and create customized, tailored integrations.

LiquidPlanner is a transformative project accounting solution for teams that want to plan, predict, perform, and track projects beyond expectations. Thanks to its predictive scheduling, LiquidPlanner is ideal for project management in dynamic environments where priorities and schedules frequently change.  

Why I picked Liquid Planner: I liked LiquidPlanner because it takes the heavy lifting of managing project uncertainty off your shoulders, including budgets. The predictive scheduling capability dynamically adapts the project to change, giving you an instinct on what will happen when you plan confidently and helping you account for all staff and time.

I also liked how you can balance workload and bandwidth for the entire team across all tasks and projects. The tool considers all the projects’ complexity and people’s availability — through time tracking — to model and help optimize performance. This also gives you an opportunity to prioritize tasks and actions. In addition, the range-estimation feature captures uncertainty and helps you prepare in time.

Liquid Planner Standout Features and Integrations

Standout features include resource management, and time tracking allowing teams to adapt and track changes. You can also use intelligent insights to automate projects, estimates, time and budgets for collaborative planning and risk control.

Integrations include Trello, Jira, Slack, Salesforce, ScribeHow, Box, FTP, Google Drive, Freshdesk, Zoho, Hubstaff, and Dropbox. Thousands of other apps and software integrations can be built via LiquidPlanner’s Open API or accessed using a paid account with Zapier.

Nutcache is a well-known collaborative project management web app for businesses and teams of all sizes to improve their productivity. It includes comprehensive project management with project accounting capabilities such as invoicing, time tracking, and expense management.

Why I picked Nutcache: What makes Nutcache stand out is the platform's focus on project accounting, such as expense management and invoicing. These features allow users to invoice directly from project boards, use tracked time and expenses to bill projects, compare actual vs. estimated project budgets and time, and attach documents to estimates and invoices. Nutcache also supports payment gateways such as 2Checkout, Authorize.net, and Paypal, allowing users to accept online payments and credit cards. This makes it a great option for less experienced payroll teams.

In addition, I like Nutcache’s availability as a cloud-based solution compatible with Android, iOS, Linux, Mac and Windows systems. Being that the platform is available for free or paid, you can first try it out free and know the gist of it before going full swing with the subscription plans. All this time, you’ll get some quality features to support your project management needs.

Nutcache Standout Features and Integrations

Standout features include invoicing and expense management for productivity. With these features, you can manage the entire project delivery lifecycle in a collaborative workspace, from the initial budget estimate to the final billing, through project time tracking, expense management, invoicing your clients, and getting paid. The real-time budget capabilities allow you to see, at all times, exactly how you’re measuring up against project targets and estimates. 

Integrations include Dynacom Accounting, PayPal, Stripe, 2Checkout, Authorized.Net, Quickbooks Online, Google Workspace, GitHub, and Slack. You can also use Zapier to link Nutcache to your favorite third-party web apps and API to build custom integrations.

ActiveCollab is a project management software that gives users complete control over their work — all tasks, files, communication, and team members. ActiveCollab combines task management, time tracking, and billing into one tool, which is ideal for small and medium-sized teams.

Why I picked Active Collab: I like how this solution helps you organize your project’s tasks, teams, and files in one place. You can choose from a timeline view, task lists, and Kanban board with task dependencies and automatic rescheduling, recurring tasks, and batch editing to map your project goals and milestones.

But what I liked more is how this software’s highly configurable, rich in planning and organizational tools helps you streamline project account processes up to when you get paid. For example, linking invoicing and payment gateway with time tracking records right within the system gives you more accurate billing. And the additional advantage of doing all these online or on a mobile app makes it ideal for any team, including small and medium-sized teams.

Active Collab Standout Features and Integrations

Standout features include task list automation and time management with stopwatch, time tracking and timesheets. These two key features help you make sure that no one is idling or burning out as work gets done to be completed in the scheduled time without overburdening the project budget. Time tracking also optimizes invoice creation and improves budget estimates.

Integrations include G-Drive, Dropbox, Hubstaff, Timecamp, Slack, QuickBooks, Stripe and Paypal. You can also develop and integrate your own solutions with Active Collab API and integrate with other apps through Zapier and Webhooks.

AdaptiveWork is a project management tool designed for Agile project management, making it ideal for software development teams and organizations that follow Agile methodologies. The platform enables software project managers to gain real-time visibility across all their work, automate workflows, and proactively manage risks.

Why I picked AdaptiveWork: I picked AdaptiveWork for its project management features like planning, analytics and reporting, workflow management, and team delivery. Its advanced features help with resource and capacity management, seamless workflow automation, and portfolio management with dynamic reporting and external collaborations. 

