We hear a lot about 'advisory services' and I myself did a lot of work 10+ years ago trying to train QuickBooks ProAdvisors on some of the core analytics associated with Business Analysis from QuickBooks Data in a textbook I worked on for Wiley Publishing with the distinguished Conrad Carlberg. And while there have been a lot of efforts to transform bookkeepers, business consultants, accounting and proadvisory personnel into analytics and advisory service experts the reality is that such services simply are not for everyone.
But, every client needs and deserves financial analytics and cash flow projections for their business as well as the advisory services related to that work, but providing these services may be well beyond the expertise of a small firm's practitioners, or exceed the time they have available in servicing their clients. That's where the wealth of sophisticated tools that perform the analytics and datametrics that once took not only weeks of training to learn and get to understand, and hours to perform from the raw data sources, now take only seconds or a couple of minutes at most once connected to the accounting source.
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One such tool you won't find in the QuickBooks App Center (yet), even though they do connect to QuickBooks via OAuth2 secure connection methodology (by the way you will see this App in the Xero App Marketplace for our Xero readers), is Clockwork (Clockwork-ai) which provides AI-powered (artificial intelligence powered) financial projections, cash flow forecasts, and scenario comparisons designed to help small businesses predict and manage their finances and cash flow.
Clockwork allows you to connect to QBO from their website using the standard OAuth2 protocol, as with all other OAuth integrations with QBO Intuit sends you a confirmatory E-mail during the process to make certain you authorized the connection.
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Clockwork syncs with either QBO or Xero and then analyzes your transaction level data to build out a completely custom financial model and cash-flow forecast based on your chart of accounts and your actual financial history. Clockwork will then poll your accounting data on an hourly basis to maintain real-time financial information so you can see how your company is performing as well as where it is heading. Clockwork makes it easy for small businesses to create forecasts and plan out different scenarios the business is considering.
The Clockwork Dashboard allows you to visualize your cash flow and finances in real-time. Automatic hourly updates from QBO or Xero maker certain you know where you are at all times.
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But Clockwork isn't just for business owners, it also allows accountants, outsourced CFOs and other business consultants to have a collaborative platform by which to provide their clients with 24/7 real-time visibility into their financial data. And with wholesale pricing, free training and on-boarding, along with dedicated coaching and marketing support, the Clockwork Champions Program* gives you as a bookkeeper, business consultant, accountant, or QuickBooks or Xero software specialist, everything you need to provide confident advisory services based around their AI-technology for your clients.
Clockwork's AI-powered financial model learns from your transaction history and company profile to automatically calculate your custom baseline forecast. But baseline projections aren't always enough, so Clockwork lets you stop wondering "what-if," and build simple projection models for unlimited scenarios.
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You won't need to know how to export reams of data into Excel spreadsheets and then perform linear regressions or other advanced statistical computations in order to compute what's going to happen next month, 6-months from now, or next year because Clockwork does it all in seconds for you.
Clockwork metrics provide monthly, quarterly and annual KPIs of your company's health you will know your key financial ratios and margins, and understand their impact on your business.
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Personally, for the amount of time I spent with this App, I thought it was pretty slick. It certainly did compute a lot of datametrics that would take your hours 'the old fashioned way' Conrad and I taught in our book. So, if Clockwork sounds like the kind of financial analytics solution you have been looking for, or this tool sounds right to help you finally reach out and provide client advisory services, then consider signing up for a 14-day Free Clockwork trial account or check out the Clockwork website for more information.
And if you do check them out with a free trial, or if you are using them already, let us know what you think by posting a comment to this article.
* - this link takes you to a sign-up page for more information on the Clockwork Champions Program.
Insightful Accountant's 'App Aware' features are not comprehensive reviews of an App or 3rd-party software even when I 'test drive' the software. Nor are these features endorsements, no matter how well I like an App, and they are never 'sponsored content' (paid for by the App Developer directly or in-directly via advertising). These features are not as in-depth an analysis as our 'First Look articles. They are simply intended to make you aware of an App we have recently become aware of (new or not) even if it is or is not included in one of the APP Centers (marketplaces) so long as we have access to sufficient information and/or the App itself to give you our basic impressions. That's why we always suggest you 'check it out' yourself with a trial before committing long-term and/or recommending it to one of your clients.
Note: Some graphics in this article are 'adaptive representations' as a result of the limited data within the QBO data set-I used, to make them more representative of those you might realize in a typical real set of data.