Alternatives
Helm alternatives
Helm reads your Xero, QuickBooks or Sage history and builds a forward cash forecast from it, with unlimited scenarios you can test without touching your accounting data. bluprnts builds a full financial model from your operational drivers and derives the statements from it, with no accounting connection required. Pick Helm for a fast, advisor-friendly cash view over the next twelve months; pick bluprnts for a longer horizon and a model of the business rather than a projection of its transactions.
First — is Helm actually the problem?
Switching costs time, so it's worth being clear about what you'd be giving up. Here's what Helm does well:
- It learns how your customers actually pay. Helm analyses the transaction history of each contact to predict their payment behaviour, which is real information about your business that no driver-based model can derive from first principles.
- Changes in Helm never affect your Xero data, so testing a scenario carries no risk to the books. Unlimited scenarios, compared side by side.
- Designed by accountants for advisory work, and priced with unlimited users, so an advisor and a client can sit in the same forecast.
- A clean short-horizon experience: daily through to annual views, connected bank accounts, invoices and bills, and a financial health dashboard.
- Very quick to a useful answer. There is no model to build before you see something.
Stay with Helm if Pick Helm if you are trading with current books and the horizon you care about is the next twelve months. Its prediction of how each customer pays is genuinely better information than an assumption you would type into a model, and for near-term cash that detail is what decides whether a month is tight. It is also a strong pick if your accountant is driving, or if you want a forecast without describing your business first.
Where bluprnts fits
Pick bluprnts when twelve months is not far enough, or when there is no history to read. Helm's horizon tops out around a year and its raw material is your transaction record, so a five-year plan, a pre-revenue company, or a decision about something that has never appeared in your accounts all sit outside what it is built for. bluprnts also produces the balance sheet and P&L alongside cash, which a lender or investor will usually want.
For the full feature-by-feature breakdown, see bluprnts vs Helm.