Author: Amrita Gurney

How Athennian Streamlines, Simplifies and Scales with Float

Posted on by Amrita Gurney

Athennian is a SaaS startup with a mission to make work easier for paralegals, law clerks, lawyers, tax professionals, and finance teams – with software that manages documents and legal entities all in the cloud. With a lean finance team and rapid employee growth this past year, Athennian knew they needed to level up their internal spend and expense management process; that’s when they found Float. We sat down with Athennian’s Director of Finance, Zach Hill and Junior Accountant, Trevor Aasen to learn how Float is changing things at their startup for the better. 

Q1: How long have you been using Float and why did you decide to choose us? 

We’ve been using Float since September 2021. We had always been interested in virtual cards as a way to manage spend but there weren’t really any solutions available in Canada. We found Float and it was everything we needed and more. Prior to Float, we had difficulties categorising purchases and identifying spenders on many of the expenses coming through our corporate card. As the company continued to grow and the volume of transactions continued to increase, old processes were no longer sustainable. 

“Float’s functionality met all of our needs for a spending software. They make it easy to set up and issue cards, automate approvals and manage transactions across all departments.”

Our global headquarters is in Calgary and we have employees scattered across North America. We believe it’s important for everyone to be able to travel and come together as one team and this is a major reason why we were so eager to partner with Float to help manage that category of expenses.

Q2: What did company spending and expense management look like at your company before Float? 

Super manual is the best way to describe our old way of doing things. Our processes lacked structure and expenses didn’t always have a clear paper trail. With a fast-growing team, it became increasingly difficult to categorize our transactions and identify spenders.

Managing expenses became more onerous as our team grew, particularly as a company that has folks travelling from different parts of the continent. We had credit cards from traditional Canadian banks and different employees would use those cards to make business purchases. The problem was that it wasn’t always crystal clear where to code those purchases and our finance team had to move mountains to figure everything out, while getting a hold of receipts at the same time. 

Working with Float has changed things immensely for us. Today over 50% of our SaaS subscriptions have their own designated Float card; we know exactly what the subscription is for and which department owns the subscription. We can also issue corporate cards easily for individual employees so they can make business purchases directly on their own card, whether they’re travelling or not. 

Q3: What were your biggest pain points?

Zach: A significant portion of our month-end process used to involve the finance team tracking down receipts and trying to understand the nature of the expenses. Without a scaleable way to accurately code expenses, putting together departmental forecasts required a significant lift. Float has unlocked so much additional time for the team around month-end. Even as the company has nearly doubled in size since we engaged with Float, Trevor can now independently process the company’s expenses in less time, while I have significantly more visibility and insight into departmental expenses which drives an effective forecasting function.

In March 2022, Athennian closed its Series B funding round to secure $42 million of funding to take the company to its next growth stage. Due diligence for the funding round required us to provide potential investors with SaaS financial metrics and other detailed financial reporting.  Float allows us to easily capture these metrics with accuracy, while giving us the confidence to share them with potential investors to accelerate our growth.

Q4: What particular features were the most useful to your team? 

“The receipt capture feature has played a big role in improving receipt compliance to close to 100% and enhancing the overall accuracy of our accounting.”

Before Float, we maintained all of our merchant, account and department relationships in an Excel spreadsheet that we had to refer back to everytime we posted a transaction. We also had people sending JPEG files of their receipts – not a scalable process to say the least. When team members found out they could automatically submit receipts by sending in pictures, it was such a game changer! Float also automatically codes our receipts by merchants, accounts and tax codes, making the process even more efficient and significantly improving the employee experience.

“We’ve been able to reduce our number of manual expense reports by 80% even with our company headcount growing nearly 40%.”

Being able to issue individual cards for specific spend categories has also been a huge success for us. As mentioned, business travel is a big one for us. Now that travel restrictions are easing and people are out and about, we have had employees venturing off site and attending conferences in Las Vegas and New York. With Float, we were able to issue our employees physical cards to book their accommodations and flight tickets, as well as any other business-related purchases during their trip. 

Our team also loves the flexibility of having SaaS subscriptions on separate cards. It provides visibility on categorisation and is much cleaner to wind up one card when we want to close off a particular software subscription. Previously, we had all of our SaaS subscriptions on two credit cards which was difficult to manage, and it wasn’t always clear which employee owned the software relationship. Because so many vendors were mapped to only two cards, simply cancelling a card after terminating a specific vendor contract wasn’t possible. 

Q5: What is the best part about working with Float?

Athennian prides itself on being a company of builders, learners, and creatives, and working with Float has unlocked so much more capacity for us to do those things as a team. 

About Athennian Athennian is a modern, cloud-based business entity management platform that powers legal, finance, and tax professionals to seamlessly manage and automate corporate entities. As an innovative business solution disrupting one segment of the business world, Athennian is helping clients reduce expenses and increase efficiency while enabling them to be transaction, audit, and compliance-ready at a moment’s notice. Business professionals use Athennian to automate workflows for ownership, governance, tax, and corporate compliance. Athennian’s headquarters is based in Calgary and has a second office in Toronto, with additional team members across the U.S. To learn more, please visit www.Athennian.com.

