Category: Case Studies

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transitioned to using Float to issue both physical and virtual cards to employees, moving away from the cumbersome and outdated expense report process.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

“We wanted to alleviate the pressure of employees having to pay with their own funds and waiting for reimbursement for company expenses.”

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”

“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.”

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

“Huge time saver! The fact that we can automate transactions going from Float directly to the Accounting System makes things simple.” 

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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.

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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

Having had experience with numerous expense management software and corporate cards, Deena wanted a tool that met their needs as a Canadian operating company.

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

“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.”

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

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. 

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

“Where it took 12 days before, I can now close expenses in one or two days. It just reconciles so easily.”

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

“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.”

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.

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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

“Having all of the controls within Float definitely helps in terms of just feeling comfortable with the number of cards in circulation.”

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

“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.”

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.

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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.

There was a point when it seemed the pandemic would break Fresh Tracks Canada, a Vancouver-based travel-agency — a fate faced by many businesses and industries in those tough times. As it happened, navigating the challenges helped the company thrive.

That is because, despite a more than twenty-year track record of delivering stellar personalized travel experiences across Canada, many of the company’s processes and systems had fallen out of date. Then the pandemic hit, and the company was forced to lay off more than half of its staff. 

“The pandemic was chaos, but chaos brings opportunity,” says the company’s Director of Finance, Robert O’Herlihy. “We broke down a lot of our systems and processes and rebuilt them up during the pandemic to be more efficient, and we’re seeing the rewards of that right now.”

Bringing A Travel Agency into the Digital Age

“The process we used was to assign a new virtual card to every booking,” O’Herlihy says. “Customer service would apply for a card, which had to be approved by finance — so inevitably there was a time lag before someone sees and approves it“

O’Herlihy says that the company emerged from the pandemic under new management with a mandate to operationalize new technology projects to drive productivity. For the accounting team, the area most ripe for improvement was payments. 

O’Herlihy explains that in the hospitality industry just about everything runs on credit cards, from hotel and tour bookings to employee expenses and even overhead costs. Overall, he estimates about half of the company’s transactions go through credit cards, which often racked up six-figure statements, with thousands of transactions requiring manual reconciliation. 

To make matters more complicated, Fresh Tracks Canada used one provider for its physical cards and another for virtual cards, of which they required many. 

“The process we used was to assign a new virtual card to every booking,” O’Herlihy says. “Customer service would apply for a card, which had to be approved by finance — so inevitably there was a time lag before someone sees and approves it — then it goes back to customer service so they could book the hotels and tours and other components.” 

Not only was the process itself inefficient for customer service staff, but it was also a nightmare for the accounting team, who had to chase staff for receipts and spend hours comparing them against bookings. As the company emerged from the pandemic with a mandate to find modern solutions, O’Herlihy says Float seemed like the most obvious fit. 

“It seemed to have a lot more features than other options on the market,” he says. “Some of them had receipt matching but didn’t allow us to add a description [to each transaction], or they might not integrate with our accounting system — Float just seemed like the full package of features we wanted.” 

One Platform, Many Solutions

“The integrations with our online banking and to our accounting software Xero were very easy, there was no custom API needed, it was plug and play essentially,”

Fresh Tracks Canada began using Float in August of 2022, following what O’Herlihy describes as a seamless onboarding process. 

“The integrations with our online banking and to our accounting software Xero were very easy, there was no custom API needed, it was plug and play essentially,” he says. “The system itself is also pretty intuitive, there wasn’t a lot of training that we had to give to the teams.” 

O’Herlihy adds that reception at Fresh Tracks Canada was “overwhelmingly positive” because Float provided a degree of autonomy and efficiency that had been lacking previously. 

“They don’t have to seek approvals, we don’t have to chase them for receipts; it’s all kind of self-managed,” he says. “When someone’s name is on a card, they’re more likely to manage it correctly, but we can set approvals in Float as well.” 

Within the accounting team O’Herlihy says life has gotten a lot easier now that all the company’s cards are managed in one system, including their U.S. dollar transactions, of which the travel company processes many. In fact, O’Herlihy says the company is saving thousands on American transaction fees alone, but cash savings wasn’t even the biggest benefit of the transition. 

“Time savings is the biggest one, like operational efficiencies, because we’re enabling our Legendary Hospitality team to take ownership and accountability of their own spending,” he says. “Getting the Float system in place was a big win for us, especially because it integrates with our accounting software, so there’s no manual entry into our accounting system — it’s all uploaded automatically.” 

How Float Improves Supplier Relations

“We’re striving to play our part in facilitating more efficient operations across the board, not just in the finance department, which is where the idea of using Float was born.”

