Both use your data from your cloud accounting solution, to assist in the cashflow forecasting process and give you insights. Both are indeed easy to understand and get started quickly. In addition, they also have the concept of scenarios which you can create on top of your base cashflow to see and analysis the effect on cashflow enabling businesses to make informed decisions.
So, what is the difference between them? It is in the way that they use the accounting information to create the cashflow. Fluidly’s approach uses AI to map out future spend based on past experience, which then you can tweak whereas. On the other hand, Float uses your accounting information to match your actual spend versus the budgets that you have created. Both approaches work well for some businesses but not for others.
I was impressed in how quick I could get a cashflow forecast using Fluidly as after a few minutes of waiting for the data to sync from my accounting system for the first time, I had already received an editable forecast. It is great if your revenue and expenditure is fairly consistent in growth, and easy to add in or take away one-off items. However, we found that if there was any kind of season fluctuation in your sales, the AI software would not be able to align itself with this change, as it was geared to look at the last few months. This means that depending where you were in the yearly sales cycle, this “dysfunction” could distort the revenue element of cashflow. Fluidly have also brought in an accounting partner plan, which means for that for just one monthly fee you can give all your online accounting clients access to Fluidly short term cashflow. This allows them to also try this out for themselves and upgrade if they wish. A nice little additional service you can offer and include as part of your practice offering to clients.