Most small businesses should start with the cash projection built into Xero or QuickBooks Online, or a spreadsheet with an AI assistant. Pay for a dedicated tool when you need a weekly 13-week view or real scenarios: Float leads on weekly cash, Cash Flow Frog and Pulse cost less, Fathom suits monthly three-way forecasts, LivePlan suits lender plans.
The biggest decision isn't which AI is cleverest. It's whether you need to see cash week by week or month by month. A business that pays wages weekly and gets paid in 45 days lives or dies by the weekly view; a consultancy with steady monthly fees can manage with a monthly one. "AI" in these tools mostly means predicting recurring costs and when clients will pay from their history. None of them know about the contract you signed yesterday.
Nine options side by side: horizon, weekly view, AI and price
List prices in USD as published on each vendor's page in September 2026; several vendors price by currency and region, and promotional rates come and go, so confirm on the pricing page before buying.
| Option | Weekly view | Horizon | What the AI does | Connects to | List price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Xero built-in projection | Short-term view (7 or 30 days) | 30, 60 or 180 days by plan | Predicts recurring transactions; JAX answers questions | Xero only | Included: plans $25, $55, $90 a month |
| QuickBooks Online cash flow planner | Chart by month; items by date | Months ahead, based on your data | Projects from invoices, bills and bank history | QuickBooks only | Included in Simple Start to Advanced |
| Float | Yes, 13-week rolling | 12 months (Essentials), 36 (Growth) | Cost prediction, auto-budgets, payment dates by client history | Xero, QuickBooks Online | $130/month, or $105 billed annually |
| Fathom | No, monthly and longer | Current year + 5 years | AI report commentary; regression-based quick start | QuickBooks, Xero, MYOB, Sage, Excel, Sheets | Per company per month; see pricing page |
| Cash Flow Frog | Yes, daily to quarterly | Up to 36 months | Predicts unplanned transactions; AI connector for Claude, ChatGPT and others | QuickBooks, Xero, Zoho Books, FreshBooks, more | From $55/month under $1M revenue; less annually |
| Pulse | Yes, daily to yearly | User-defined | Little AI; recurring items and scenarios | QuickBooks Online (mid plan up) | $29, $59 or $89 a month |
| LivePlan | No, monthly | Multi-year plans | AI idea validation; AI insights in Premium reports | QuickBooks Online, Xero | $20 or $40 a month ($15 or $30 annually) |
| Agicap | Yes, 13-week | Short and long term | Bank-data categorisation, scenarios | Banks and accounting systems | Quote only |
| Spreadsheet + AI assistant | Whatever you build | Whatever you build | Builds formulas, times receipts, explains variances | Exports from anything | An existing AI plan, e.g. $20 a month |
What "AI" actually does in a cash flow tool
Vendors use the same two letters for three quite different things, and it helps to know which one you're paying for.
- Pattern prediction. The tool reads your past transactions and suggests future ones: the software subscription that leaves on the 3rd, the quarterly insurance premium, the client who always pays 12 days late. Float's Smart Expected Payment Dates, which shifts each outstanding invoice's expected date by that client's history, is the most useful example, because receipt timing is where most forecasts go wrong.
- Plain-language questions. You ask "what happens to cash if we hire in March?" and get an answer from your own numbers. Xero's JAX does this inside Xero; Cash Flow Frog's AI connector lets you ask the same kind of question from Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini, and can also add projections to the forecast when you tell it to.
- Written commentary. The tool drafts the narrative for a report: "cash fell 18% because two large receipts moved into next month". Fathom's commentary writer and LivePlan Premium's automated reports sit here. Useful for advisers who produce monthly packs; less useful for an owner who just wants to know whether payroll is covered.
None of these know about anything that isn't in your books yet: a new client, a lost contract, a supplier's price rise. Every tool relies on you adding those by hand, and a forecast is only as good as the person who remembers to.
Built into your accounting software: Xero and QuickBooks Online
Xero projects cash from your bank balances, open invoices and bills, and predicted recurring transactions based on past data. The length depends on plan: 30 days on Early ($25 a month list), 60 days on Growing ($55) and 180 days on Established ($90), with the ability to move expected payment dates on overdue invoices and add one-off items. JAX, Xero's AI assistant, is available to all subscribers at no extra charge for now, and can answer questions about your figures in plain language.
QuickBooks Online includes a cash flow planner on Simple Start, Essentials, Plus and Advanced. It builds a projection from your QuickBooks data (future invoices, bills and expenses) and the history of your connected bank accounts, and lets you add planned items, including repeating ones, without touching your books. One limitation that catches people out: QuickBooks' help says the planner isn't available when multicurrency is switched on. Intuit Enterprise Suite, its product for larger businesses, adds an AI-assisted 13-week forecast that uses 18 months to 2 years of past data.