In fact, O’Herlihy says that the change has even had a positive impact on the company’s relationship with its suppliers, as Fresh Tracks Canada can now issue virtual cards with spending limits to tour operators directly. 

“We give them a dedicated virtual supplier card, so ‘here’s a Visa, it’s got a limit of $5,000 or whatever it might, whenever you serve our clients feel free to charge that,’” he explains. “That builds trust with them and good relationships with them, and they know they won’t have any problems dealing with us.” 

While the pandemic nearly ended the now 26-year-old business, O’Herlihy says it ultimately made it stronger. These days Fresh Tracks Canada is back to its pre-pandemic headcount, even hiring back many of the staff it previously let go, and is now on track to surpass pre-pandemic revenues. 

“We’re striving to play our part in facilitating more efficient operations across the board, not just in the finance department, which is where the idea of using Float was born,” he says. “We kind of became a little stagnant before the pandemic, and in hindsight tearing down the system and rebuilding it was the best thing for the company.”

About Fresh Tracks Canada

Vancouver-based Fresh Tracks Canada has been creating personalized Canadian vacations since 1996. Their team has explored the country — because they love to travel too — and have used this insider knowledge to create more than 25,000 personalized trip itineraries.

Find Fresh Tracks Canada at www.freshtrackscanada.com. You can also book tours and vacations operated by the Fresh Tracks Canada team at www.canadiantrainvacations.com and www.northernlightscanada.com.

Fresh Prep’s ad hoc employee expense management system worked fine in the early start-up days, but as the company expanded the meal kit provider was hungry for a more robust solution. 

Founded by three friends in Vancouver in 2014, Fresh Prep now boasts more than 430 employees and operations in both Alberta and British Columbia, with plans for further eastward expansion.

How Company Cards Keep the Lights On For Small Businesses

“We had two company cards, and there weren’t any names attached, so it was really hard to get a hold of any records or receipts, which becomes a particular problem when we have an audit.”

When Shannon Lee joined the company roughly five years ago, she says the organization leaned heavily on two small pieces of plastic. 

“We had two company cards, and there weren’t any names attached, so it was really hard to get a hold of any records or receipts, which becomes a particular problem when we have an audit, which happens once a year,” she says. “We had a lot of issues identifying who was responsible for the transactions we were seeing.” 

Lee, who gradually rose the ranks from customer service to her current position as a staff accountant, says up to 10 staff members might use the same card in a given month, and their access to funds was vital for fulfilling orders and paying bills on time. 

“We have our grocery suppliers, and we do typically pay by EFT or ACH, however a lot of times when we need top-ups for whatever reason — if one ingredient is short — we need to do store runs, so the card comes in handy for those,” she says. “Sometimes digital ads [providers] don’t accept any payment methods other than cards, and our digital spends are typically pretty high.” 

Fresh Prep’s reliance on card transactions can also push their monthly spending needs well into the six-figures, which Lee says banks weren’t always happy to provide, often requiring additional paperwork of collateral. Furthermore, all this spending on two cards made it hard to know who was responsible for what. 

“We used the vendor information to kind of guess what the spending could be, there was just no other choice,” she says. “I’ll be honest, a lot of the time if we couldn’t find out exactly what the expenses were we had to move on.” 

When Startup Solutions Don’t Fit a Grown-Up Company

“We really enjoyed how intuitive the Float platform is — it’s very user friendly — which was really nice, especially when we were used to these classic banking institution interfaces that are frankly really outdated and made it difficult to get a hold of data; Float just offered it to us on a platter.”

While the ad hoc approach worked well enough in the start-up years Lee says it became obvious they needed to find a better solution for managing employee expenses after Fresh Prep expanded beyond its provincial borders. 

“Employees in Alberta we didn’t know at the time were buying all these things because you need a lot to get a manufacturing plant started, so it took months before we could reconcile most of these transactions,” she says. “It was chaotic.” 

At that point Lee says the company realized that it would need to find a better solution before attempting any further expansion. Though she wasn’t part of the selection process herself, Lee suspects that Fresh Prep chose Float for the ability to assign virtual and physical cards to individual users, finally bringing transparency, oversight and greater organization to its expense management practices. 

“Our bookkeeper loves it, because she knows exactly who to ask [about company spend]; even if we’re missing receipts, we can hold someone accountable for those transactions,” she says. 

Lee adds that implementing Float in early 2022 proved very straightforward, thanks to its user-friendly interface and strong customer service. 

