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Finance and Compliance
Cost forecasts that match the books. CapEx and R&D Tax review workflows your auditors actually accept. Variance alerts before quarter-end.
Stop flying blind. Then stop the leaks.
Engineering is the largest line on most software P&Ls — and the worst-instrumented. Finance gets a salary register from HR, an ERP totals line from accounting, and a slide deck from the CTO that doesn't tie to either. By the time variance shows up in the close, it is already too late to do anything about it.
Flowstate sits on top of your live workforce roster, your project allocations, and your effort data, and turns them into the four artefacts your finance team and your auditors actually ask for: a forecast they can trust, capitalised CapEx with rationale, R&D tax claims with evidence, and budget variance they can see before quarter-end.
The four workflows
Cost Capitalisation
Decide which projects capitalise, attach the rationale your auditors expect, and book the right amount to the balance sheet. Flowstate proposes candidates from your live project portfolio, captures jurisdiction-specific rationale through a guided writer, and routes claims through a configurable approval workflow.
Cost Capitalisation overview — recommendations, per-project review, completed claims, approval workflow.
R&D Tax
Surface the projects that qualify for R&D tax credits across UK, US, and other jurisdictions, capture the technical narrative against the relevant framework, and produce a claim package your tax adviser can hand to HMRC or the IRS without rework.
R&D Tax overview — recommendations, claim review, archive, approval workflow.
Variance Tracking
Versioned budget snapshots, change requests with team-by-team proposals, and inline drift badges on every forecast cell. When the cost forecast moves away from the active budget, the variance shows up where you are looking — not in a quarterly report.
Variance Tracking overview — budget snapshots, requests, cost review workflow.
Cost Forecast
The base layer. Project headcount, contractors, vacancies and AI agent spend forward in time, grouped by team, project, cost centre, geography or value stream. Compare the forecast against any active budget snapshot. Drill into any cell to see who is on it.
Cost Forecast overview — forecasting view, summary views, cost centres, value streams.
How the pillars connect
| You changed | What moves |
|---|---|
| A team allocation in Workforce | Cost forecast, budget variance, CapEx classification |
| A salary or contractor rate | Forecast, completed-CapEx depreciation, R&D qualifying spend |
| AI agent seats or usage | Forecast, OpEx side of CapEx splits |
| A project's cost centre or value stream | Forecast grouping, CapEx eligibility, summary views |
Live data flows in once. Every finance artefact downstream stays in sync.
Where to start
- New to the finance pillar? Start with the Cost Forecast overview — it is the layer everything else sits on.
- Closing a quarter? Open Variance Tracking and check the active budget snapshot's drift summary.
- Preparing for an audit? Walk the Cost Capitalisation and R&D Tax recommendation queues.
- Setting up the workflows? See CapEx approval, R&D approval, and Cost review workflow.