Take an illustrative two-partner law firm on Xero's Growing plan with steady monthly fees and no weekly payroll. A 60-day projection, checked every Monday alongside the aged debtors report, answers its real question ("can we pay the partners' drawings at month end?") without another subscription. The built-in route runs out when you need a full quarter week by week, several saved scenarios side by side, or you run more than one company.
Float: the weekly 13-week specialist
Float connects to Xero and QuickBooks Online and forecasts cash using the direct method: it starts from your reconciled bank balance and works forward from known receipts and payments. Its two views are a 13-week rolling view, covering the next 91 days week by week, and a monthly view for longer planning. Pricing (list USD, September 2026): Essentials $130 a month, or $105 a month billed annually, with 12-month forecasts; Growth $265, or $215 annually, with 36-month forecasts; Scale $389, or $315 annually, adding multi-entity consolidation. All plans include unlimited users and 8 scenarios, with a 14-day trial and no card required.
The AI features are practical rather than flashy: Smart Cost Prediction suggests recurring costs from your history for you to confirm, Auto-budgets builds budget figures from the last 3, 6 or 12 months of actuals, and Smart Expected Payment Dates adjusts when each outstanding invoice is likely to be paid based on that client's past behaviour.
An illustrative recruitment agency that pays temps every Friday and waits 30 to 60 days for clients shows why this matters. Its cash problem is almost entirely timing, and Float's payment-date adjustment does automatically what the agency would otherwise do by hand every Monday: push each slow client's invoices into the weeks they'll really arrive. Watch-outs: the integration list is short, so check your accounting system is on it; and the monthly price is high for a business whose cash is rarely tight, where the built-in projection may be enough.
Fathom: monthly three-way forecasts and reporting
Fathom is a reporting and forecasting tool used heavily by accountants and bookkeepers producing management packs. Its forecasting is three-way (profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow, linked together), driver-based if you want it, with a quick-start option that uses linear regression on your account history. Forecasts run monthly, quarterly or annually, for the current financial year plus five years. It connects to QuickBooks Online and Desktop, Xero, MYOB, Sage, Excel and Google Sheets. It's priced per company rather than per user, with unlimited users on every plan, no minimum term and a 14-day trial; the pricing page shows rates in your local currency, so check it directly. The AI element is a commentary writer that drafts report narrative with the figures visible.
An illustrative accountancy practice producing quarterly management packs for 25 clients gets the most from Fathom: consistent reports, three-way forecasts that show how a loan or a big purchase affects the balance sheet as well as cash, and commentary drafts that cut the writing time. Watch-out: it doesn't do a weekly view, so a client whose problem is "will we make payroll in week six?" needs something else alongside it.
Cash Flow Frog: revenue-based pricing and an AI connector
Cash Flow Frog sets its price by your annual revenue. For businesses under $1M, its pricing page showed $55 a month on monthly billing in September 2026, with lower rates for annual and two-year billing and an introductory discount on top. Plans include cash flow forecasts up to 36 months, scenario planning and up to 10 users, with a free trial, no card required, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. It lists integrations with QuickBooks Online and Desktop, Xero, Zoho Books, FreshBooks, Odoo and Plaid (a bank-data service). Its forecasting predicts transactions that aren't yet planned from your history, and it offers rule-based projections using rolling averages or amounts tied to projected revenue.
The distinctive feature is its AI connector, built on MCP (Model Context Protocol, a standard way for AI assistants to connect to other software). Cash Flow Frog says it works with Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and other MCP-compatible assistants, is included in the plan at no extra cost, and can do more than read: you can tell your assistant to "add $12k in expected revenue for April" and the forecast updates.
Picture an illustrative insurance broker whose owner already works in Claude all day. Asking "if the spring renewals bring in 10% less than last year, when does cash dip below $50,000?" from the assistant they use anyway is a real convenience. The watch-out is the same power: an assistant that can write to your forecast can also write the wrong thing to it. Give the connection to one person, and check what changed after any AI-driven edit.
Pulse: simple cash tracking for manual-friendly businesses
Pulse is the simplest tool here and makes the fewest AI claims. Plans are $29 a month (Basics), $59 (Small Business, which adds multiple accounts, team access, actual-versus-projected tracking and the QuickBooks Online integration) and $89 (Premium, with unlimited accounts and multi-currency conversion), all with a 30-day free trial, after which the card you signed up with is charged. It handles daily to yearly views, recurring income and expenses, and scenarios.
