Do you know what the future has in store for your business? By using the right technology, you can get a pretty clear idea.
We at James Scott are big believers in the power of accounting software to help our clients make informed decisions and push their business forward.
We’ve talked before about how we use apps like Dext and ApprovalMax to do this, as well as narrowing down our top 5 Xero add-ons. This time, we’re looking at our favourite forecasting software: Futrli.
What is Futrli?
Futrli is a set of financial forecasting tools, designed to help businesses make data-driven decisions based on long, short and medium-term performance projections.
It includes three separate products:
- Predict – Use data from your accounting software to forecast cashflow, profit, sales, spend and more. Get a forward-looking view of every aspect of your business.
- Advisor – Live dashboards and reporting to help you plan and monitor KPIs. Use this to make key decisions, budget effectively and raise finance.
- Portfolio – Reporting on performance, risks and opportunities for a portfolio of clients. This is a valuable tool for us as your accountant, but it’s also great for franchises and groups of organisations.
Benefits of Futrli
Data-led planning
It might sound obvious to say it, but getting a clear view of the future really does change the way you run your business.
In our experience, a lot of businesses rely on assumptions and instincts to make important decisions, from new projects and products to hiring choices and structural changes. Making those choices based on nothing but gut feeling isn’t just scary – it’s risky, too.
Futrli Predict puts all your business data together, pulling it automatically from accounting software like Xero to give you total accuracy. It means you can see what’s just around the corner, avoiding any nasty surprises and financial shocks, as well as offering visibility on the years ahead.
Improve your strategy
With that information in front of you, you can pinpoint potential issues and inefficiencies, or look for opportunities to improve.
Whether it’s a significant expense coming up, a likely dip in sales based on customer trends, or a predicted tax bill, your forecasts will give you all the information you need to prepare for those ups and downs.
You might decide to tweak your sales strategy based on the trends Futrli picks up, or test out your cash position and profitability based on different scenarios.
Either way, you’re making those choices based on solid, reliable information, and you’ve got more time to plan compared to fixing problems in the here and now.
We’ve found this invaluable when advising our clients on our business strategy. It means we can pick up on those potential pitfalls, or on the opportunities they have to grow, and work with them to find the best solution for their business.
Dashboards and reporting
Futrli Advisor consolidates your data into live dashboards, showing you both past and future performance. These are easy to adjust as you need, and to share with your team for visibility.
It also allows you to produce reports, so you can present your performance to shareholders, lenders, and any other key stakeholders.
These can be created in PDF format and are fully customisable, perfect for board meetings and business plans.
Track KPIs
One of Futrli Advisor’s most useful features is KPI tracking. This lets you set up automatic alerts based on different figures, depending on what’s most important to you.
You can set these up using Futrli’s formula builder, or create your own custom formulas. And in addition to financial KPIs, you can monitor non-financial ones like headcount, customer numbers and more. It’s all up to you.
If you hit a KPI, or go over your budget, Futrli can notify you, keeping you on top of your progress at all times.
Clear, smart layouts
Another thing we love about Futrli is the way it looks. This is more important than it sounds – and if you’ve ever needed to use complex or outdated business software, you’ll know why.
When you’re trying to understand the intricate detail of financial data, you need that information to be clearly presented. Futrli is easy to use and navigate, saving you valuable time and helping you to understand your performance at a glance.
And if anyone else needs to see your data and forecasts, you can hand them a sleek, smart and detailed report.
Talk to us about Futrli and our other favourite business apps.