Introducing Retained Learnings

Posted on by Amrita Gurney

The corporate finance department is changing, and so are the roles and responsibilities of its leaders. Data and technology are being used in new and strategic ways, leading to fundamental shifts in the way finance professionals work.

Automation, communications, people management and training are just some of the areas that are evolving.

When you’re looking for advice that could benefit your company in these areas, there isn’t always someone in your professional network that can help. And if you’re trying to become a better finance leader, you probably want to learn from the best.

What if you could hear from other seasoned finance professionals about how they overcame some of these challenges in their own unique way? Whether you’re implementing a zero based budgeting model for the first time or raising a Series B, there’s a good chance someone has been in your shoes before.

Listening to their stories just might help you turn these milestones into career defining opportunities.

We’re excited to launch Retained Learnings, a new podcast for Canadian finance leaders. Hosted by Float CEO Rob Khazzam, Retained Learnings will feature Canada’s most respected and accomplished finance and business names to bring you some of the lessons they’ve collected during their careers.

In each episode of Retained Learnings, we’ll share strategic advice and potential solutions to answer some of the finance departments most important questions. We’ll touch on topics like preparing to go public, hiring in a tight talent market, or even moving to an ERP solution like NetSuite.

If you’re a Canadian finance professional, curious about how the best finance leaders in the country do their jobs, be sure to listen to Retained Learnings. Now available on Spotify and Apple podcasts.

How Forma.ai Found True Financial Autonomy With Float

Posted on by Amrita Gurney

Forma.ai, the world’s first end-to-end sales performance management (SPM) platform, is growing and they’re growing fast. Andy O’Reilly, Forma.ai’s Senior Manager of Finance & Technology, swiftly recognized after joining the company in 2021 that a quick and efficient spend management solution was necessary. With the company’s headcount increasing 4x in a little over a year, Float was the obvious solution to help manage spending and track expenses. Read how Float has enabled Andy and the entire Forma.ai team to reach their goals and maintain their rapid growth without the distractions of over-complex and manual spend management processes.

Q1: How long have you been using Float? What about Float made you choose us?

I joined Forma.ai in March 2021 and coincidentally, in April 2021, one month after I joined, Float reached out to us and we’ve been working together ever since. Given the nature of my job, I see a lot of demos – but Float’s was one of the best I’ve seen. I felt immediate confidence in the platform and in their level of service and attention. I also quickly saw that Float was able to offer our teams the financial autonomy and agility we were searching for, while maintaining full control of budgetary spend. At the time of onboarding, I was a team of one and we were a company of 50 employees.  Checking expenses against receipts was a huge bottleneck for everyone. We’re over 150 employees now and without Float we would have had an A/P nightmare.

Float has created an independent workflow where everything is automated, integrated, and digitally captured – allowing us to focus all our attention on taking Forma.ai to the next level of our growth.

Q2: What did company spending and expense management look like before Float?

Before Float, spend and expense management was tedious and time-consuming. We did not have an efficient system in place or a way to track expenses. We had one credit card and often had to facilitate wire transfers, which cost us money every time! 

Working with Float, we’ve been able to save so much money and become more streamlined at the same time. AND we get back what we spend on our Float cards with their cashback feature – it’s a win-win! 

Float also gives me the power to manage and oversee everything without having to be directly involved. Our senior leadership team can now control their own spending and expenses without constantly seeking approval to use their corporate cards. It not only makes my life easier but for our whole team too!

We recently raised $45 million in our Series B funding round, which is a big milestone for the company. Given our tremendous growth in the last year, I don’t think it would have been possible to get to where we are today without Float.

Q3: What were the biggest pain points that Float solved for your business? 

Before using Float, we had a single corporate card that a lot of people needed to access. We have a large sales team distributed across Canada and the United States – just imagine the receipt tracking that came with that!

I really value how much Float has streamlined our bookkeeping. It integrates so well with our accounting software and the process of balancing our books is no longer manual. 

Float also sends every employee a notification after a transaction has been completed, reminding them to take a picture of their receipt and upload it. It’s now so much easier to get a handle on our receipt paper trail because it’s all stored in the cloud.

Q4: What is the best part of working with Float?

Float’s ability to integrate has been a game-changer for us at Forma.ai. The automation gives us back so much time we otherwise wouldn’t have had. It has also created a smooth expense approval workflow, with no hold-ups or delays in reimbursement. 

With Float, we can easily set financial or time limits on cards and having this control gives everyone clear guidelines and expectations when it comes to company spending. 

Since implementing Float at Forma.ai, I’ve recommended the product to several colleagues in the industry. The Float team is always available and attentive, supporting us with whatever we need. The direct chat has allowed for seamless communication and no mixed messages. 

Aside from the people, the Float platform is critical for us now. Float’s virtual cards continue to give our team the flexibility and autonomy they need and deserve – we have a total of 60 currently active. If one of our team members leaves, we can immediately stop their card without having to worry about cancelling any of their subscriptions or memberships.

