Everything You Need to Know About … Unleash
Unleash, which was designed to help small-business owners manage their income and expenses, markets itself as “Your Cloud CFO.” Using a proprietary algorithm, it summarizes the state of the business’s finances in a “uScore” rating of 1 to 100. As part of the company’s effort to make financial concerns more accessible and relatable, the uScore is accompanied by friendly sports jargon—“Out of bounds” to “Bases loaded”—to convey the business’s health.
The number-crunching program is available for free, online at Unleash.us and in the Apple App Store. For tablet users, the application (app) is compatible with iPads only and requires iOS 5.0 or later to function. Retirement plan advisers could use the program when prospecting—for instance, to further their research into potential client companies.
With the client’s consent, retirement plan advisers may use a small business’s accounting information to calculate the company’s financial health, as well as project the potential impact of various business decisions.
How to Use Unleash
To get started with the Web version of Unleash, provide an
email address and create a password. After that step, new users are prompted to
connect their account with their company’s chosen accounting software:
QuickBooks or Xero. Retirement plan advisers can create unique accounts for
each of their client companies or input new data as necessary for an analysis
of a particular firm.
After authorizing Unleash to share the accounting data, users must select their industry type from the list of suggestions. Small advisory firms may be interested to know they can check “other financial investment services” for their own practice. Clients range from food services to accounting.
After importing data from the accounting software, Unleash automatically calculates the firm’s Uscore. A test company we generated—with no income, expenses, profits, cash or valuation to speak of—was given an automatic 39. Better than expected but still “out of bounds” by Unleash’s standards. The program duly admonished: “You are not paying attention to key business indicators. You may be at risk of making uninformed decisions.”
Announcements on the right side of the screen, which also appear in the program’s banner bar, highlight patterns within a given business. For example, the above sample company received this message: “October’s income has been consistent with the last three months. Income is the money you bring into the business. It’s your lifeline. It’s also a good way to tell whether or not you’re growing. Your sales have remained consistent! Keep it up!” From the alerts’ pop-up box, users may click for more information, add a “to-do” or dismiss the notice.
Unleash also features several business tools: Payables, Receivables, To-do’s and Decision assist. After clicking “Decision assist,” a pop-up prompts users to create a decision: “Hire/fire,” “Spend less,” “Sell more,” “Make a new purchase,” “Change the business location,” or “Launch a marketing campaign.” These tools can come in handy for retirement plan sponsors in their own businesses, as well as to show their clients the value of developing their retirement plan versus the costs incurred by having financially unwell employees.
Name a decision, and plug in the direct costs and expected revenue, as well as the expected start date and time frame—“One-time,” “Monthly” or “Recurring.” Unleash then creates a chart showing cash and expected profits along the given timeline. To see the potential impact of more than one course of action—the expense of switching locations against the funds saved from reducing spending—create multiple decisions to see how your profits are affected over the long term.
From the main page, different tabs break down a business’s income, expenses, profit, cash, profit margin and valuation. The “Income” graph plots expenses, cash and profits over time. The expenses, profit, cash and profit margin charts show the same, but also include peer scores. Retirement plan advisers can quickly gauge the fiscal fitness of their clients’ as well as their own firms.