But I really liked the financial management aspect of AdaptiveWork which makes it stand out among other project accounting software. It includes budget tracking to monitor expenses and ensure every project stays within budget. You can set hourly rates (even globally) and by role, user, or project. Time and expense tracking helps you automatically track all billable and non-billable hours to the appropriate work item or project and streamline the approval process. The solution also has revenue forecasting vs. expected revenue so you can better plan for your client engagements. And finally, rate cards define specific resource rates for clarity in cost, billing, and revenue.

AdaptiveWork Standout Features and Integrations

Standout features include Professional Services Automation and project financial management. With these features, teams and project managers can gain real-time visibility across all their work, automate workflows, proactively manage risks, and manage project resources and budgets to deliver greater business impact.

Integrations include Jira, Zendesk, Sharepoint, NOW, Excel, Microsoft Teams, Box, Slack S-Suite, AWS, Oracle, SAP, Procore and Tableau. API access and webhooks allow you to connect to other third-party apps. You can also integrate thousands of third-party apps using Zapier.

GanttPRO is an online Gantt chart maker for professional project management. It helps users become more efficient and productive in project management, from conceptualization to delivery, since it integrates all essential project management and accounting tools.

Why I picked GanttPRO: I included GanttPRO on this list because of their combined reliable and efficient project management and budget control, helping you deliver projects on time and within your budget estimates. I appreciate that the project budget feature gives you the capability to calculate the cost of your project based on the cost of tasks and resources on their duration and the type of the working unit such as labor, material, or fixed costs needed to complete the project. This allows you to always be on top of your project accounting needs.

While this platform is fit for all businesses, it has an affordable monthly price, which is a great service for any small business owner who doesn't have the budget or resources for larger project accounting software and specialists. You can use financial performance control, set duration, estimation, or actual cost for your project activities and resources and oversee and track income, expenses, and profits. 

GanttPRO Standout Features and Integrations

Standout features include Gantt chart templates and project budgets. You get many Gantt chart templates to allow you to start working on your projects right away on either Excel, Google Sheets, or GanttPRO. The project budget allows you to calculate your project’s costs in terms of time and resources and view budgeted vs. actual costs. 

Integrations include Slack, Jira Cloud, OneDrive, Google Drive, Excel, MS Project, and MS Teams. Use GanttPRO’s open API to connect your tools and Integrate GanttPRO into your existing business processes.

Rippling Spend is a spend management platform that helps businesses handle their expenses, from payroll to corporate cards. It’s designed to keep spending in check through automated policy enforcement and reporting. You can control how much gets spent, where, and by whom, all from one platform. 

Why I picked Rippling Spend: For project accounting, Rippling Spend works well because it integrates spending with payroll and expenses, allowing you to allocate project costs directly to their respective budgets. You can track project-based expenses in real time, ensuring that your team stays on budget.

The platform also lets you set specific spending limits and approval workflows for different project phases, keeping everyone accountable. This level of control makes it easier to handle project-based accounting, especially when you have multiple projects running at once.

Rippling Spend Standout Features and Integrations

Standout features include automatic policy enforcement, global spend management, corporate cards, bill generation and approval, custom workflows, receipt requests, real-time reporting, and customized dashboards.

Integrations include Slack, Google Workspace, Office 365, AWS, Zoom, Dropbox, and Salesforce.

Scoro is a work management software that doubles up as project accounting software to help agencies and consultancies streamline projects, simplify quoting, and automate billing. They have many different plans, but because of their advanced features for project accounting, I think it serves agencies and professional service providers as well.

Why I picked Scoro: The platform is an all-in-one business management software that also includes time and team management, billing, sales, and professional services automation. It tracks tasks and expenses while automating invoice processes and simplifying overall project accounting tasks such as invoicing or managing expenses.

In addition, Scoro allows users to have a centralized view of their projects, budgets, tasks, resources and deadlines, allowing for better coordination and resource management. I also like the platform because it supports team collaboration, facilitating communication, information, and sharing among team members.

Scoro Standout Features and Integrations

Standout features include simultaneously estimating delivery costs, and tracking estimated vs. actual results for timely delivery of projects within budget. Another great feature is invoicing, which automates billing and payment collection  (with multiple payment options ranging from direct deposit to pay cards and paper checks). You can also sync the invoicing with your finance tools for accurate payment information and speedy cash collection.

Integrations include major business tools like MS Exchange, Google Calendar, Quickbooks, Asana, Jira, Evernote, Trello, Harvest, Basecamp, GitHub, Xero, Expensify, Exact, Salesforce, Hubspot, Mailchimp, Stripe, Paypal,  Woocommerce, Drift, Dropbox, and Zendex. Zapier allows you to connect it to many other third-party apps. You can also use the API to create your own integrations and submit them to Scoro Marketplace.