About Forma.ai

Forma.ai is the only sales compensation platform that allows organizations to flexibly manage what are currently brittle and easily broken sales compensation management processes. Their unique platform enables organizations to design, execute, and optimize their sales compensation strategy with a scientific approach driven by a collective data model. Forma.ai transforms one of the largest cost centers in an organization into its most powerful lever for top-line revenue growth. Founded in Toronto in 2016, the company is backed by ACME Capital, Crosslink Capital, xFund, Panache Ventures, Golden Ventures, Uncork Capital and Gaingels. Forma.ai is trusted by a growing list of innovative global enterprises with clients including Autodesk, TrustPilot, OpenTable, CareerBuilder, and more.

Guide to Modern Expense Policies

Posted on by Amrita Gurney

More often than not, company expenses are handled in a reactive way.

Employees will make a business purchase using personal funds, submit the necessary information to get it approved by finance, and later get reimbursed via payroll. That’s a lot of administrative overhead (and delayed financials).

But you can make life a lot simpler by replacing this reactive approach to company spending with a faster, more proactive one.

With Float, finance teams can issue cards to employees worry-free with $0 card balances and custom limits, and automate company expense policies while gaining full visibility and control over spending.

But first…

What is an expense policy?

An expense policy is a set of guidelines made by a company that clearly identifies acceptable and unacceptable business expenses and the processes for getting them approved and reimbursed. This gives the finance department and administrators the ability to quickly determine the validity of an expense, and gives company spenders a clear understanding of what they can spend on.

Benefits of having expense policies

Expense policies offer a structured and logical way to control company-wide spending. That way, when an expense is rejected or questioned, your expense policy will serve as the final standard for making decisions on approving or rejecting the spend request.

It standardizes the rules for your expense management process, while also helping to prevent non-compliant expenses from being made. It also gives your finance team a gold standard to govern those incoming spend requests and quickly determine what’s acceptable and what’s not.

With everyone aligned on the company spending guidelines, senior management is better able to control costs more efficiently and calculate spending forecasts.

Types of expense policies

Depending on the size of your business and the industry you’re in, your expense policy will differ.

Some companies may have one broad expense policy and others may have multiple expense policies specifically related to travel, entertainment, or departmental expenses.

Typically an expense policy will include:

  • Expense Categories: Different types of expenses that employees can incur, like travel, meals, accommodation, or office supplies.
  • Spending Limits: Clear limits for each expense category, specifying the maximum amount employees can spend without additional approvals.
  • Approval Process: The steps employees must follow to obtain approval before incurring expenses, including any documentation required.
  • Documentation Requirements: The supporting documents, such as receipts or invoices, that employees need to submit along with their expense reports.
  • Reimbursement Procedures: How employees should submit expense reports, including the required forms or software systems.
  • Non-Reimbursable Expenses: Expenses that are not eligible for reimbursement, such as personal expenses, fines, or alcohol.
  • Travel and Accommodation Guidelines: Guidelines for booking flights, hotels, and rental cars, including preferred vendors and any travel-related policies.
  • Expense Audit and Compliance: The process of auditing expense reports and the consequences of non-compliance with the policy.

What’s the downside?

Having guidelines in place is essential to maintain control over employee spending. But more often than not, expense policies become corporate documents buried in a shared drive, which leads to:

  • Complicated and time consuming approval processes
  • Purchases being made that are not compliant with policy
  • Limited visibility into spending
  • High administrative overhead on reimbursements and reconciliations
  • Teams being limited in making purchases necessary to help grow the business

The good news is that Float allows you to implement your company’s spend guidelines directly on Float Cards themselves – ensuring that purchases made on Float Cards are automatically compliant with your company’s expense policies.

Automated expense policies in Float

Float allows you to set boundaries for corporate spending directly on Float Cards themselves, with automated rules for transactions that reflect your company’s expense guidelines.

So every time a company employee makes a purchase on a Float Card, our intelligent software will determine if the transaction complies and automatically prompt cardholders to upload receipts and expense information as soon as a transaction is made.

Contrary to traditional teams where only a limited few hold business credit cards (and share them), Float allows company’s to issue Float Cards to all team members, worry-free, with real-time visibility and control over company-wide spend.

Here’s how:

✅ Approve spend before it happens

Multi-level Approval policies based on your company’s organization structure lets employees easily request to make a purchase from managers (with an audit trail).

🤖 Automatically collect receipts and GL codes

Submission Policies let you define the information employees are required to submit with each transaction, like receipts and GL codes, and will pause cards without them.

🛡️ Protect your company from unauthorized spend

Individual card controls like Merchant Controls let you restrict spending at certain merchant categories and custom Recurring and Temporary limits ensure your company doesn’t get overcharged.

📉 Get insights into your cash flow

Float’s Reporting feature provides a real-time overview of company spending with insights into who is spending what.

—

Want to learn more about Canada’s smartest corporate cards and business spend software? Get our Spend Management Guide at the link below.

Float Spend Management Guide

Login to Float to implement your company’s expense policies, or Book a demo today to experience simplified business spending.

