South Wales-based IFA has launched an online cashflow planning tool called CashCalc after finding rival offerings “clunky”.
Ray Adams, director of Niche Chartered Financial Planners, has built up a suite of excel spreadsheet calculators including a cashflow modelling tool over the last 10 years.
Mr Adams said he decided to develop the software further a year ago after being disappointed with the cashflow software available to other advisers and planners
CalshCalc took on two full time software developers and after seven months of testing inhouse www.cashcalc.co.uk was set up and made available nationwide.
He said: “When I looked at the providers I wasn’t wholeheartedly happy with any of them. We found them either too clunky or too simplistic.
‘There are about 25,000 advisers in the UK and about 5,000 of them are using some kind of cashflow modelling software and I’m genuinely not sure why the other 20,000 aren’t. They could be put off by complexity and costs.
“We wanted to have a service that was completely intuitive, meaning it is completely obvious what to do as soon as you open the program.”
It is free to sign up and use the basic service of cashflow, however, Mr Adams said he hoped a good proportion of the users would want to upgrade to a premium service where they can ‘bespoke brand’ the output reports and use a range of other calculators, including level versus indexed annuity comparison and immediate versus deferred pension income.
Branding is £25 per month and the full suite of all calculators including branding is £100 per month from 1 September but with a special offer of £30 per month from now until September.
Mr Adams said he had not launched the tool primarily to bring in money for the firm.
He said: “I am passionate about financial planning. The target is to have 10,000 users within two years. I would hope that about 20 per cent of those will be paying users.”
To read FTAdviser’s Guide to Cashflow Modelling, and earn 40 minutes CPD, click here.