“We really enjoyed how intuitive the Float platform is — it’s very user friendly — which was really nice, especially when we were used to these classic banking institution interfaces that are frankly really outdated and made it difficult to get a hold of data; Float just offered it to us on a platter,” she says. “The customer service is also really awesome. The wait times aren’t very long, everyone seems very friendly, and it’s easy to talk to customer service — they seem to know what they’re doing.” 

How a More User-Friendly Solution Facilitates a More Friendly Workplace

“We really enjoy letting our employees not have to spend and get reimbursed; we’re able to set a limit and give them the room to make purchases on behalf of the company.”

An additional benefit Fresh Prep enjoyed once switching to Float include a high spending limit without any of the headaches imposed by their previous providers.

Lee however suggests that perhaps the greatest benefit was the ability to change the finance team’s relationship with their colleagues. That’s because Float lets them set merchant and category restrictions, spending limits, and even generate one-time use cards for specific purchases, letting employees spend freely while maintaining even higher security, reporting, and oversight standards. 

“We really enjoy letting our employees not have to spend and get reimbursed; we’re able to set a limit and give them the room to make purchases on behalf of the company,” Lee says. “We’re able to give them a bit of autonomy, but at the same time we also don’t have to risk the company possibly losing money due to transactions that shouldn’t have gone out, or transactions that we can’t track.” 

When asked whether the company could pursue its ambitious growth plans without this level of spending insight and control, Lee says the answer is “an absolute no.” 

“Having the means to be able to make those transactions definitely makes us feel more confident in our ability to grow,” she says. “Knowing that Float will be there when we expand in the future gives those of us on the finance team more security knowing we will be able to track every transaction along the way.” 

About Fresh Prep

Vancouver-based Fresh Prep joined the meal-kit industry to serve busy Canadians with a focus on reducing packaging waste and providing fresher, quality ingredients. Find Fresh Prep at www.freshprep.ca.

When James Lemon moved from Calgary to Vancouver, he took the first accounting job he could find. Fifteen years later, he remains with the same employer, Surrey B.C.’s SPI Logistics.

“Honestly, I just sort of fell into it,” he says. “Logistics is a very interesting world because it’s way behind the times, it’s just starting to catch up, technology-wise, so it creates a lot of interesting challenges; there’s always something new and interesting to learn and deal with.” 

During that time Lemon gradually climbed the ranks from junior accountant to his current position as VP of finance and CFO. While he says a lot has changed since he first joined the team much of the innovation has occurred in just the last few years. 

“Five years ago, most companies in the logistics space were still writing things on spreadsheets,” he says. “With COVID we saw a major shift from physical cheques to electronic payment.”

Embracing Innovation in a Traditional Industry

“If for some reason my card had ever been compromised, we would have had to go to dozens of vendors trying to get our corporate card information updated before they try to run another transaction.”

Prior to the pandemic Lemon says he wrote checks for “virtually everything,” from office supplies to employee expenses, and paid its network of vendors using a single corporate card, both of which posed significant challenges and liabilities.

“If for some reason my card had ever been compromised, we would have had to go to dozens of vendors trying to get our corporate card information updated before they try to run another transaction,” he said. “Our bank requires two signatures for every cheque, so especially during the pandemic when nobody was together anymore it was really difficult.”

In hindsight Lemon says there were a lot of reasons to upgrade SPI’s spend management system, but admits that one of the things that first attracted him to Float was the ability to log expenses and generate reports simply by taking a picture of the receipt.

“Before we moved to Float I hadn’t received a receipt from our VP of sales in four months, and so when I started researching and found Float and saw it gave us the ability to text images of receipts, that right there was a godsend itself,” he said.

Soon after, in November of 2022, SPI Logistics onboarded the solution, which Lemon says proved “seamless.”

“We went with the Pro version, so I had a dedicated person help me do the initial set up, and the system was super intuitive,” he said. “We had another call scheduled for a couple of days later to see if I needed any more help, but I already had it all set up and running before that call was supposed to take place.”

The Benefits Keep on Rolling

“One of the other offerings we didn’t realize was going to be such a benefit was the fact that they have Canadian and U.S. dollar cards,” he says. “Now when we travel to the States rather than paying the 3% fee the bank charges on every U.S. dollar card transaction, we can now pay the actual exchange rate.”

Pretty soon, however, Lemon says he began discovering extra perks that made him wish he had signed on earlier. For example, he says that each of the many cheques the company issued cost about $20 to clear, while its company cards were processing about one million dollars a year without any added benefits.

The switch has turned a two-hour monthly card expense reconciliation process into a 20-minute activity, creating time savings for the team.