How Klue Found Its Way to Better Spending

Posted on by Amrita Gurney

We sat down with Adrian Pape, Klue’s VP of Finance, to discuss the company’s experience with Float over the last year. Klue’s software combines the best of competitive intelligence and revenue enablement — giving their clients a leg up through advanced market and competitive insights. When it came to their finances, Klue needed a change, especially after facing regular issues of fraud, blocked credit cards, unauthorized purchases and more. Here’s what Adrian had to say.

Q1: How did you hear about Float?

I found Float after doing a bit of my own research. Eventually, I met with Shawn and watched some pre-recorded demos of the platform. In terms of customer care and service, the standard Shawn set was a cut above. As it turned out, Float (called Journal at the time) was exactly what we were looking for. Plus, the 1% cashback was definitely something that caught our eye.

Q2: Before Float, what did company spending and expense management look like?

We had roughly 13 corporate credit cards — seven American cards and six Canadian. During that time, our credit cards were constantly being blocked. Employees who didn’t have corporate credit cards were filling out reimbursement forms and uploading receipts. As you can imagine, correctly capturing tax information from those receipts was a headache. There was probably between $10,000 and $20,000 of accumulated GST from old expense reports that fell through the cracks.

“Credit cards in our company were scattered everywhere and there was a slew of unidentifiable charges on these cards. Finding out who they were from or what they were for took days, if not weeks.”

There were also a few instances of external fraud. Because all the cards had been compromised at one point or another, 13 new cards had to be issued, with each and every connection having to be re-established using a new credit card number. We had no control over who was adding recurring charges to cards and there was no visibility or accountability. Essentially, no one knew who was spending what because the cards were used so often – it was a significant challenge. 🤯

Q3: What are the biggest pain points that Float solved for your business?

At the time, we didn’t have someone dedicated to looking after payroll – so I had  taken on the responsibility in the interim. On top of my primary responsibilities, I had to review and import expense reports and keep track of 150+ people who needed to be reimbursed. Since implementing Float, the burden is a lot smaller. At Klue, we have established a strong culture of trust and transparency, so it’s been a nice perk to be able to set up virtual cards for employees and give them the freedom to make business-related purchases. Another huge advantage for us is the SMS receipt capture feature. 🤳🏾 ​​It allows our employees to submit their receipts in real-time directly through Float using their smartphone. 

“It gives us greater control because we’re able to monitor company spending, easily approve purchase requests, and Float reminds employees to submit their receipts on time.”

Float also saves our employees time since the last thing they want to do at the end of the month or year is dig out and submit hundreds of receipts. Instead, it gets it done in the moment and is off their plate, which many of them appreciate.

Q4: What features were the most useful to you and your team?

“Float’s Quickbooks integration allows us to seamlessly connect to our chart of accounts and retrieve and update our tax codes – no problem!” 

With the QB feature, we no longer have to waste time producing expense reports. It’s as easy as reviewing the tax figures, allocating the expense, and clicking Export to Quickbooks – then Float takes care of the rest! 🤩I would also say that being able to give non-managers and non-finance employees access to an individual corporate credit card with a pre-approved limit has been great for our team. 💳  It’s eliminated a lot of the complication and mess we were previously experiencing with unauthorized purchases and poor spend visibility.

Q5: How did your finance and operations team respond to implementing Float?

The crew was ecstatic that it all worked out. 👏🏼 Buying software is always a little frightening but after a couple of demos, and working with the Float team, we were up and running pretty quick. We also have a Float x Klue Slack channel where Float employees can read our threads and listen to what’s going on. Every now and then, we will tag their team and share any key concerns and the team is incredibly responsive and helpful. 

Q6: What advice would you give to other companies considering Float?

Don’t hesitate and get started right away. 🙌🏽  It’s quick, saves a lot of time, and the onboarding process is straightforward and easy. And the best part is that the Float team is right there with you at every step. They’re always taking our ideas and needs into account and continually looking for ways to better support us. 

About Klue

Klue provides a lens into your competitor’s world, continuously updating and connecting the dots to help you win more business. It’s a new way to capture, manage, and communicate market insights from the web and across the company, in the platforms you already use.

How Float Helps Marketing Teams Spend Smarter

Posted on by Amrita Gurney

If your marketing team is constantly asking for the corporate credit card, don’t worry – you’re not alone! With Float, you no longer have to use a single card for all of your business purchases. Your finance team can instantly issue an unlimited number of physical and virtual VISA cards specifically to your marketing team — including managers, employees, and even interns!

Float gives marketing teams flexibility to spend while providing the finance team with oversight and control. It’s a win-win.

How Float drives marketing teams forward 🤩

Marketing is typically one of the biggest spenders in an organization — regardless of the industry you’re in. In the age of digital advertising, the list of expenses is always growing and can be even more complicated to manage without the right tools in place. These day-to-day expenses can include:

💰Funding social campaigns
✈️Travelling to conferences
💻 Purchasing software subscriptions
➕ So much more!

Easily request cards for marketing spend  🙌🏻

Your marketing team needs to be able to make strategic decisions fast, without any bottlenecks. Our Expense Policy features enable Finance Admins to give marketing team leaders the authority to set spending limits on cards and quickly approve spend requests from their staff.

