Sage expands SME cash flow management offering via “critical” acquisition

Accounting, financial, HR, and payroll technology specialist Sage has announced it has completed the acquisition of Futrli, a cash flow forecasting software solution for SMEs and accountants.

The move deepens Sage’s commitment to supporting accountants with complete end-to-end proposal-to-advisory services as the industry prepares for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self-Assessment (MTD for ITSA). Futrli provides a “critical tool” for SMEs to maintain healthier cash flows to grow their business and reach their potential.

Futrli’s solution is focused on helping growing businesses understand current and future cash flow, providing SMEs and accountants with data-driven three-way forecast financials (profit and loss, balance sheet, and cash flow) using proprietary prediction algorithms.

These are based upon data-analysed historical trends, blending direct and indirect forecasting methods, using invoices, bills, journals, cash, and payment data, enabling customers to “visualise the past, present, and future of their business”.

Neal Watkins, EVP product, Sage, commented: “At the heart of every successful business is strong cash flow management. Futrli will form an important role in the way we support accountants and their clients to gain the visibility needed to deliver great advisory services - all as part of our Sage for Accountants solution.”

“I am delighted to welcome the Futrli team to the Sage family and look forward to achieving great things together.”

In line with Sage’s focus on supporting accountants with services that span from proposal to advisory ‘Futrli by Sage’ will be integrated with Sage for Accountants, helping accountants to combine workflows across their practice in one place, with a simple per-client pricing model.

In addition, ‘Futrli by Sage’ is and will remain a market solution and will continue to be available to SMBs as a standalone product post-acquisition.

Hannah Dawson, CEO and founder, Futrli, added:“For nearly a decade, we’ve had a sole focus of helping our customers to better manage their cash flow, which in turn helps them to make intelligent business decisions.

We pride ourselves on our unique 3-way forecasting solution that allows accountants to tailor and personalise based on client or industry need. We couldn’t be more excited by the opportunity to scale our expertise and bring this to Sage customers.“