Spotlight Reporting review

A full advisory suite for accounting firms. Powerful, and priced accordingly.

By the ConsoHQ editorial team. Updated 4 November 2026.

What Spotlight Reporting is

Spotlight Reporting was founded in New Zealand and sells mainly to accounting and advisory firms in Australasia, the UK and North America. Rather than a single app, it's a suite: Spotlight Reporting for management reports and consolidation, Spotlight Forecasting for three-way forecasts, budgets and scenarios, Spotlight Dashboards, and Spotlight Multi for networks such as franchises. Its Growth plan also includes Sustain, an ESG reporting module.

The firm-first design is the key thing to understand. Spotlight assumes a practice will standardise its advisory offering, train staff to deliver it and roll it out across clients. That's why training, certification and customer success are bundled into the plans.

Features in detail

Management reporting

Spotlight's reports combine financials, charts, KPIs and commentary in a format designed to be walked through with a client. Templates can be standardised across the firm so every client receives a consistent pack.

Forecasting

Three-way forecasting is included in every plan, and it's a core reason firms choose Spotlight. You can build budgets, forecasts and scenarios, then track actuals against them. For firms selling cash flow advisory or lender reporting, this is a significant strength.

Consolidation

Spotlight's pricing page lists consolidation for up to 75 entities with all currencies supported on the entry plan. For firms with group clients, that covers most needs. As with any tool, test your eliminations and currency translation against a month you've already closed.

Dashboards and Multi

Dashboards give clients a live view between meetings. Spotlight Multi aggregates and benchmarks networks such as franchise groups, and is priced separately on request.

Pricing

All plans include forecasting and a 14-day trial with no card. Growth adds unlimited dashboards, Sustain and a dedicated customer success manager; Scale adds priority support and tailored team training. See Spotlight's pricing.

The per-organisation figures only hold if you fill the plan. A firm with 12 client organisations pays for Growth's 30-organisation capacity, which works out at about £41 per organisation in use. By contrast, Joiin's 10-company price is $92 a month on annual billing with unlimited users, though without the bundled training and with forecasting on its Pro plan.

Who Spotlight suits best

• Accounting firms building a structured advisory service with forecasting at its centre.
• Firms that value training and certification to get staff delivering advisory consistently.
• Franchise networks and their advisors, through Spotlight Multi.

Who might be better served elsewhere

• In-house finance teams who need group reports, not an advisory platform: Joiin.
• Small firms with a few group clients: the entry price is hard to justify; see Spotlight alternatives.
• Advisors focused on KPI analysis: Fathom is the closest like-for-like tool.
• Groups on Sage, MYOB or several ledgers: check integrations; Joiin covers more.

Questions to answer in your Spotlight trial

• How many organisations will you actually connect in year one and year two?
• Will your team use forecasting with most clients, or only a few?
• How long does building a consolidated pack take for your most complex group?
• Does the onboarding and certification fit how your firm works?
• What would the same output cost on a lighter tool?

Read our head-to-head Joiin vs Spotlight Reporting comparison, and our list of the best reporting software for accountants.

What Spotlight looks like inside a firm

The firms that get the most from Spotlight treat it as the backbone of an advisory service, not a reporting add-on. A typical rollout looks like this. A partner or advisory lead gets certified first and builds the firm's standard report and forecast templates. Then a pilot group of ten or so clients moves onto the new monthly or quarterly package. The firm prices that package as a fixed monthly fee covering a report, a forecast update and a review meeting. Once the process works, it's rolled out across more clients, and newer staff are trained using Spotlight's own materials.

That structure is why the pricing is shaped the way it is. If you're going to deliver advisory to 30 clients, £495 a month is a modest cost relative to the fees. If you're going to use it for four, the maths is harder.

Setting up Spotlight: what to expect

• Onboarding. Plans include onboarding support and training, and higher tiers add a dedicated customer success manager. Use it; the firms that skip onboarding tend to under-use the product.
• Templates first. Agree what your standard advisory pack contains before connecting clients.
• Forecasting skills. Three-way forecasting is powerful but needs sensible assumptions. Budget time for staff to learn it properly.
• Group clients. Set up consolidations with clean intercompany accounts, and check the first consolidated month line by line against your previous working papers.

Mistakes to avoid

• Buying capacity you won't use. Plans are capped by organisations. Don't jump to Growth or Scale before the advisory service has proven itself.
• Selling forecasts without a process. A forecast nobody updates is worse than none. Agree who refreshes it and when.
• Treating it as a bookkeeping tool. Spotlight reports on your ledger; it doesn't fix it. Clean books first.

How Spotlight stacks up

Spotlight sits at the "complete platform" end. Fathom is the nearest like-for-like competitor for advisory. Joiin is the leaner, cheaper option where consolidation is the main need, and it's often used by firms that want group reports without committing to a full advisory suite.

Is Spotlight worth it for a small firm?

It can be, if you're deliberately building an advisory practice and expect to grow into the plan. If you're a small firm with a handful of group clients who simply need accurate consolidated accounts each month, a lighter tool will cost a fraction of the price. One way to decide: write down the advisory fees you expect to bill through Spotlight in year one. If they don't comfortably exceed a few times the subscription, start smaller.

Spotlight for in-house finance teams

Spotlight is designed around accounting firms, but some in-house teams use it, typically larger groups that want reporting, forecasting and dashboards from one vendor. If that's you, the questions are slightly different from a firm's. You won't need multi-client features or advisory training, so you're paying for capacity aimed at practices. On the other hand, if forecasting is central to how you run the business, getting it in the same platform as reporting has real value.

A practical test: list the reports and forecasts you produce each month and how long each takes today. Then estimate what you'd produce in Spotlight, and what you'd produce with a lighter consolidation tool plus a spreadsheet forecast. If the difference in time saved is small, the lighter route is probably better value.

Switching to or from Spotlight

Because Spotlight reads from your ledger, switching doesn't touch your books. What you'd rebuild is templates, forecasts and client set-ups. If you're moving to Spotlight, start with new clients and migrate existing ones at a natural point such as a year end. If you're moving away, export your forecasts and historical reports first, and give clients notice that their pack format will change. Either way, run both tools side by side for one cycle so you can check the numbers agree.

Spotlight pricing for UK firms, explained

Spotlight's UK advisor prices are quoted per month excluding VAT, and each plan is capped by the number of client organisations. The page offers monthly and annual billing; check the annual figure before you sign, as it isn't shown alongside the monthly price. Remember to add VAT if your firm can't recover it, and budget for any add-ons such as Spotlight Multi, which is priced separately. When you compare with other tools, compare the cost at your realistic organisation count, not at each plan's maximum.

The bottom line on Spotlight

Spotlight is the most complete advisory platform in this group, and firms that commit to it can build a real business on it. That commitment is the point: it pays off when you use reporting, forecasting and dashboards across many clients. If you're not ready for that, start with a lighter, cheaper tool and revisit Spotlight once advisory work is a meaningful part of your fees.

Frequently asked questions