“One of the other offerings we didn’t realize was going to be such a benefit was the fact that they have Canadian and U.S. dollar cards,” he says. “Now when we travel to the States rather than paying the 3% fee the bank charges on every U.S. dollar card transaction, we can now pay the actual exchange rate.”

So far this year, Lemon estimates Float has saved SPI Logistics $10,000 in U.S. dollar conversion fees alone, but the benefits don’t stop there, either. He adds that when Float launched its virtual corporate card program earlier this year it immediately proved massively beneficial.

That’s because previously non-executives of the 35-person organization had to dip into their own pockets when traveling to conferences and events. The new feature, however, allowed Lemon to generate virtual cards in minutes, set merchant and category restrictions, spending limits, and even generate one-time use cards.

“In today’s economy lots of people don’t have lots of extra money to spend a few hundred dollars on a work trip to hopefully get paid back within one to two weeks,” he says. “Now with the ability to offer virtual cards from their phones, we can issue small temporary cards to the employees who are traveling, which makes their lives easier, and makes our life easier, because I get all the receipts electronically.”

Taking The Risks Out of Vendor Payments

Furthermore, all those vendor payments that used to come from Lemon’s corporate card have been replaced with a new system that assigns each vendor their own card, meaning that if one is compromised the others won’t be affected.   

“One of our executive cards did get compromised, and Float caught it right away, and disabled the card automatically, without us having to do anything,” he says. “That was hugely beneficial so that we weren’t dealing with any fraudulent transactions.”

Lemon adds that innovations like Float are part of what keeps his work feeling fresh fifteen years after taking the first job he could find. 

“Being able to embrace new technology and new ideas keeps things interesting,” he says. “If you work at a company that isn’t doing that, it’s really hard to stick with something for 15 years.”

About SPI Logistics

For over 40 years, SPI has been a leading firm providing a dedicated transportation network and third-party logistics hub to shippers, receivers, and carriers. Find SPI Logistics at www.spi3pl.com.

Much of Stef MacDiarmid’s life has been shaped by Black Feather, a Canadian wilderness adventure company that specializes in expeditions to Canada’s north.

Not only has it been her employer for the last ten years, but it’s also how she met her now husband, Ken, with whom she shares a two-and-a-half-year-old, and a second child due in December.

“I had been working as a head instructor of a canoe and kayak school and ended up wanting to get back to my roots in canoeing, so I contacted Black Feather,” says MacDiarmid. “Each year they do a guide warmup, and my husband had already been working with them for a number of years, so it was in that guide warmup that we ended up meeting each other, and then paddling together for the first time; I guess you could say the rest is history.”

Bringing a legacy business into the digital age

“I could be spending $15,000 to $30,000 on canoes, but I wouldn’t know if it made sense to spend that money, because I didn’t know what our profit was going to be at the end of the year, so I couldn’t budget properly.”

After a decade working side by side — first as guides and later in management — the husband-and-wife team took over Black Feather as co-owners earlier this year. At the time the duo felt it was their responsibility to shepherd the now 50-year-old business into the 21^st century. One area most ripe for improvement, according to MacDiarmid, was the company’s process for expense reimbursement and tracking.

“Everything was manual; each guide was given an advance for whatever expenses they needed to procure on whatever trip they were guiding, and we asked them to keep hard copy of the receipts, and a hard copy hand-written expense form, and mail those back to our head office, where our bookkeeper would sort through them,” she says. “It was painfully slow, the receipts would get damaged, we’d have to follow up with people all the time, and sometimes not get them back because someone had lost them, misplaced them, or was poor at getting stuff back.”

At the time MacDiarmid, who now serves as director as well as co-owner, says the team of four full time staff and three part-time helpers dedicated significant time and resources to managing the expenses of between 50 and 60 guides, who lead between 60 and 100 trips each year.

To make matters more difficult, the nature of the work meant paper receipts were commonly lost, damaged, or misplaced. During peak season guides may only have a few days between trips, and often didn’t have time to fill out expense reports before their next expedition. This ultimately created a range of challenges for Black Feather when it came to financial management.

“Forecasting and actually having an idea of how we’re doing in terms of profitability to make decisions about gear-buying for the following season was the biggest challenge,” MacDiarmid says. “I need to order canoes in August for the following year, and I could be spending $15,000 to $30,000 on canoes, but I wouldn’t know if it made sense to spend that money, because I didn’t know what our profit was going to be at the end of the year, so I couldn’t budget properly.”

Finding one solution that met a range of needs

“We were looking at other platforms that helped us track expenses, but it was still going to be out of pocket for people,” she says. “Float allowed them to have a company card without the hassle at the bank and the extra fee for each of those cards.”

