Hi Paul,
Appreciate your detailed feedback. Clearly shows I'm unable to properly articulate what it is. Which I'm fine with for the moment as it's new for me to, and this conversation has been so valuable to help me find the right message.
I've done various cash flow forecasts in the past, but I always ended up going back to my self built spreadsheet to get a better snap shot of where the business stood financially. Its so lightweight in use, than all I have to do is add my current bank balance and mark if any outstanding due obligation was paid, and the system calculates the updated position. The longer its used, the better picture it paints in its trend graph. I think it helps me understand the business's financial flow a lot better too as it's a current snap shot in a cycle of obligations and what ownership they each have of the current bank balance.
If a bank balance shows £100,000 one day and £30,000 the next due to £70,000 of obligations, the 'True Balance' would have shown £30,000 ONO the day before, because it had already accounted for the £70,000. It means in a month where you 'break even' the True Balance would remain almost the same, whereas the bank account could be jumping up and down through money in and out. If anything, it provides a calmer picture of the business finances.
Its definitely not trying to be a complex accounting piece of software. It could be updated as little as once a week in a few minutes and over time would give an accurate picture of the company's financial health and its direction.
Unfortunately, this isn't how most marketing works, e.g. you've not sold me any features and their benefits. This is too detailed for the quick browsers, yet not detailed enough for the detail people!
Too detailed - The problem with the 2 or 3 long paragraphs is many people won't read them online; you need snappy short benefits and solutions to problems for most customers.
Not detailed enough - We use the full Xero package, this has a cash-flow and bank forecasting tool that does what you describe above.
I may be wrong, but to me, I cannot see any benefit, as I have something that already does that. You have not explained how it does it any better and what the accounting packages don't do.
Unless you familiarise yourself with the likes of Xero, Quickbooks, Freeagent etc, you cannot answer the question above, so can articulate no tangible benefit to a large tranche of potential customers.
You also didn't answer the "why would I input my data into this and an accounting system". I can update an accounting package in a few minutes if I do it every week, the point is a lot of people do it a handful of times a year.
Next steps - Ask yourself, why does a business need it, if they've got enough money in their bank account do they care?
For us, it would not be worth it unless there was a real upside, which I cannot see from what you've said.
There are loads of searches for "cashflow modelling/software" etc every month, but you're up against enterprise solutions and the accounting packages.
Do you know who your target customer is; you need this to find what they look for and where, by looking at their pain points and understanding their online searches?
If you can't explain the features and benefits easily, or find niche areas to market using the process above, it's going to be very hard to find customers. I'd suggest any sort of name comes after you've done proper customer and market research.
