Best cash flow forecasting software UK in 2025
Wouldn’t it be great to have a clear idea of where your business is heading? Of course, no one can guarantee to know the future - but wouldn’t it be refreshing to have complete confidence in your cash flow predictions?
Cash flow forecasting software can give you just that. It will be no surprise that there are many options available, so how do you find what your business needs? We’ve taken a look at some of the leading options. Read on for an overview of the best cash flow forecasting software in 2025.
What is Cash Flow Forecasting Software?
Cash flow forecasting software uses your financial data, as well as powerful forecasting and reporting tools, to give you a clear view of your cash flow position now and looking forwards - helping to significantly improve your cash flow. Business leaders use it to make more confident decisions and achieve clarity about their evolving financial outlook.
Best Cash Flow Forecasting Software
To help you identify the best cash flow forecasting software for your business, we’ve taken a quick look at a few of the leading players. Here's a breakdown of some of the most popular cash flow forecasting tools for small and medium-sized businesses, including features, pricing, and ratings (where available, data as of January 2025):
The Access Group
Access cash flow forecasting software is aimed at medium-sized businesses across all sectors. It’s also popular with financial advisors who need to provide cash flow forecasts for their clients.
In addition to all the standard or integrated cash flow forecasting and reporting tools you would expect, key features include instant calculations, driver-based planning, and rolling forecasts using real-time data.
- Pricing: Starts from GDP: £97 p/m
- Trustpilot Rating: 4.6
Fathom
Fathom is an all-in-one reporting, analysis and forecasting tool also offered by The Access Group. It is a popular tool used by small and medium-sized businesses, Accountants and Bookkeepers and franchisees, with key features such as reporting, forecasting consolidation and benchmarking to help businesses manage their finances.
- Pricing: Starts from GDP: £36 p/m
- Trustpilot Rating: Profile, no reviews or score. Part of The Access Group with a score of 4.6
Sage
Sage offers cash flow reporting and forecasting software aimed at accountants seeking a tool that enables them to inform and advise their clients.
It offers budgeting, forecasting and reporting to help predict cash flow and profit. Like all cash flow accounting software, it saves time by enabling you to see the information you need without merging documents or building new reports and spreadsheets.
- Pricing: Starts from GDP: £15 p/m
- Trustpilot Rating: 4.4
Futrli
Futrli is a stand-alone Sage product which does cash flow forecasting and reporting, and includes 3-way profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow forecasts for 3 years.
- Pricing: Starts from GDP: £37 p/m
- Trustpilot Rating: 4.7
Xero
Xero cash flow forecasting is designed to support small business owners, providing a glimpse of financial health and helping to plan future spending.
It provides a step-by-step process for creating a 12-month cash flow forecast in a few clicks, taking into account the business incomings and outgoings and using a simple template rather than building a separate spreadsheet.
- Pricing: Starts from GDP: £1.60 p/m
- Trustpilot Rating: 3.7
Quickbooks
Quickbooks Cash Flow Planner is aimed at start-ups, small businesses, accountants and bookkeepers.
It makes it easy to create a 24-month cash flow forecast which includes tracking projects, specific jobs, and locations, to give greater insight into where money is coming from. It is available in IOS and web versions and also links to the business bank account and credit card to keep data up to date.
- Pricing: Starts from GDP: £1.60 p/m
- Trustpilot Rating: 4.5
Spotlight
Spotlight offers solutions for business advisors and accountants as well as business owners and Finance professionals.
Key features of this platform include consolidated forecasting and reporting including 3-way cash flow forecasts, budgets and scenarios. The dashboard offers an instant and visual snapshot of performance. Spotlight can also be integrated with Xero.
- Pricing: Starts from GDP: £295 p/m
- Trustpilot Rating: Profile but no reviews or score
Syft
Syft integrates with a range of finance solutions popular with small and mid-level business in different sector sizes including Xero, QuickBooks, Stripe and Shopify.
Designed as an interactive and collaborative financial reporting tool, Syft produces a wide range of reports from the simplest to the most complex. Key features include attractive visuals which bring insights to life as well as easy-to-use forecasting tools.
- Pricing: Starts from USD: $19 p/m
- Trustpilot Rating: 3.2
Castaway
Castaway offers benefits for SMEs up to enterprise-level organisations as well as finance advisors and accountants.
Using integrations to pull data from accounting packages such as Xero, or via Excel, Castaway produces reports, forecasts, and ‘what if’ scenarios using a customisable dashboard, drag and drop functionality and image widgets to create the outputs you need.
- Pricing: Starts from AUD: $150 p/m
- Trustpilot Rating: No profile
Frequently Asked Questions
How do cash flow projection tools work?
Cash flow project tools work by collating historical finance data, to predict the future state of a business’ cashflow. It does this by calculating the difference between incoming and outgoing cash, and by analysing data such as sales, expenses and payment schedules.
How to set up a cashflow forecast:
To set up a cashflow forecast manually, you would need to list expected cash in and out over a set time period, with an estimate for each financial categories based on your historical data. You would then need to calculate the net cash flow by subtracting your outgoings from incoming cash to understand your available cash flow for that period.
