Can I forecast cash flow without connecting Xero or QuickBooks?

Yes. Most cash flow forecasting tools require a connected ledger because they work by projecting your accounting history forward — with no history, they have nothing to extrapolate from. bluprnts works the other way round: the forecast is built from your operational drivers, so it works before you have books at all, which matters if you are pre-revenue, launching a new product, or modelling a business that does not exist yet. Xero can be connected if you want it. It pulls in real actuals so you can check the forecast against what actually happened — an optional input for grounding the model, not the engine that produces it.

How do I know when my business will run out of money?

Divide the cash you have by your net monthly burn — the amount that actually leaves the bank each month after receipts. That gives you your runway in months, and counting forward from today gives you the approximate date. It is a rough answer, because it assumes this month repeats forever. A proper forecast gives you the real date, because it accounts for the things a simple average cannot: a hire starting in March, an annual insurance bill, a customer paying 60 days late, a VAT payment. In bluprnts the bank balance is projected month by month from those drivers, so the point where it crosses zero is a date on a chart rather than a division sum.

Comparison

bluprnts vs Helm

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.

Last reviewed 21 August 2026

Choose 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.

Choose bluprnts if…

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.

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.

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Side by side

Feature comparison between bluprnts and Helm
	bluprnts	Helm
How the forecast is built	From drivers you enter: products, prices, sales, people, costs, financing.	By scanning your accounting history and predicting forward from it.
HorizonReviewers cite the twelve-month ceiling as their main wish-list item.	Five years by default, month by month, and adjustable.	Up to twelve months, with daily through annual views.
Works before you have accounting data	Yes. A complete forecast with nothing connected.	No. History is what it reads.
Predicting how a specific customer paysLearned from history against modelled as an assumption you can flex.	Payment terms are an input you set and can test, across 30, 60 and 90 days.	Yes, learned per contact from their transaction history.
Three-way forecast (P&L, balance sheet, cash flow)	Yes, all three.	Cash focused.
Scenarios	Levers on the live model, scoped to a product, channel, department or role.	Unlimited scenarios, typically percentage changes to existing inflows and outflows.
Modelling a new venture or product	Yes. Modelling something with no history is the case it is built for.	Limited, since there is no history for it to read.
Safe to experiment against your booksBoth are read-only. Neither can damage your ledger.	Yes. There is no write path to any accounting system.	Yes. Changes never reach Xero.

The horizon is the honest dividing line#

Most comparisons in this category turn on mechanism. This one turns on time. Helm is built for the next twelve months and does that job well: it reads your accounting history, works out how each of your customers actually behaves, and gives you a near-term cash picture grounded in real invoices and bills rather than in assumptions.

Over that horizon, working from history is an advantage and we would not argue otherwise. Knowing that one particular customer always pays at fifty-five days regardless of terms is a fact about your business, and a model that assumes thirty-day terms is simply wrong about it. That precision is what a tool reading your ledger can offer and a driver-based model cannot.

Where history stops helping#

The same strength becomes a limit as the horizon extends. Two years out, almost nothing that matters is in your transaction record: the products you have not launched, the people you have not hired, the site you have not signed for. A forecast built by reading the past has no way to represent them, which is why the twelve-month ceiling is a design consequence rather than a missing feature.

What a lender or investor asks for#

One practical difference worth flagging. Helm is cash-focused, and a cash forecast on its own is often not what an outside party wants to see. A bank considering a loan, or an investor considering a round, will usually ask for a three-way forecast: profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow together, with the assumptions written down. bluprnts produces all three from the same model, which is the situation it was built around.

Common questions

Can I forecast cash flow without connecting Xero or QuickBooks?: Yes. Most cash flow forecasting tools require a connected ledger because they work by projecting your accounting history forward — with no history, they have nothing to extrapolate from. bluprnts works the other way round: the forecast is built from your operational drivers, so it works before you have books at all, which matters if you are pre-revenue, launching a new product, or modelling a business that does not exist yet.
Xero can be connected if you want it. It pulls in real actuals so you can check the forecast against what actually happened — an optional input for grounding the model, not the engine that produces it.
How do I know when my business will run out of money?: Divide the cash you have by your net monthly burn — the amount that actually leaves the bank each month after receipts. That gives you your runway in months, and counting forward from today gives you the approximate date. It is a rough answer, because it assumes this month repeats forever.
A proper forecast gives you the real date, because it accounts for the things a simple average cannot: a hire starting in March, an annual insurance bill, a customer paying 60 days late, a VAT payment. In bluprnts the bank balance is projected month by month from those drivers, so the point where it crosses zero is a date on a chart rather than a division sum.