You can log into Float at any time and easily request a single use virtual card for purchases like swag orders, props for shoots or photography equipment. For advertising and software subscriptions, you can request a recurring virtual card. Virtual cards are issued instantly and accepted everywhere VISA and Mastercard are – all you have to do is simply copy and paste the card details into the vendor’s billing details page.

Instantly create a virtual card by vendor 💳

Create a virtual card by vendor to easily categorize the types of recurring online spend your marketing team is making. A virtual card for every vendor gives you the option to create daily, weekly or even monthly recurring cards with assigned budgets. For example, if you know that your Facebook ad spend is $40K/month, you can create a recurring monthly card with that limit.

A virtual card by vendor allows you to:

💵 Set monthly budgets for specific marketing activities
👀 Easily track and control spending over the month
☑️ Set limits to every card to ensure spend isn’t exceeded
✋🏽 Ensure vendors don’t overcharge the card without your authorization
💳 Avoid disrupting other subscriptions or payments when you pause or cancel a card

Use physical cards for real world expenses 💳

The finance team can issue a physical card to each marketing team member who has on-the-go expenses for travel, conferences, or client meetings. Float offers unlimited physical cards to Professional plan members, and with the ability to set card limits and apply automated expense policies, there’s no reason to hold out.

Cardholders are automatically reminded to easily send Float receipts and assign pre-defined GL codes as soon as the purchase is made, eliminating month end expense reports and reconciliations.

Track spending in real time without any guesswork ✅

Managing corporate spending closely is on everyone’s minds right now. If your finance team doesn’t have a smart solution in place, it’s likely taking over their 9-5. 🤯 Using Float, marketing leaders can log into the platform at any time and monitor their team’s spending in real time. Expenses like Google ads, travel costs and even miscellaneous expenses like morning coffee and lunch are all visible and categorized by vendors too! Gone are the days of asking for budget updates over Slack and tracking spend through a spreadsheet. Float makes everything available for you right on the dashboard. No guesswork, no errors and no stress! 👍🏼

Managers can also assign auto-tags to clearly define each employee’s role and spending authority. As for the finance team, Float grants them full visibility over what every department is spending, what they’re purchasing and whether their budgets need to be increased.

Collect and manage receipts in a flash – literally. 📸

With so many transactions being made, marketing teams typically generate a ton of receipts. Float makes it easy to stay on top of those receipts through our SMS receipt upload and email receipt feature. Spenders can simply snap a picture of their receipt and upload it into the platform immediately after a transaction! And if they don’t, managers have the option to send out automated reminders until a receipt is submitted. No more chasing employees down! 🏃🏻‍♂️ Float also provides the option to tag expenses by vendor or category and add additional notes to every receipt submission so that managers know exactly what the purchase was for. 

Laptop showing expense transactions

*If you’re using Float’s Professional Plan, you can also get access to unlimited physical cards – Essentials Plan users get access to five. 

Ready to give your marketing team more autonomy and an easier way to spend? Book a demo with us today or sign up for free! 

New Survey Reveals Pain Points in Spend Management

Posted on by Amrita Gurney

Today we released new data that shows companies are struggling with managing corporate spend, particularly with the shift to a remote or hybrid workforce. The survey, conducted among business decision makers on the Angus Reid Forum, reveals the negative impacts of inefficient spend management on company security, workforce productivity and employee happiness — which are of increasing concern as businesses navigate the uncertain economic climate.

Key survey highlights include:

  • 61 per cent of businesses who have most or all employees working remotely express that expense reporting is one of the most tedious jobs in their organization
  • More than half (51%) at these companies agree that time spent reporting expenses negatively impacts their ability to accomplish work
  • 49 per cent of businesses where most or all employees work remotely share company credit card across multiple employees, and among this group, 63 per cent share card details over Slack or email, more than three times the proportion of businesses with only some employees working remotely (18%)
  • Seven-in-ten (71%) businesses report that their employees incur company expenses on personal credit cards, increasing to 80 per cent for businesses with remote employees

Shift to remote work has created new pain points for employees and HR leaders

The pandemic was an unexpected push to remote work that created operational challenges as businesses moved quickly to adapt. Even in a post-COVID world, the strain on employees and HR leaders lingers as companies settle permanently into hybrid and flexible working arrangements. Four-in-five (80%) businesses with remote employees have staff who incur company expenses on their personal credit cards, and 45 per cent report that employees are incurring more company expenses personally for reimbursement since shifting to remote work. With inflation and the cost of living rising, this is a significant financial burden for many Canadians. 

For HR leaders, maintaining existing benefits such as team building activities and socials, as well as managing new employee benefits brought on by remote work arrangements, has resulted in difficulties with expense tracking. Over half (54%) of businesses working primarily remotely report an increase in funds or stipends distributed to employees, and half (51%) of businesses who had most or all of their employees shift to remote work said that it has made receipt tracking more complicated. On both ends, more than half (53%) at these companies agree that expense reporting is a major pain point for employees, and 51 per cent agree that time spent reporting expenses negatively impacts their ability to accomplish work. As remote or hybrid work becomes the norm, these challenges will only become more prevalent unless businesses adapt new processes and technology to streamline spend management.

