Futrli, Spotlight Reporting or Liveplan?

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Hi,

Has anybody had experience of any of these software packages?

I will be looking at trailling the software soon, just wondered if anyone had any pointers or recommendations prior to looking at them?

Liveplan appears to be cheaper but looks to be very much an American product?

Thanks for your help.

Replies (5)

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By Mark Lee
27th Sep 2018 10:04

Accountants I have worked with each have their favourities. They are not interchangeable and your choice will depend on:
- how you want to work with your clients to advise them and interpret the data produced
- which format appeals most to you
- the ease of updating reports as the underlying data changes

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By ads1188
27th Sep 2018 13:32

Hi,

Interesting discussion, I am trialing Futrli, Fathom, Float and Spotlight.

Out of the these 4 Fathom seems the most appealing however there is no functionality to add a forecast and apply what if analysis.

For that reason, we are more likely to go with Futrli. You can add custom cards to your dashboard and its more flexible than the other software packages we've trialed so far.

Not trialed Liveplan and not a fan of Spotlight.

Let us know how you get on.

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By kiwilondon99
27th Sep 2018 15:12

there are a lot of basic budget/cashflows around -
does it have to be cloud -
does it have to integrate with xero/qb
are you looking at difficult revenue recogitions v cashflows [ deferred rev ? ][ landlord rents in advance..][subscriptions+ SaaS]
**** all choice limiting factors

doyou want to be able to go back and model budgets and revisions + what ifs

these and price will determine what you want [ nothing beats the sunk cost of old winforecast...!! ] but it has its aka replacements now too [ castaawy +forecast5]

would be interested to see what the trialling results/comments are....

note that @ the recent software 2018 awards in the: Forecasting, Planning & Analysis Software of the Year - Fluidly

ps not invest in any of the above or those listed by others earlier- but am an owner of old wfc
Nominees: Adaptive Insights for Finance, Float, Futrli, Spotlight Reporting

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John Toon
By John Toon
27th Sep 2018 16:20

As others have already said it's very much a matter of finding what works for you.

I use Spotlight, Fathom and Fluidly and personally think they work extremely well for our clients who are predominantly Xero and Sage 50 users.

My use case for each is as follows:
- Spotlight - great for dashboarding, visual management reporting, consolidated reporting and forecasts
- Fathom - brilliant for benchmarking and what if planning
- Fluidly - combines the features of Satago/Chaser with Float

I've always struggled with Futrli, even before the rebrand, as I find you have to invest a lot of time to get the set up right. But I know a lot of people who rave about it.

The same goes for Float - it's great for "simple" forecasting but it lacks the features in something like Spotlight or even Castaway (which might just be the answer to replacing Sage Winforecast)

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By AdShawBPR
04th Oct 2018 11:53

I've tried Futrli (when it was crunch boards) and using Spotlight at the moment. Was having a hunt yesterday to see what else was around. I thought Dry Run looked quite interesting but could find none that quite fit the bill (for me). Spotlight is giving me some pretty reports with a lot of information, variance analysis, etc but not quite what I think my clients really need - which is a cash flow projection showing quarterly VAT payments and Corporation Tax payments - and one that is easy to muck about with. Perhaps I haven't invested enough time in them to make them work properly.

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