This can be a lengthy and time-consuming task to perform manually as each time period would need to be calculated separately. Most accounting software platforms will include a cashflow forecasting tool which will pull and analyse your financial data automatically, and provide cashflow forecasts quickly and without the need of manual calculations.
What are the benefits of using software for forecasting cash flow?
There are a whole range of benefits to using cash flow forecasting software – as you can see from the list below.
✅ Improved accuracy and reliability: It’s so much easier to make fast and effective decisions when you trust your data. Cash flow forecasting software draws upon finance data from across your business and operations, which means you can have confidence in the overall accuracy of your reports and predictions.
✅ Better cash management: Because cash flow software uses data from all of the various parts of your business, it gives you a clear picture of your cash position at any point in time. It highlights issues such as late payments so that you can respond accordingly; it also provides long-term or strategic cash flow forecasting which gives insight into the impact of different business decisions on future cash flow.
✅ Access to real-time data: The cash position of your business can change quickly – so it’s vital that your cash flow forecast stays up to date at all times. By using integrated data flows in real time, you can make more informed decisions about your cash position.
✅ Simplified financial management processes: One of the key benefits of integrating and consolidating data into your cash flow forecasting software is that it removes the need for manual rekeying which so often results in errors and inaccuracies which can create nasty surprises further down the line.
✅ Improved financial planning: With the right information at hand at the click of a mouse, it’s so much easier to make robust and confident financial decisions and plans. It’s great for reporting too – especially when you want to give regular updates to the senior leadership team in your business.
Pro tip: Three-way forecasting lets you take into account operations, investments and finance activity in your cash flow forecast. Three-way forecasting integrates cash flow, profit and loss, and balance sheet forecasts – it’s also increasingly requested by finance providers. Check whether the cash flow software solution you choose is able to support this.
What are the limitations of cash flow projection software?
While the use of cash flow projection software is recommended for a quick and clear view of your financial liquidity, there are some limitations to its use, such as:
Short-term focus: While your cashflow projections may be accurate for the short term, you should not be reliant on their accuracy for an entire financial year. Regular updates and refreshes should be undertaken to continue a more accurate representation of your cash flow.
Over-reliance on estimates: The inflow of cash you’ve estimated is just that – an estimate. You should not rely on the estimates in your cashflow projections as a source of truth – keep an eye on the actual cash coming into the business and compare to your estimates to ensure your forecasts remain accurate.
Fluctuations: Cashflow can fluctuate suddenly and unexpectedly, due to external factors such as the economy and consumer behaviour, as well as seasonal peaks and one-off expenses. These types of changes to circumstances can have a substantial impact on your forecast accuracy.
How much does it cost and what is the expected return on investment (ROI)?
The cost of cash flow forecasting software can vary depending on the software you choose, the number of user licenses you require and the features the software contains.
The expected return on investment from forecasting software can range from low to very high, depending on the cost of the software, implementation costs and the direct and indirect tangible benefits you gain from utilising the software and its insights. If you can benefit from improved cash management, better debt management, financial planning and reduced risk of insolvency, then you can expect a very high ROI.
Cash flow forecasting software: Free vs Paid
Cash flow forecasting software is one of those key areas where it really is worth investing because you’ll gain practical benefits. You do ‘get what you pay for’.
Yes, it’s possible to create a cash flow forecast yourself, for free, using a spreadsheet: but to be honest, do you have the time? And will you feel 100% confident that every piece of relevant data has been included?
Manually produced cash flow forecasting spreadsheets can be problematic if any inaccuracies creep in. It’s also time-consuming to keep them updated. These are some of the reasons why a software tool that all the information automatically feeds into is such a useful and helpful addition to your decision-making armoury.
Can I use Excel for cash flow forecasting?
Businesses can use Excel and spreadsheets to calculate their cash flow forecasts and projections. This requires a large amount of manual calculations and adjustments for each and every time frame they wish to have a forecast for, which can be prone to human error or miscalculations.
To avoid any errors and the need to calculate manually, businesses can take advantage of cashflow forecasting software, or accounting software with cashflow forecasting tools to quickly get cashflow forecasts.
Can I use cash flow forecasting as a budgeting tool?
There are distinct differences between a budget and a forecast - a budget is set at the start of the year or the start of a project and is based on the strategic aims of the business, whereas a forecast is an estimation of the business’ future cash flow.
While they are different, your cash flow forecasts can be used as a part of your budget. Your cash flow forecast can provide valuable insight into expected cash flow in, and out of your business to help you plan out expenditure, highlight any potential for cash shortages and your level of cash liquidity, so you can plan out your budget for a year.
Choosing Cash Flow Forecasting Software for Your Business
It’s clear to see that staying on top of your cash flow forecast – what’s expected to come in and what needs to go out – is vital for businesses of all sizes, especially during times of uncertainty or when pushing forwards with ambitious growth plans for example. Cash flow forecasting software can help, not only because it gives you a constantly updated view in real time, but also because it saves you time and effort too.
Whether you are a start-up or small business with plans to grow or a medium-sized company looking for a comprehensive option that fits with the specific requirements of your business – why not check out Access cash flow forecasting software? It will help you get to grips with your cash flow forecast as you push ahead with your plans. You can use the links below to find out more.
