We posted recently about Fluidly’s withdrawal from the cash flow arena, and suggested Float as our preferred alternative for clients who wanted to be sure that they were tracking their cash carefully and effectively. You can read that post here.

Xero has its free ‘Xero Analytics’ option, which we feel is currently some way behind the functionality that the free Fluidly option was providing, though the road-map does show there will be some developments to come in future.

The payable Xero Analytics Plus option isn’t really comparable to the Float offer either, which has some fairly major enhancements that could be really helpful if you have aspirations of growth for your business.

In the recent quarterly Xero Product Update though, Xero announced they are giving customers on Starter, Standard and Premium subscriptions the chance to try Analytics Plus free for four months. You need to sign-up before 30th June 2023 to qualify.

If you’re currently using Fluidly and are looking for alternatives, this could be a good time to consider and compare Analytics Plus.

The current cost for Analytics Plus, that you’d be committing to for the future, is £5 per month. Though the functionality of Analytics Plus in comparison to Float is limited, the cost is significantly lower.

What is Xero Analytics?

This gives you two dashboards, connected to your Xero Subscription. These are short term cashflow and business snapshot.

Analytics Plus is the enhanced option, over the ‘standard’ Analytics that’s included with a Xero Subscription. This gives you extended forecasts, out to 90 days, and allows you to customise your business snapshot to include financial metrics.

How do the two Xero Analytics options compare?

Short term cashflow:

Feature	Analytics	Analytics Plus
See future cash flow based on existing upcoming invoices and bills	✔	✔
See the impact of scheduled repeating invoices and bills	✔	✔
Project cash flow for the next 7 or 30 days	✔	✔
Project cash flow for the next 60 or 90 days	–	✔
View predicted recurring cash transactions based on your spend and receive money history	–	✔
See the VAT payment due for the current filing period, as well as amounts for past filing periods	–	✔
Add one-off amounts to the dashboard to see the impact on cash flow	–	✔

Business Snapshot:

Feature	Analytics	Analytics Plus
Get a summary of key financial information, such as revenue and expense trends	✔	✔
Print the dashboard or save it as a PDF	✔	✔
Choose set reporting date ranges (eg last month or last quarter)	✔	✔
Run the dashboard on either a cash or accrual basis	✔	✔
Drill down into a metric to see the underlying financial transactions	✔	✔
Choose custom reporting date ranges	–	✔
Select which accounts are included in the dashboard’s calculations	–	✔
Choose which expenses to track on the expenses table	–	✔
Hide or show metrics on the dashboard to suit your business needs	–	✔

One key consideration…

It’s important to remember that any cash flow monitoring will only ever be as good as the information that is in your Xero system. It’s vital that, if you want to use an add-on to Xero (or Quickbooks etc) your bookkeeping is kept up to date and your bank reconciled frequently and promptly.

If you’d like any help in getting your processes in place to make that possible, please get in touch. It may feel that it’s a long way off, but there are some simple changes that can probably bring regular and timely reporting much closer than you may think, and they don’t have to be costly.

How do you add Analytics Plus?

If you do decide to add Analytics Plus to see how it might be helpful, particularly while you can do so at no cost, it’s really simple! Just bear in mind it’s the subscriber who needs to follow the steps below.

• Log in to Xero.
• Click the organisation name in the top left.
• Click Manage Subscription.
• Click Change Subscription.
• Click Continue to add-ons.
• Underneath Optional add-ons, select the checkbox for Analytics Plus.
• Click Continue to review and pay.
• Click Confirm purchase.
• Click Done.
• Set up a reminder to remove the add-on in four months’ time to remind you to make a decision about keeping it or not!

You can find out more about Xero Analytics Plus here.

As ever, if you’d like to discuss the best options for your business, please do get in touch. We’re here to help! We don’t benefit in any way from clients using any system, App or approach over any of the others, so are objective and simply want to find the best solutions for your needs.