Concerns for corporate spend management in a tough economic climate

As recession fears grow in Canada, business leaders are increasingly focused on maximizing productivity and finding cost-saving opportunities. The survey found an operational bottleneck amongst many Canadian businesses to be their manual expense tracking, which directly impacts productivity. 82 per cent of businesses spend at least a day to close their books at month-end, and among businesses whose workforce shifted to remote work during the pandemic, two-in-five spend at least four days on the task. This is significant as almost three-in-four (74%) businesses agree that they could spend less time closing their books at month’s end.

The ripple effect of heavy manual expense tracking is that it leaves businesses unable to scale up without increasing overhead. Currently, the most time-consuming expense reporting tasks for companies that have shifted to remote work are: ensuring expenses are accurate (64%), fixing human errors (56%), tracking down employees for receipts (56%) and manually reconciling and entering data (55%). These are pain points that will become larger as a company grows, limiting Canadian businesses’ ability to shift as needed during a volatile economic period.

Additional findings include:

  • Almost half (48%) of businesses with most or all employees shifting to remote work are seeing increased paperwork from expense reporting
  • 30 per cent of businesses who have most or all of their employees working remotely use 6 or more different finance software and tools for accounting-related work 
  • More than two-in-five (44%) businesses with primarily remote employees plan to purchase new software for finance and accounting-related work in the coming year

Methodology: These are the findings of a survey conducted by Float from May 26-30, 2022 among a nationally representative sample of 427 Canadian finance decision makers at companies with 15-300 employees. All respondents were members of the online Angus Reid Forum. For comparison purposes only, a probability sample of this size would yield a margin or error of +/- 4.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The survey was offered in both English and French.

5 Ways Float Saves Your Business Money

Posted on by Amrita Gurney

There’s often a delicate balance within growing businesses between spending and saving. As a busy finance professional, finding that balance often falls to you… along with all the oversight and administrative work that comes with it.

Enter Float – a physical and virtual corporate card backed by powerful spend management software that gives you far more oversight over spending… while offering significant savings to your business. 

Here are five ways Float can help your business save money:

1️⃣ No surprise fees 

When you spend with Float, you won’t have any surprises – there are no foreign transaction fees, and no hidden monthly fees. Additionally, you can issue unlimited virtual cards as needed… without additional charges. What does this mean? The only charges you’ll see each month are the expenses incurred by your business – no additional fees, and no surprises.

2️⃣ 1% Cashback 

It’s true! For each purchase you make with your Float physical and virtual corporate cards, you’ll get one percent cash back. Depending on your team’s monthly spend, this adds up to significant savings. Some Float customers regularly receive tens of thousands of dollars in cash back – with no strings attached – deposited into your Float account monthly. 

3️⃣ Spend controls that are easy to implement

While Float allows you to issue unlimited physical and virtual corporate cards, you’re able to limit the spend on each individual card – providing you a level of proactive control over your organization’s spend that traditional corporate cards don’t offer.

4️⃣ Track real-time spend by vendor 

Tracking vendor spending is a tedious process of waiting for invoices, processing payments, and logging the transactions. It’s asynchronous, and doesn’t offer a real-time view into what your suppliers are spending. 

Since you control the spend limit on each card, you can set up your vendors with a virtual corporate card with a spend limit in line with their typical monthly spend. This also allows you to track their spending, and increase or decrease their spend limits in real time as needed. This not only ensures that vendor payments are happening on time and on budget – meaning you won’t be overcharged – saving you time and money.

5️⃣ Set approval structures

Still need peace of mind? Float customers are able to set up multiple expense approval processes to ensure that even if a vendor or employee needs a credit top-up, spend is still monitored, and can be approved on the fly… even via Slack.

💰 Bonus! Earn up to $150k in special offers from Float partners

Becoming a Float customer is simple. Applications take just five minutes online, and you can be approved in a few days. Compared to a traditional approval timeline of four to six weeks for traditional credit cards, it’s not just a financial savings – it’s a time savings. Plus, Float’s perks program provides some pretty sweet bonuses… adding up to $150k in additional savings for your company. 

Here are just a few:

  • Intercom offers a FREE first year, a 50% discount in your second year, and an ongoing 20% discount as long – a value of $61k USD
  • Amazon Web Services provides $25k USD in AWS Activate Credits along with a year of AWS Business Support – a value of $5k USD
  • Hubspot is offering 30% off a subscription for the first year, and 15% each subsequent year – a savings of up to $35k USD

With this many opportunities to save, what’s stopping you from booking a demo? Find out what makes Float so special today!

Float and Letterbox Doughnuts Make for the Sweetest Combo

Posted on by Amrita Gurney

Letterbox Doughnuts was growing fast, but with all that dough coming in they needed a solution to keep up a pace with all their expenses. Donut worry, Float saved the day!

During the summer of 2020, Jonathan Oliver and his wife found themselves with a lot more time on their hands. Priom Mahbub, a baker at heart, was constantly churning out doughnuts for all the socially distanced celebrations in their family. Eventually the two of them along with their friend Mallory Greene decided to officially share these delicious treats with their community. What started in their kitchen at home eventually grew into Letterbox Doughnuts, a local Toronto bakery selling personalized, lettered doughnuts perfect for any occasion. With such rapid growth and expansion, Letterbox was looking for a better way to manage their expenses and make company spending a hole lot easier. We sat down with Jonathan to discuss how Float is helping them spend smarter as they scale.