It suits businesses that plan cash by hand and want something tidier than a spreadsheet: a bookkeeping firm's sole-trader clients, say, where the adviser sets up the recurring items once and the client updates a handful of expected receipts each week. Watch-out: the Basics plan lists no accounting integration, so everything is typed in, and the time that saves you on analysis goes into data entry instead.
LivePlan: forecasts built for plans and lenders
LivePlan is business-planning software with forecasting built in. Standard costs $20 a month ($15 billed annually) and Premium $40 ($30 annually), with a 35-day money-back guarantee rather than a free trial. Both include a full financial forecast (profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow), up to 10 what-if scenarios, QuickBooks Online and Xero integration with an auto-updating forecast, and budget-versus-actual dashboards. Premium adds automated board reports with AI-generated insights; both plans include AI-assisted idea validation.
It wins when the forecast is part of a document someone else will read. An illustrative engineering consultancy applying for a loan to buy survey equipment needs a three-year forecast inside a business plan, in the format lenders expect; LivePlan does that well and can be cancelled once the loan is agreed. Watch-out: it's monthly, so it won't show the week-to-week squeeze of a business with weekly payroll.
Agicap and the bigger platforms
Agicap and similar platforms (Dryrun is another name you'll see) are aimed at growing and mid-sized companies with several bank accounts or entities. Agicap connects to banks and accounting systems, categorises transactions, and offers short-term positions, a 13-week forecast and longer plans with scenarios. Pricing is quote-only, and reviews suggest it sits well above the small-business tools. Worth a demo if you run several companies or bank accounts in different currencies; overkill for a single small company with one bank account.
A spreadsheet plus an AI assistant
A well-built spreadsheet is still the most flexible option, and AI has made it much quicker to build and keep up. ChatGPT or Claude (from $20 a month on individual plans; business plans from $25 per seat monthly, minimum two seats) can build the layout with formulas, analyse a year of paid invoices to work out how each client really pays, and explain each week's variance. Copilot in Excel does similar work inside the file for Microsoft 365 Copilot users, and Gemini is built into Google Workspace's Business Standard and higher plans for Sheets users.
The trade-offs: someone has to export the data and roll the sheet forward every week; formulas break when rows are inserted; and the AI's arithmetic must happen in the spreadsheet or in code, never in the chat. For a step-by-step build, see building a 13-week cash flow forecast with AI help. It suits a business that wants to understand its cash properly before deciding which tool to pay for, and many owners find that after three months of doing it by hand they know exactly which features they'd pay for.
Which tool wins in which situation
| Your situation | Start with | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Steady monthly income, rarely tight on cash | Built-in Xero or QuickBooks projection | Answers the question you have at no extra cost |
| Weekly payroll, slow-paying clients | Float, or Cash Flow Frog on a budget | Weekly view with receipts adjusted for real payment behaviour |
| Adviser producing packs for many clients | Fathom | Per-company pricing, unlimited users, three-way forecasts and commentary |
| Loan application or investor plan | LivePlan | Multi-year forecast inside a lender-ready plan |
| Books kept by hand, or desktop software | Pulse, or a spreadsheet with AI | No dependence on a cloud accounting connection |
| Several companies or bank accounts | Float Scale, or a demo of Agicap | Consolidation across entities |
| You want to ask questions in your usual AI assistant | Cash Flow Frog with its AI connector | Works from Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini |
A worked choice: one bookkeeping firm, three client situations
An illustrative bookkeeping firm with 90 clients wanted to offer cash forecasting as a service, and started by sorting its clients rather than choosing a tool. Three situations covered most of them:
- Eight clients with weekly payroll and tight cash, including a staffing business and two building-services contractors. These needed a 13-week weekly view with receipts timed by payment history, updated every Monday. The firm trialled Float and Cash Flow Frog side by side on two of them. Float's weekly view and expected-payment-date adjustment fitted better for the staffing client; Cash Flow Frog's lower price suited the smaller contractor. At list prices, eight clients on Float Essentials billed annually would cost $840 a month, which the firm built into a monthly forecasting fee.
- About 60 clients with steady, predictable cash. For these, the built-in Xero or QuickBooks projection plus a monthly check was enough. The firm wrote a one-page guide for clients on reading their own projection and stopped there.
- A handful preparing for finance or a sale. These needed three-year forecasts in a presentable format. The firm used Fathom, which it already ran for management reporting, and used LivePlan once for a client who needed a full business plan for a lender.
The lesson the firm drew: sorting clients by how tight their cash is, and how often they need to look at it, did more for the choice than any feature list. Two tools and the built-in projections covered everyone, and nobody paid for a 36-month weekly forecast they'd never open.
