Tech Review: Prestwood's cashflow tools

Prestwood offers two versions of its proposition: Prestwood Professional, which has cashflow planning and back office system functionality; and Truth, its specialist cashflow planning tool.

The strength of the Prestwood offering is the pedigree of the solution and the community that users join. This pedigree is borne from 27 years of supplying cashflow modelling tools to fee-based financial planners. At a time when a growing number of advisers are moving to fee-based planning this experience is invaluable and is visible not just in the services but in the software itself.

Fee module

Prestwood Professional, for example, has one of the most comprehensive fee modules we have seen. It contains several ways to record time spent on advising a client including a historic timesheet and an automated time recording system.

The ‘stopwatch’ approach is well executed, with the ability to have two timers open at the same time, each allocated to a different task, one starting as soon as the other stops. The facility enables a user with a single click to move from recording time against one task to another. Time can be recorded against different users with different charge-out rates and each user can have different roles – again with different rates attached.

In reality, many advisers will not base charges on time and will rather have a menu of fees. Even in this case, recording activity is valuable as it enables client profit centres to be set up so firms can understand which of its clients are most profitable. Perhaps even more valuable for some advisers will be the way Prestwood can identify which clients are unprofitable and by how much their fees will need to increase to correct this situation.

Prestwood community

As well as useful functionality, the Prestwood legacy brings with it a supportive community. Prestwood has put in place processes to help clients fully benefit from this community. One of the most notable is the creation of a mentoring service to help guide users in the use of the tools and the transition to the post-RDR world. Mentors (typically experienced, renowned practising advisers) provide workshops around the country, usually every six to eight weeks.

Marlene Shalton

One of the most well-known users of Prestwood is Marlene Shalton who is the current president of the Institute of Financial Planning and a Certified Financial Planner with Bluefin Wealth Management. Shalton identifies four categories of advisers.

First is the “transactional adviser”, who she sees as focused and trained on selling products and doing so as quickly and efficiently as they can. In a commission-based world these advisers made considerable money but post RDR it is likely they will struggle to justify their existence.

Second is the adviser who tends to use financial planning techniques to address all the needs of a client but in reality is still selling product – it is just that they are doing so across multiple needs.

The third category includes advisers that have recognised the value of cashflow planning and are focusing on the inflows and outflows of the client using information to identify their needs.