Author: Shanelle Holder

Bonnie Kershaw stands as a testament to excellence in the accounting field, bringing over four decades of rich experience that cuts across diverse sectors, from construction to the forefront of innovation in artificial intelligence. Throughout her storied career, she has consistently observed the indispensable role that accounting plays in driving the success of businesses in every industry. Currently at BenchSci, a trailblazing AI firm revolutionizing pre-clinical pharmaceutical research, Bonnie has navigated through both familiar terrains and uncharted waters. Amidst the company’s explosive growth, which saw its size double in 2022, BenchSci faced a number of accounting challenges. One challenge included handling an overwhelming tide of expense reports. These expense reports, burdened by unwieldy spreadsheets and the painstaking process of manual data entry into accounting systems, represented a significant bottleneck in the company’s operational efficiency.

BenchSci has successfully transitioned to using Float to issue both physical and virtual cards to employees, moving away from the cumbersome and outdated expense report process. This strategic shift has resulted in a significant time saving of 40+ hours per month, streamlining expense processing and enhancing operational efficiency. This achievement is a monument to the fruitful partnership between BenchSci, and Float.

A Partner First, Customer Second

BenchSci distinguished itself not only as an early adopter of Float but also as a key partner in honing the platform’s features to better serve its needs. By actively engaging in the feedback loop, conducting thorough testing, and contributing to the feature development roadmap, BenchSci helped ensure that Float’s offerings were finely tuned to address the complexities of modern financial operations. This partnership allowed BenchSci to significantly benefit from Float’s cutting-edge capabilities, tailored to streamline and enhance its expense management processes. In turn, Float’s features evolved through this collaborative process, becoming more aligned with the practical demands of companies like BenchSci. This mutually beneficial relationship underscored the value of Float’s features in addressing the specific challenges faced by BenchSci, showcasing the platform’s adaptability and relevance in a fast-paced business environment.

From Tedious Expense Reports to Corporate Cards for All

As BenchSci underwent a period of rapid expansion, it encountered two primary challenges with its existing reimbursement approach. The first challenge was the laborious nature of expense reports for employees. The manual entry of data into Google Sheets not only consumed considerable time but also resulted in delays in delivering these reports to the finance team. Bonnie highlighted the frequent issues, stating, “A lot of times people weren’t sending their expenses in on a timely basis… because we’re remote, you’d have to go back and forth as well when information or receipts were missing.” As the company’s transaction volume increased, the process of entering expense report data into the Accounting System one at a time consumed a significant portion of Bonnie’s schedule.

The second challenge involved employees having to use their personal funds for significant company-related purchases, such as travel expenses. “We wanted to alleviate the pressure of employees having to pay with their own funds and waiting for reimbursement for company expenses,” Bonnie explained. The adoption of Float presented a solution to these challenges, offering BenchSci the ability to issue an unlimited number of physical and virtual cards. This enabled proactive control over company spending and eliminated the reliance on the cumbersome reimbursement process, significantly improving the efficiency of expense management and employee satisfaction.

A Culture of “Freedom and Responsibility”

At BenchSci, fostering a culture of “Freedom and Responsibility” is a top priority. Bonnie encapsulates this philosophy, stating, “Each person is responsible for the success of the company. So you treat company money like your own personal money.” This principle guides the finance team’s use of Float to empower each employee with their own physical Float credit card, endowed with a predefined monthly renewable limit. Moreover, to enhance flexibility and autonomy regarding employee benefits, additional expense policies are implemented on these corporate cards. These policies cater to specific stipends, such as learning and development, with annual limits, thus offering employees greater freedom in utilizing their perks.

For situations where additional funds are necessary, Float simplifies the process, allowing employees to request a temporary increase in their spending limit with just a brief explanation of the intended expenditure. Bonnie appreciates the efficiency of this feature, noting, “It’s very handy. If somebody needs a temporary increase, they can click on a button and request higher spend. We also love that people can request virtual cards for things like subscriptions.” This shift has significantly empowered employees, allowing them to directly manage software subscription payments pertinent to their teams, a task that was previously handled by the finance team through ACH or wire transfers. Float’s vendor-specific virtual cards, which can be set with recurring limits and expiration dates aligned with the company’s contractual terms, further streamline this process and safeguard against unnecessary spending.

