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CashFlow forecasting for small businesses and freelancers

49 points| jaimeiniesta | 13 years ago |wisecashhq.com | reply

28 comments

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[+] thibaut_barrere|13 years ago|reply
Hi there - I'm the guy behind WiseCash (SaaS service, in beta since July).

The homepage is not yet ready for the general public, nor for a "Show HN"!

I'll happily answer questions though.

Here's an internal newsletter archive if you want to have an quick look inside though:

https://www.wisecashhq.com/newsletters/acquiring-more-financ...

[+] ROFISH|13 years ago|reply
Hi there, quick question: do you have any support for eCommerce or are you just about burn rates for other SaaS companies? The trickiest part is figuring out "okay, we can do $10k this week in new products" after counting our sales rate, burn rate, amount of credit available (via credit cards, etc), and how much we owe licensors.
[+] chime|13 years ago|reply
The screenshots look great. I like that you support Euro (and will hopefully do dollar and other currencies too) - just make sure you get the commas and periods localized well ( http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/06/10/jquery-glo... ). The bootstrap UI looks sleek but I recommend styling the buttons to make it look slightly more customized than the default bootstrap CSS.

Also, you should check out my free app: https://zetabee.com/cashflow/ (see the demo and update the dates/amounts to play around). It has similar features and is very much like the original spreadsheet I used myself. It has burn rate (balance), monthly (income vs. expense), and many other views/lists.

My biggest feature request has been multiple simulations/forecasts so users can do what-if scenarios. Also the ability to easily ignore/disable rules with one-click to help with this. Either I get the new car or don't. Check/uncheck to see how it impacts the future. I've been very busy with my other projects and have not updated this app in over two years. I hope you guys can incorporate these features into your app so I can forward the heavy users to you. Good luck!

[+] davidw|13 years ago|reply
> The bootstrap UI looks sleek but I recommend styling the buttons to make it look slightly more customized than the default bootstrap CSS.

I'd think it'd be a much better use of their time to improve the product, especially seeing as how they don't think it's ready to be released.

The number of people who have any idea what bootstrap is or looks like is dwarfed, by orders of magnitude, by people involved with small businesses and freelancing. So unless you're targeting snooty design folks who get offended that someone would sully their site with bootstrap, get on with the features!

[+] thibaut_barrere|13 years ago|reply
Thanks for your comment and the good luck, too! Glad you like the screenshots.

Simulations are definitely on my roadmap, along with an API to let people extend the app themselves, and much more.

Euro, dollar and more currencies are supported, it's just "one currency at once" for now.

On bootstrap, localization etc: as this is a bootstrapped service (I'm a freelancer), I wanted to keep a very low overhead of development for now, so I pretty much removed everything I could remove, and leveraged existing stuff as I could.

I will work on a better/more polished UI, localization etc once we (my wife-associate and I) become profitable.

I'll have a look at your app, thanks a lot!

[+] Aidan|13 years ago|reply
This looks fantastic! Cash flow has been a major pain point for me, and quite an unexpected one with a rapidly growing apparel company (https://www.kigu.me).

We've been managing this using a spreadsheet but tracking loan repayments, stock purchases, postage, cost of sale and salaries as well as picking a useful scale (daily vs weekly) has been a real challenge.

I can't wait for an invite.

[+] lleims|13 years ago|reply
Looks really interesting. As a freelancer/writer I sometimes don't know how much to charge and I've never found it easy to manage my cashflow.

Looking forward to receiving an invite to the beta :)

[+] thibaut_barrere|13 years ago|reply
Will invite you this afternoon so you get an idea! Cheers.
[+] typicalrunt|13 years ago|reply
The splash page is leaving a lot of questions in my mind, and the invitation to give my email address (just to find out more) is a bit of a speedbump. Reading the comments in HN I can see other people asking how your service works.

My suggestion is to take your answers to those questions and use them on the front page to provide a bit more information to hook potential customers like myself.

[+] thibaut_barrere|13 years ago|reply
I totally understand and do agree! This wasn't meant to be posted on HN as is (although the app is up and running since July at least, with people using it daily).

The splash page is a placeholder I put in place a long while back and it does not explain at all what you'll get inside the app (and what you won't get).

A proper home page (with detailing benefits, features, privacy policy, pricing, and a screencast) is on its way.

Thanks for taking the time to underline this :)

[+] saturnflyer|13 years ago|reply
I'm glad to see this here. I've been a beta user and it's really helped me get a good view of how far into the future money will take me.
[+] ericboggs|13 years ago|reply
I didn't look closely, but if this product builds a direct-method cash flow statement from a balance sheet - then you've got a winner. Quickbooks - the default small business accounting product - does a HORRIBLE job with the cash flow statement.
[+] thibaut_barrere|13 years ago|reply
Once WiseCash becomes profitable, I plan to work on automating data extraction from various tools (like QuickBooks, FreshBooks etc most likely), either as a first time setup or a full sync process.

I think WiseCash will complement those tools nicely.

Thanks for the suggestion!

[+] jaimeiniesta|13 years ago|reply
I'm using it as a beta user, and I find it really helpful.

I used to do this kind of things with a spreadsheet, but this tool automates it and gives you nice charts.

[+] thibaut_barrere|13 years ago|reply
Glad you like WiseCash!

We (my wife and I, co-founders) also used a spreadsheet a long while back and it got fairly hairy.

We built WiseCash both to create a secondary income apart from freelancing and to help out people get more freedom like we managed to.

[+] codegeek|13 years ago|reply
sorry i have not signed up yet but how do you get the required data to create the forecast ? I mean are you using an automated aggregrator (like yodlee etc.) to pull bank details, credit card info etc ?
[+] thibaut_barrere|13 years ago|reply
WiseCash (currently) requires that you input the planned expenses and income (using recurrence rules).

It makes no attempt (for now at least) to pull existing data from sources.

I will work on that topic once we are profitable though.

[+] bluewater|13 years ago|reply
hard to tell from the screenshots but do you or would you consider adding a weekly look at cash flow vs. only monthly? looks like a nice product in the making though :)
[+] ar4s|13 years ago|reply
If you're still giving some priority to HN users… /raises hand
[+] thibaut_barrere|13 years ago|reply
I'm working on an "onboarding screencast" to avoid blowing up under support, then I'll invite pretty much everyone who left their mail (so 487 people, so far :-).