Futrli vs CFO Pal
Futrli, now part of Sage, is a well-established forecasting and reporting platform used heavily by accountants. CFO Pal is built for the business owner directly. Both forecast cash. The real question is who builds the model, and who is expected to read the output.
Where Futrli is stronger
Futrli goes further than we do on planning. Three-year forecasts, detailed budget models, multi-currency consolidation and scenario modelling across entities are all things it does and we do not. If you need to build a proper financial model, or your accountant already runs Futrli across their client base, it is a capable and mature tool with a lot of depth.
Where CFO Pal is different
Futrli is largely a tool an adviser operates. Someone builds the model, configures the reports, and talks the client through them. That works well when you have an adviser engaged and paying attention every month. It works less well when the question is simply whether this month is alright and nobody has opened the dashboard since March.
CFO Pal is built to come to you. A written brief lands every Monday whether or not you log in, and anything urgent reaches you the same day by email, SMS or WhatsApp. The forecast is shorter, deliberately: 8, 12 and 16 weeks, because that is the horizon where a small business can still change the outcome. Every figure the AI quotes is calculated by our own engine first, so the model explains the numbers and never produces them.
Pricing
CFO Pal is £199/month + VAT with everything included and a 14-day free trial. Futrli publishes pricing in US dollars, starting from around $40 a month on its smallest plan and rising with the number of licences, up to practice-level plans for firms. Compare them on what you actually need rather than the headline: our single price covers reporting, alerts and management accounts that would sit outside a forecasting licence.
Whichever tool you compare it to
What CFO Pal does differently
Set Futrli aside for a moment. Five things are true of CFO Pal against every product on this list, and each one is enforced by a test in our own code rather than by a sentence on a page.
It only ever reads. We connect to Xero, QuickBooks or Sage and never write anything back. Our job is interpretation, not bookkeeping, so there is nothing we could break in your ledger.
The AI is not allowed to do arithmetic. Every figure it quotes is calculated first from your accounting data and handed to the model as fact. An answer containing a monetary figure that is not already in that data fails our test suite.
If the numbers do not reconcile, it says nothing. Before any AI output is written, we check that the balance sheet balances, that the profit and loss agrees with the ledger, and that cash bridges from one month to the next. If a check fails, the model is not called and you are told why, rather than handed a confident figure that is wrong.
It starts the conversation. A written brief lands every Monday and an alert arrives the day something moves, whether or not you log in. A dashboard waits to be opened. A finance director does not.
Xero, QuickBooks and Sage are treated the same. Every check runs on every platform, so a business with two companies on two systems, or a firm with a mixed client base, gets one way of working.
Feature by feature
Where a row says 'not published', it means we could not verify it from Futrli's public site rather than that the feature is missing.
| Capability | CFO Pal | Futrli by Sage |
|---|---|---|
| Who it's designed around | The business owner, who may never have built a forecast | Accountants and bookkeepers building advisory services, and businesses |
| Forecast horizon | 8, 12 and 16 weeks, with what-if scenarios | Up to three years, with scenario modelling |
| Long-range planning and budgeting models | Near-term cash is the focus | A core strength |
| Multi-currency consolidation | Single UK business at a time | |
| Setup effort | Connect and go, first analysis the same day | Models are built and configured, usually by an adviser |
| Reaches you without logging in | Written brief every Monday, alerts the day something moves | Reports and dashboards you open, plus scheduled report delivery |
| WhatsApp and SMS, including voice notes | Not published | |
| Plain-English commentary on what changed | Written from your figures, unlimited follow-up questions | Insights and dashboards, interpretation largely yours |
| The AI never calculates | Figures computed by our own engine, enforced in our test suite | No equivalent claim published |
| Accounting integrations | Xero, QuickBooks, Sage | Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage, plus Excel upload |
| Owned by | Independent | Sage Group plc |
| Price | £199/month + VAT, everything included | Published in US dollars, from around $40 a month, rising by licence count |
Futrli features and pricing as published on futrli.com at the time of writing (August 2026), in US dollars. Check their site for current details.
Full detail on what's included is on the features page.
The honest summary
If you need a three-year model, multi-entity consolidation or a proper budgeting exercise, Futrli is the more capable tool and we would not pretend otherwise. If what you actually need is for someone to watch the next four months and tell you when something moves, without you having to remember to look, that is the job CFO Pal was built for.
A forecast you do not have to build
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