Accounting Automations: A Huge Time-Saver

This new, proactive approach to spend reduced the need for the team’s spreadsheet expense reports (and transcribing them into the Accounting System). In addition to creating a better alternative to the manual processing of expense reports, the team unlocked further time-savings with Float’s Accounting Automations. To streamline reconciling the company’s expenses, they use Float’s Merchant Rules to automatically code all transactions made at the same vendor with the matching GL codes and tags. Employees also have the ability to add GL codes to transactions themselves as they spend, to help streamline the close process for the finance team as well.

When BenchSci’s finance team wants to review transactions before exporting to their accounting software at month-end, they can use Float’s Accounting Workboard to pull a list of non-compliant transactions in a single click. They can filter this list and make updates in bulk so all transactions are quickly ready for export. Bonnie says, “You’re proofing everything before exporting it, so you know once it gets into the Accounting System you don’t have to go check on things to make sure they’re done properly.” As Float integrates directly with their accounting software, the team can sync transactions in bulk from Float to the Accounting System in a few simple steps without worrying about downloading and manipulating data in spreadsheets. On tying Float’s Automations and Accounting Sync together, Bonnie said, “Huge time saver! The fact that we can automate transactions going from Float directly to the Accounting System makes things simple.”

Security and User Management at Scale

With a growing team of over 350 employees, BenchSci required a spend management solution equipped with robust user management and security features to safeguard company finances. To streamline the process of employee transitions, BenchSci integrated Float with their Human Resources Information System (HRIS). This integration facilitates the automatic synchronization of employees’ names, titles, and direct managers to Float, ensuring that card activity can be efficiently managed in alignment with personnel changes. Cards are automatically paused when an employee leaves the company, significantly reducing manual effort and enhancing security. Bonnie appreciates the automated efficiency, remarking, “Automatically on their final day their card is paused, which is amazing. I’d normally have to put a reminder in my calendar to do that, but now it’s done for me.”

To further secure and simplify access to Float, BenchSci utilizes the single sign-on (SSO) solution provided by Okta. This allows IT to distribute a single set of secure login credentials to employees, which can be used across the company’s diverse platforms, including Float. This approach not only streamlines the login process for employees, enhancing user experience, but also maintains a high level of security across all company-sanctioned software and applications, ensuring that access to sensitive financial management tools like Float is both secure and efficient.

Supercharging The Finance Team’s Efficiency

Transitioning from an era dominated by paper-based processes, Bonnie has witnessed firsthand the transformative impact of technology on accounting and expense management.

Reflecting on the advancements that solutions like Float represent, Bonnie says, “I can’t even imagine going backwards to that old time when we had to do things manually. I look back and think why didn’t someone create this 20 years ago? It would have definitely been well received by accountants, especially someone in my position who is the one doing work on the ground level.”

Bonnie leveraged Float’s suite of accounting features to not only work more efficiently but also to enhance the company’s control of employee spend. “The Accounting Automations are the biggest Float features for me. There’s also other features – being able to control spending limits, submission policies, approval workflows… They’re all great audit controls.”

Revolutionizing Financial Operations

The adoption of Float’s pioneering expense management software has revolutionized BenchSci’s financial operations, delivering unprecedented time savings each month. This transformation has empowered BenchSci’s finance team to elevate their focus to higher-value activities, underscoring their role in driving the company’s efficiency and strategic financial planning. Bonnie’s adept navigation through Float’s capabilities showcases not just her expertise but also her commitment to optimizing the finance team’s workflow, maintaining its agility and precision. Bonnie’s enthusiasm for Float’s impact is palpable: “Without Float, we’d be in the position of needing to expand our team. Thinking about the sheer volume of time saved, we’re talking a monumental 40 hours every month at the very least.” This testament not only celebrates Float’s innovative solution but also highlights Bonnie’s pivotal role in harnessing technology to forge a leaner, more dynamic finance operation at BenchSci, making it clear that with Float, the future of expense management is here, and it’s transformative.

About BenchSci

BenchSci’s vision is to exponentially increase the speed and quality of life-saving research by empowering scientists with the world’s most advanced biomedical artificial intelligence. You can find them at benchsci.com.

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.