Draft for Ciaran's read, not published

Compare

Own Your Numbers vs Float.

If you will spend twenty minutes a week keeping a forecast honest, buy Float - it is the best owner-friendly forecasting tool we analysed. Its reviewers are owner-directors speaking in their own voice, and what they bought is the ability to see forward. The catch is the same one as the spreadsheet: a forecast is a thing you own, and it is only as true as its last update. Own Your Numbers is the opposite trade: no forward scenarios, nothing to maintain, a verdict that arrives on its own.

Float's numbers: 4.83 average, 345 reviews. Forecasting dominates its reviews (102 of 345 in our corpus) and scenario planning appears in 75 - far more than any other tool we analysed. And its buyers sound like you: "I am not an accountant or even a bookkeeper however I can manage this very easily." The relief is real too: "My only regret is I didn't start using Float years ago. No more worrying about cashflow. My runway is crystal clear now."

The maintenance catch

A Float forecast is powered by your payment dates, and like the spreadsheet, it stops being true the week you stop updating it. The reviewers who love it describe a weekly habit, and that is the honest price of seeing forward: you do the seeing. Worth knowing too: its review flow has slowed - 16 of 345 since January 2025 - and the bug and VAT complaints in its reviews are a decade old.

Float or a weekly briefing?

Different questions. Float answers "what happens next if my assumptions hold" - genuinely valuable, and we do not do it. Own Your Numbers answers "is my cash safe this Monday and what do I do about it": cash, net cash, cushion in months, a risk rating, the debtors to chase, five actions, with nothing to maintain because it reads Xero itself and lands in your WhatsApp or inbox on its own. A minute to read, and it has an opinion - fast, clear, built for busy. If you want to test decisions before making them, Float. If nobody in the business will maintain anything, ours. Some businesses genuinely want both: the forecast for planning, the briefing for the weeks the forecast quietly goes stale.

Your situationBuy
You will maintain payment dates weekly and want scenariosFloat
You want to see forward before decisionsFloat
Nobody will maintain anything; you want the Monday verdictOwn Your Numbers
Planning and a stale-proof pulseBoth

If you are the accountant, bookkeeper or fractional FD

For the clients who will never maintain a forecast - most of them - a briefing that maintains itself. Connect each client read-only under one account: every client's cushion and risk rating in one Monday scan, briefings you can share without granting anyone write access, and the monthly pack stays yours. The practice workflow is its own page.

See my cash cushion

14 days free · no card · read-only.