Month: March 2024

Deena Lu is the Controller at Practice Better, a Toronto-based software company in the health and wellness space. She’s no stranger to fast-paced startup culture and the demands that come with working on a lean Finance team. Like many SaaS startups, at Practice Better there are always multiple different initiatives on the go that produce a lot of ad hoc requests for Deena. To keep pace with the scaling company, changes were needed to boost the finance team’s efficiency. They soon made the strategic decision to bring their financial processes fully in-house and leverage new tools to help them scale and manage the company’s spending.

So Many Approvals, So Little Time

“Things would not get booked in correctly and we wouldn’t know until after close. And by then you’re almost into the next month.”

In the 6 months since Deena joined Practice Better, the company has doubled in size. As the company’s headcount expanded, new departments were being created and company processes evolved. While these budding teams established new structures, rituals, and mandates, tracking a budget was not always top-of-mind. “Depending on what stage you join, the company might not have departments set up and might not be tracking the budget very well,” says Deena. “While departments were created as Practice Better grew, approvals were still centralized to finance, which can create an environment where department leaders do not have visibility on budgets and spend.” The need for real-time visibility into company spend and streamlined approvals became more and more important as the team grew to enable department leaders to have greater control over their budgets. 

When the team was smaller, they also opted to outsource their bookkeeping and accounting. However, as their transaction volume grew, it became clear that accounting needed to be done in-house. Closing the books took about 12 days and the team had little visibility into the reconciliation process. “Things would not get booked in correctly and we wouldn’t know until after close. And by then you’re almost into the next month.” Deena would end up fixing records after the fact and things weren’t as efficient as they could be.

Finally, getting transactions into their accounting software also proved difficult. With the traditional banks, Deena was often still forced to manually upload transaction statements to Xero. 

A Solution for Canadian Companies

Deena and her team knew they wanted to bring their financial processes in-house and find a solution that would streamline approvals and accounting, without compromising on spend control. Having had experience with numerous expense management software and corporate cards, Deena wanted a tool that met their needs as a Canadian operating company.  Namely, one that supported cross-border transactions, provided both CAD and USD cards, and supported connections to their Canadian bank accounts. These criteria and more gave Float the edge over alternatives.

Decentralizing the Approval Process

Where before all spend requests were coming through Finance for approval, with Float Deena could now set up an automated approval process to drive efficiencies. Using Float’s Approval Policies the team could proactively route spend requests by team and amount. “We’ve decentralized the approval process so that it’s not all on finance. It’s really the team leads now who are responsible for the budget and can approve their team’s spend requests,”  says Deena. By setting up custom thresholds, requests now only go to the right person (or people) at the company to approve things quickly and keep projects moving. 

The dynamic, added layers of approvers for higher spend volumes give the team additional control, security and peace of mind while removing bottlenecks for smaller spend requests. The Finance Team is now only looped in when their discretion is needed.

Corporate Cards with Smart Controls

Pre-Float, Practice Better was operating with four company cards from their bank. With multiple employees putting spend through on each card, managing risk was difficult. “If, there are fraudulent transactions, it’s now easier to flag and manage. Before Float, we had four main corporate credit cards which all transactions would go through, and the cards would get shared across team members if ad-hoc spending was required.” says Deena.

If a card was breached, a time-consuming process would ensue to rectify the issue and ensure recurring transactions (like subscriptions) weren’t paused.  “I would be on the phone for two hours trying to get a reversal and issue a new card. Then I’d have to update card information because the old card was cancelled.”

Now with Float, the company gets unlimited physical and virtual corporate cards they can securely issue to employees individually. If a card is compromised, they can quickly cancel it without impacting multiple teams and subscriptions. And there’s no more waiting on hold with the bank. 

Practice Better issues each employee their own physical card when they onboard at the company and starts them off with a zero-dollar limit to prevent unwanted spend, a feature unique to Float. When they need to spend, say for a company off-site, the Finance team can give them spending power on their cards with a temporary limit increase.