How long have you been using Float and what made you choose us?

We joined Float in December 2021 but officially began using the platform earlier this year. Our motivation for signing up was two-fold. We had recently moved from Toronto and were no longer going to be in the kitchen everyday. Being there all the time made it easy for me to pick up receipts from staff and later input them into Quickbooks manually. After moving, this way of doing things was no longer working. Second, we are growing our team and just hired a Bakery Manager at our Toronto store. Right now, our team consists of five bakers and we’re hoping to double that in the near future, as well as grow our delivery team. We’re also planning to expand our business across Canada and potentially in the U.S. and U.K. in the coming years. With that in mind, we want all our employees to be able to spend and purchase easily – whether it’s supplies, ingredients or other business-related transactions based on the needs of their location. Now that we’ve signed on with Float, we can issue multiple corporate cards to employees, set clear spending limits and even get 1% cashback too!  

What did company spending and expense management look like before Float?

Before, we would use my personal credit card and I would have to keep track of everything myself. I was the one filtering through transactions, balancing the books on a monthly basis and double-checking receipts to match up expenses. It was very manual, time consuming and oftentimes, many receipts were missing. I would like to be spending my time focusing on growth and what the future looks like – reconciling and looking for receipts was not a useful way to spend my time. I used to spend every Saturday doing this but now, I have my Saturdays back to plan, forecast and look at other markets to grow in. 

“Float is a massive time-saver and it empowers people who don’t have a financial background to be in a position where they can confidently control their corporate finances and gain greater insight on company-wide spending.”

As we continue to grow, I know that having Float will provide even more simplicity and clarity over spending from one location to the next. Right now, we have a Float card designated to our one location but as we plan to hire more people, I’m looking forward to issuing individual cards to team leaders and having a platform that automates all the heavy lifting for us. 

What were the biggest pain points that Float solved for your business? 

Since we were experiencing such quick growth, we were faced with the challenge of making the ordering process more seamless. Originally, I was placing orders myself, but we needed to find a way to allow the team to have full autonomy and purchase ingredients and supplies on their own. We wanted to empower our employees to do this but still wanted to be able to set the guidelines and expectations from a management standpoint – and Float made this possible. 

“Float is a very simple, unintimidating system to use. It gives people the ability to spend without any roadblocks but also makes it quick and clear to track spending. It allows managers to set expectations for monthly spending and empowers employees to feel like owners and take on more responsibility.” 

What particular features were the most useful to your team? 

“Float keeps us on top of our corporate spending. I don’t have to constantly put reminders in my phone and I can easily review the transactions at my own discretion.”

The fact that Float provides an automated breakdown of the subtotal and HST on every purchase has saved our team a lot of time. I also have the ability to change things on my end if there’s ever gratuity, which is even more of a game changer. At the end of the day, the team doesn’t have to run to me with questions and I’m not chasing anyone down for answers. 

Float allows our employees to make smart spending decisions and feel a greater sense of financial responsibility in their job. Accountability is shared across the team and if I set a specific spend expectation, Float makes it easy for everyone to comply. It eliminates a lot of awkward and confusing conversations and there’s never any guesswork. Sometimes, managers and team members don’t have a good grasp on finance stuff, and the reason why we love Float so much is because they provide a very straightforward way of going about it without getting overwhelmed.

A lot of the bakery suppliers we work with operate in a more traditional sense. Translation: paper receipts and invoices. Priom and I both come from a tech and investing background where everything integrates. So much so that while I used to pick vendors based on pricing and quality, part of that criteria is whether they could integrate with our systems. With Float, this isn’t something I need to think about. If we receive paper receipts, all our team has to do is take a picture and upload it to Float and it’s taken care of. 

About Letterbox Doughnuts

Letterbox Doughnuts creates custom lettered doughnuts for Canadians to celebrate their special moments and enjoy personalized treats. Baked fresh daily, the doughnuts are made using authentic ingredients with no artificial preservatives – just great taste!

The Ultimate Trade: Coinberry Leaves Amex for Float Spend Management

Posted on by Amrita Gurney

Coinberry is the first-ever Ontario Securities Commission-registered and regulated crypto company, which is a reflection of their commitment to abide by all anti-money laundering, KYC and customer protection requirements. After implementing Float in 2021, Jerry shared that Coinberry experienced a noticeable shift in the way the company handled their expenses and spending processes.

Here’s what Jerry had to say about us.

Q1: When did you start using Float and why did you choose us?

I began using Float in my previous role as VP of Finance at FlipGive – I believe we were one of the first clients Float onboarded at the time. Even though I joined them in their early days, using Float was such a seamless experience compared to all the other credit card providers out there. From the moment I joined Coinberry, it was a no-brainer for me to reach out to Rob, Shawn and the rest of the Float team. The driving factors included the ease of onboarding, control, customization and the ability to structure prepaid cards to our liking.

