Plainsong turns your accounts into a plain answer to the decision in front of you: cash, profit and breakeven, in minutes, not days. No finance team needed.
Built by a finance professional with nearly ten years in FP&A, not a Silicon Valley coder.
The buffer holds if the hire adds at least £1,408 a month of gross profit from month 1.
One bookkeeper, or an outsourced accountant. Nobody has the time or the expertise to model whether the business can afford what comes next.
Hire, borrow or invest: the big calls get made on instinct, without the support larger companies get from a finance function.
When the modelling does get done, it can take days of one person's time. What had to be paused while it was?
Today it usually goes like this:
Plainsong works differently. Enter your revenue, costs, payroll, cash and the salary. Plainsong shows what happens to your cash and profit over twelve months, what the hire must deliver to pay for itself, and what would change the answer.
Five parts, one answer you can defend. Pick a part, then try the salary slider.
Monthly figures. Typed in today; imports from a Xero or QuickBooks export are next. They stay in your browser.
Employer NI and pension are worked out from the salary. Illustrative business; same arithmetic as the product.
The reading changes if revenue falls about 11% or cash is about £6,800 lower, holding everything else as it is.
Bars run from the downside case (left) to the upside case (right), measured on lowest cash against the buffer. Illustrative figures.
Nothing is defaulted silently. Every assumption is on the page, editable, and written on the answer you take away.
// in development
Cantor explains what a number means, walks through why the reading is what it is, and answers general questions about the arithmetic. Ask in your own words.
The numbers come from Plainsong's arithmetic, not a language model guessing. Cantor reads the working and puts it into words. Cantor never invents a figure, and never makes the call for you.
You are also the sales lead and the person signing off the hire. You need an answer you can trust without learning to model.
Investors and a board are asking, and the decisions are arriving faster than the spreadsheet can be rebuilt.
Take away a one-page answer with every assumption written down, ready for your accountant, lender or investor.
With money decisions, trust comes first. So we are clear about where the line sits.
A hiring answer needs about five numbers, not your whole ledger. That keeps it quick to start and easy to check against your own accounts.
Every assumption is on the page: employer NI, pension, recruitment cost, the cash buffer. Change one and watch the answer move, along with what would flip it.
More decisions follow on the same model: pricing and growth, then borrowing and investment. The question is the front door; the arithmetic stays the same.
We're working with a small group of businesses ahead of launch. Tell us the decision in front of you and we'll show you how Plainsong answers it.