Being a SaaS company, the team also has several software subscriptions. With Float they can issue vendor-specific virtual cards in both CAD and USD to manage their software spend, while saving on foreign transaction (FX) fees. Each card maps to a different bill with recurring limits in place so they’re never overcharged. Deena has also found setting up cards for unique vendors helps with contract management “A problem I’ve had in past organizations is not being able to know when a contract is renewing. It’s really hard to go back and say hey we need to renegotiate this contract after the new term is auto-renewed.”, says Deena. With card limits and expirations in place, unexpected price changes to contracts won’t go through, letting the team manage renewals that may have slipped under the radar. 

6x Faster Closes with Float

After bringing bookkeeping fully in-house, the team leaned on Float’s Accounting Automations to streamline transaction coding, receipt collection and reconciliation with Xero. Deena set up custom Submission Policies to specify which details employees should submit after a transaction is made (like a GL code or receipt). To further automate coding, she leveraged Float’s Merchant Rules. Whenever a transaction is made with a merchant the company commonly spends at, she can have GL codes, tax codes, tags and account vendors automatically attached to the line item. 

By month-end, transactions are largely already export-ready, but when she needs to take a second look Deena can filter transactions (by merchant or compliance status for example) and quickly make necessary updates in bulk. With the coding happening throughout the month, she can check in periodically and flag compliant transactions as ‘ready to export’ for a smooth formal close. “Where it took 12 days before, I can now close expenses in one or two days. It just reconciles so easily,” says Deena. She can also now export transactions to Xero through Float’s Accounting Sync in a single click. “I like the integration piece with Float. It’s really easy. With our Xero integration, everything is just posted in real-time versus with the other credit card platforms.”

Streamlining Spend While Empowering the Company

Implementing Float has proven transformative for Practice Better, especially when addressing spend management for a scaling SaaS company. Deena and the finance team successfully transitioned from an outsourced bookkeeping model to a fully in-house approach leveraging Float’s automations and controls to streamline approvals, mitigate risk, and optimize accounting. Along with the time and cost savings that the finance team generated for themselves, they helped the employees at Practice Better move faster as well. Deena recalls a marketer at the company commenting on her pain-free business purchases using Float. “She felt empowered that she could pay for something without needing to go through Finance. She could work with her VP and get the approval done in a seamless way. It’s not a pain point that they have to struggle through just to get a $2,000 payment out.” Ultimately with Float, not only were the finance team’s operations streamlined, but they also empowered employees, fostering a positive spend management culture at the growing SaaS company.

About Practice Better

Practice Better is a leading all-in-one practice management software solution transforming how Health & Wellness professionals run their practices and support their clients. You can find them at practicebetter.io.

In the world of creative production where innovation and creativity drive success, Toronto-based Makers faced distinctive challenges as they grew. With roots in advertising the company soon expanded its reach to entertainment, producing documentaries, feature films, and TV series while cultivating a global producer network. 

As the company evolved from a small team of freelance producers to a production powerhouse, its project-based work created an ever-growing transaction volume that soon became a bottleneck for managing finances efficiently. Alex Dvorkin, Makers’ Head of Finance joined at a pivotal moment in the company’s expansion and championed Float’s corporate cards and spend management software as a tech-forward solution to streamline operations. 

Navigating Growing Pains

“Our growth led to a need for better controls and data practices. You’d have to collect receipts and do everything manually. That was a big strain on the company as it was going through a growth phase and the transaction volume was becoming unsustainable.”

When Makers was a smaller team, sharing a few corporate cards from the bank sufficed. However, as they expanded, the few company cards weren’t working for the team. With the company’s growing number of producers often out on set and on the go, they needed access to their own corporate cards to make purchases for their projects – everything from set props to vehicle rentals and any necessary travel for the project. As the volume of transactions across the company also grew exponentially, manual processes for receipt collection, financial controls, and accounting also became hurdles for the Finance Team. “Our growth led to a need for better controls and data practices,” reflects Alex. “You’d have to collect receipts and do everything manually. That was a big strain on the company as it was going through a growth phase and the transaction volume was becoming unsustainable.” 