Q2: What did the company’s spending and expense management process look like before Float?

We didn’t have any corporate credit cards. Instead, we had a central bank account that we used to pay vendors and wire money – it was a total headache. Using this method made it harder for us to settle invoices. Not only that, we were paying more to wire money and we were only able to send funds in Canadian dollars. If we wanted to pay our U.S. vendors, we had to find a way to do it through personal PayPal accounts. At that point, we decided to get three AMEX cards, however, we weren’t allowed to issue subcards to our employees. So while this fixed the challenge of paying our U.S.-dollar expenses, it provided no solution to improve our spend approval and expense management process. Employees were still emailing or messaging via Slack for permission to use the credit card with no other paper trail after that. We would see the charges come through and sometimes have to chase people down to find out what the charge was for and if there was a receipt for it. It was far from streamlined and more importantly, we just didn’t know who was spending what. With everyone sharing the same card number, it was really hard to understand our corporate spending from a control perspective.

Using Float, employees get their own card and it’s theirs. They don’t have to share it with anyone but of course, they’re accountable for it. And all they need to do is email or upload the receipt. It’s incredibly simple. Now that we’re all set up, we have specific cards for certain purposes, we have better control and our visibility into spending is crystal clear.

“From unwanted monthly subscriptions to unauthorized transactions, the level of control we now have with Float is saving us approximately $10,000 a month.”

Q3: What would you say were the biggest pain points that Float solved for Coinberry?

One is simply the transaction capturing between both ends – input at the spending level and expense reporting at the senior management level. Before, the bookkeeper would go through the statements, manually input the transaction (the spend, the HST, the expense, the invoice and the receipt) and would often have to chase people down for missing information.

“Using Float, our bookkeeper can track expenses throughout the month, instead of waiting for employees to submit their receipts at the last minute. By the time month-end comes along, 80% of the work is already done.”

Being able to categorize cards for specific spend types like Facebook ads has been a game changer. It’s fully integrated with our Quickbooks platform and we have the insight to know when a transaction on a particular card is related to Facebook marketing.

From a savings standpoint, the cashback feature is also very helpful. With Float, you get 1% cashback after every month. The best part is I don’t have to account for that any differently because you just earn the cashback and the system takes care of all the nitty gritty manual labour. Another piece that really saves us time is the speed to settlement and the speed to fund. We spend thousands of dollars per month on Facebook, Google and Apple advertising. By using Float, we’re able to maintain our critical spending categories for both advertising and acquisition without interruption. When we were using AMEX, it was incredibly time consuming to do this – I am talking two or more days – and it often put our ad campaigns on pause and we would lose users every day.

“Float makes this process seamless for us and always puts us in a position to win so we can move forward on our daily tasks without any roadblocks.”

Q4: How has Float impacted processes within your teams and how did employees respond?

It has definitely impacted the way we handle all our payables. Since Float has a 1% cashback, we’ve actually done a complete overhaul on how and when we pay our vendors. We do weekly pay runs and I’ve actually created a new process to identify all our vendors and determine who we can pay through Float.

Our spend process is also much more centralized and streamlined than it used to be. Before, employees were either using one of our three AMEX cards or spending on their personal cards. This made reimbursement complicated, expense reports were a hassle and there was a lack of control and visibility into what we were spending. Today, there’s no friction. Before money is even used, I have the ability to increase or limit spending and can consolidate as much of our AP, invoices and employee expenditures as possible. Instead of having to rely on 10 to 20 employees, Float allows us to put these processes in the hands of three people at most. And that’s saved us a tremendous amount of time and stress.

“We’ve saved our senior management team nearly 5 to 10 hours a month on expense reports alone and can give employees more responsibility and accountability when it comes to their spending.”

Our employees responded really well to Float – I remember feeling like Santa Claus when I was handing out everyone’s corporate cards! It was a great feeling to see everyone so excited because our old process really bottlenecked our teams’ daily tasks. Before Float, our employees constantly found themselves asking for permission and waiting for approval on minor purchases like signing up for software or paying for conference tickets. Giving them their own card immediately removed those roadblocks and really allowed me to empower the team, which made all the difference.

Q5: What particular features were the most useful to your team and why?

The number one for me is being able to issue as many cards as you need and the speed of doing so. We have a card for Canadian one-time account payables, another card for U.S. payments and one dedicated for marketing – all categorized for a particular spend. We enjoy the flexibility to issue multiple cards quickly, with the ability to code and create processes and structures for each one. We can also set our own limits – from as low as $10 to as high as $100,000 a month — and have the ability to customize and adapt each card based on our requirements. Nothing in the market really compares to that.  

If you meet Rob, Shawn or Natalie, they’re some of the most wonderful people and you can tell. They are passionate about the business and constantly working to resolve the pain points for all their users. On a personal and professional note, the best part about working with Float is the people. But as a platform, it’s the technology behind it – which has come a long way as well. If you’re considering Float, don’t hesitate. If you have bills to pay and more than five employees, it’s a no-brainer experience.

About Coinberry

Coinberry is a Canadian digital asset trading platform that provides users the easiest and safest way to buy and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash and Stellar in Canada.