A two-week trial that tells you more than a demo
Most of these tools offer a free trial or a money-back window. Use it to test your own awkward cases, not the vendor's tidy example:
- Connect your real books and check the opening cash matches your bank. If it doesn't, find out why before anything else; unreconciled transactions are the usual cause.
- Look up your slowest-paying client. Does the tool expect their invoices on the due date or on the date they usually pay? Can you correct it once and have it stick?
- Add a known future event, such as a new hire or a large equipment purchase, and see how easily it goes in and how clearly the effect shows.
- Build one scenario ("our largest client pays 30 days later") and check the numbers by hand for one week.
- At the end of week one, compare forecast with actual and see how well the tool shows the difference.
- Export the forecast to a spreadsheet. If you can't get your data out cleanly, that's a problem the day you want to leave.
Score each tool on those six points, not on the demo. A tool that gets your slowest payer wrong and makes it hard to correct will mislead you every week, however good its charts.
Costs and risks that don't show on the pricing page
- Clean books are the real price of entry. Every tool here forecasts from your accounting data. If bank reconciliation is weeks behind, the forecast starts from the wrong balance. Budget time to get reconciliation current before trialling anything.
- Setup time. Expect two to four hours to set up recurring items, correct payment timings and build the first scenarios, plus 20 to 30 minutes a week to keep it honest. Some vendors charge for guided onboarding; Float lists it as an optional one-off fee on Essentials.
- Per-entity pricing. Fathom charges per company and Float adds a charge for each extra entity on Scale. A group with three small companies pays three times.
- Supplier risk. Software companies get acquired, change pricing or close. The AI calendar tool Clockwise shut down in March 2026 and deleted user data rather than transferring it. Keep a monthly export of your forecast and assumptions so you're never dependent on one vendor's servers.
- Access. A forecasting tool usually gets read access to your whole ledger, and an AI connector may be able to change the forecast. Decide who can connect apps, and review connections when staff leave. Connecting AI tools to your business bank account safely covers the wider checks.
If your cash forecast keeps being thrown out by clients who pay late, no tool fixes that on its own; chasing late payments with reminders that sound human works on the cause rather than the forecast.
Choosing a cash flow tool: follow-up questions
Do I need a separate tool if I already use Xero or QuickBooks?
Often not at first. The built-in projections cover the next one to six months from your invoices, bills and recurring payments. A separate tool earns its cost when you need a week-by-week 13-week view, several scenarios, longer horizons, or payment dates adjusted by each client's history. Try the built-in view for a month before paying for anything.
How much history does an AI forecast need?
Pattern-based features need enough transactions to find patterns: at least six to twelve months of reconciled data, and some products ask for more. QuickBooks help, for example, says the AI-assisted forecast in Intuit Enterprise Suite uses 18 months to 2 years of past data. With less history, lean on manual entries for known receipts and payments.
Is it safe to connect a forecasting tool to my accounting data?
Most connect through the accounting system's official integration with read access to your books, which is a well-trodden route. Check what access the tool requests, whether it can write data back, who at your firm can connect apps, and how you export your forecast if you leave. An AI connector that can change the forecast deserves the same care.
Which tool is best for a business that isn't on cloud accounting?
Pulse and a spreadsheet with an AI assistant both work from manual entries or bank data, so they don't depend on a cloud accounting connection. Cash Flow Frog also lists QuickBooks Desktop among its integrations. If your books are still on desktop software, check the integration list before starting a trial.
Further reads
- What Is Cash Flow Forecasting? A Plain-English Guide With AI Examples — What cash forecasting is, before you pick software for it.
- Best AI Accounting Software for Small Businesses in 2026 — The accounting systems these forecasting tools plug into.
- How to Use Xero's JAX for Invoices and Cash-Flow Questions — Ask Xero's JAX cash questions before buying another tool.
- AI Vendor Lock-In: How to Keep Your Data and Prompts Portable — Keep your forecasts portable if a tool changes or closes.
- How to Review an AI Tool After 90 Days: Keep, Fix or Cancel — Decide whether to keep your forecasting tool after a quarter.
- Best AI Business Intelligence Tools for Small Businesses (2026) — When you need dashboards beyond cash.
- Outgrowing Spreadsheets: When to Replace Manual Excel With AI — Signs your spreadsheet forecast needs replacing.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Xero pricing and cash flow pages (30, 60 and 180-day projections by plan; JAX); QuickBooks Online help (cash flow planner; AI-assisted forecasts in Intuit Enterprise Suite); Float pricing and AI information pages; Fathom pricing and cash flow forecasting pages; Cash Flow Frog pricing and AI connector pages; Pulse pricing page; LivePlan pricing page. Prices checked September 2026.