Float to the Rescue: Finance’s First Choice

Already aware of Float’s smart automations, controls and corporate cards, Alex selected Float to boost the team’s efficiency and data hygiene. With Float he first sought out the ability to issue the company’s team of producers their own corporate cards. With so many employees across departments having access to company funds, Alex also wanted to ensure the right limits and financial controls were in place to mitigate any risk to the company. “Having all of the controls within Float definitely helps in terms of just feeling comfortable with the number of cards in circulation,” Alex says.

Float additionally helps Makers get real-time insight into company spend. As the Finance Team grew and their close process became more formalized and fluid, they wanted a solution that synced seamlessly with their accounting software. The company’s transactions would now largely be coded automatically and be export-ready throughout the month. Makers’ internal project management system which connected to QuickBooks could now have the real-time financial data needed for reporting and quick decision-making on day-to-day operations. No more manual work and delays getting monthly records of transactions from the bank into their accounting tool. “With the bank, it would be harder to manage all of it and know who’s spending what while making sure the company is adequately protected and able to operate,” notes Alex. 

Controlling Spend while Empowering Spenders

With multiple projects of varying lengths happening simultaneously at the company, Alex needs to ensure that producers have access to the funds they need to spend on their projects. With Float, Alex can issue physical and virtual corporate cards to employees and in some cases, contractors, with either a recurring limit or a set temporary limit that can expire at the end of a project period. 

Suppose employees need additional funds beyond their anticipated budgets or need new funds for an upcoming project. In that case, they can quickly submit a request for a temporary limit increase in the app for the Finance Team to approve. “This is really valuable because I want them to normally be at one spend limit. Instead of having to go and change it back, the limit increase will expire. I don’t have to keep track of it.” Alex gets notified about spend requests promptly with Float’s Slack integration and can issue approvals with a simple click, to keep employees unblocked and spending.

Streamlining Accounting for a Faster Close

Float’s Accounting Automations also helped the team save time by coding their high volume of transactions efficiently and accurately. The team set up custom Submission Policies for expenses unique to different projects and teams. These policies designate which supporting details employees are required to submit after a purchase is made (like receipts or accounting codes). When employees are required to add accounting details to their transactions, they’ll only see potential GL codes that are relevant to their policy, team and spend type, to make coding simple and reduce potential errors. “It’s made it easier to make sure things get coded right. It’s very obvious for them. They don’t have a huge list of GL codes they need to figure out,” Alex says. With employees empowered to code their own transactions, the Finance team saved hours each month by no longer having to search for missing information for hundreds of expenses.

When it’s time to close the books, Makers’ Accounting Associate Alyssa Ryan can filter the company’s transactions by close period and quickly identify any transactions that might be flagged by Float as non-compliant against the company’s unique Submission Policies. With the bulk of transactions already coded by Float’s automations or by the company’s employees, the closing process is streamlined for the Finance Team, with little manual work on their part. “It’s made coding transactions significantly faster and easier. I no longer have to spend hours creating journal entries or tracking down receipts and manually matching them,” says Alyssa. “It has cut the time it used to take me to process expenses by half. As a result, we’re able to close our books quicker and stay on top of coding throughout the month.” Once she confirms the expenses are accurate and ready for export, Alyssa can sync transactions in bulk to QuickBooks with a click. 

Creativity Meets Financial Efficiency

In embracing Float’s innovative solutions, Makers not only overcame the challenges posed by their rapid growth but also elevated their financial management practices. The seamless integration of corporate cards, real-time insights, and automated accounting processes allowed Makers to focus on what they do best—creating exceptional content. By creating financial controls tailored for the different groups within the company, Makers struck a balance between oversight and flexibility. As they continue to navigate the ever-evolving Production industry, Float remains a steadfast partner, empowering Makers to thrive at the intersection of creativity and financial efficiency.

About Makers

Makers is cultivating a new breed of Producer, equipped to solve global problems through collaboration and creativity. Starting from advertising, expanding globally, and into various disciplines, we’re developing a tech platform and a school to foster this mission. You can find Makers at makers.to.