MacDiarmid spent some time exploring potential solutions with her accounting team, and ultimately chose Float for its unique approach to expense management, seamless onboarding and integrations, and high level of customer service. Specifically, MacDiarmid says she was most interested in Float’s Spend Management features, which allowed her to distribute physical and digital company cards to her team, while having the ability to set limits, controls, and custom approval policies.

“We were looking at other platforms that helped us track expenses, but it was still going to be out of pocket for people,” she says. “Float allowed them to have a company card without the hassle at the bank and the extra fee for each of those cards.”

MacDiarmid adds that Float gave Black Feather’s guides access to the funds they needed to run expeditions without dipping into their own bank accounts, while providing the company with real-time financial visibility, oversight, and security. It also saved its guides and accountants countless hours of manual expense tracking and filling through Float’s Automated receipt collection and Accounting integrations.

“Especially with the integration and being able to export directly to Xero, that saves a ton of manual data input,” MacDiarmid says. “Not only is the spend tracked in a way where I can go and look at who spent what whenever I want to audit a little bit better and have that insight, but because we can export automatically to Xero it means our overall manual woman-hours ends up being drastically reduced.”

Ongoing improvements add more value

“It has essentially saved us a huge headache and time wasted and a lot of manual data entry. That is not where we want to be at this point, so we’re very happy with the switchover.“

MacDiarmid notes that onboarding Float proved relatively seamless, adding there have already been several meaningful improvements to the product since Black Feather began using it just six months ago.

“The onboarding for me felt really good — there was lots of transparency in how things were set up and how they would work best for us — and there have been a few improvements as we’ve been rolling through,” she says. “One is having more than one account linked, so I don’t need to log out of one to log into the other… and the same thing with the expense reimbursement rollout; that felt like an added bonus within the program.”

MacDiarmid has also been impressed with Float’s customer service, and its ability to meet the needs of its large and diverse community of guides.

“If we have an issue and we don’t know how to solve something, the support comes quickly, and in a really great solution-oriented manner,” she says. “It has essentially saved us a huge headache and time wasted and a lot of manual data entry. That is not where we want to be at this point, so we’re very happy with the switchover.”

Getting ready for the next generation

Though she would love to see her children take over the business someday MacDiarmid says she and her husband don’t want to pressure them into it, either. No matter who takes the reins next, however, MacDiarmid feels a strong responsibility to pass along a stronger and more financially sound Black Feather, and not just because of its place in her family’s story.  

“We’re at an interesting crossroads right now in terms of tourism and travel and climate change,” she says. “When you experience a place, you’re much more interested in conserving it, and much more connected to the land and the water and the people.”   

Finding new, more efficient ways of operating, adds MacDiarmid, is the best way to ensure Black Feather remains a strong conduit to Canada’s northern communities.

About Black Feather

For over 50 years, Black Feather adventurers have paddled wilderness rivers, hiked remote landscapes, and sea kayaked along pristine coastlines and through sparkling fjords. Find Black Feather at www.blackfeather.com.

Founded in 2018, PolicyMe is a startup life insurance company that modernizes the way people purchase life insurance online – making the process quicker, smoother, and more approachable. We sat down with their Strategy and Finance Manager, Suvansh Mehta, who has been with the company for just under two years. Since onboarding, Suvansh has first-hand experience using Float and had nothing but excellent feedback on the platform. 

How long have you been using Float? What about Float made you choose them?

We started using Float in February 2022. Last year, our company headcount grew by 50% and our spending process at the time simply wasn’t cutting it for our level of growth. Our team and expenses increased and it was getting difficult to keep track of. In January, I noticed a lot of gaps and missing invoices from year-end. This wasn’t the way we wanted to start Q1 2022 so we became eager to find a better solution. That’s when our CEO introduced me to Float and I was instantly impressed with the quality and breadth of their features. 

PolicyMe was looking for a way to issue credit cards easier – both physical and virtual – and Float deemed the best solution. Previously, we were sharing credit cards across the team, but this process wasn’t setting us up for growth. It became difficult to distinguish who was spending what, there was little accountability among spenders, and the reconciliation process was unimaginably tedious to say the least. 

Float’s receipt management feature really won us over. The capability to link receipts from an employee and finance perspective, being able to forward invoices directly into Float, and automatch to the correct transaction together has saved us so much time. 

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

Before Float, we had very little oversight of who was spending company dollars and what the transactions were for. Today, we have the ability to instantly issue credit cards per vendor and assign them to specific users in various departments, resulting in greater spending accountability – all thanks to Float. 

Being able to set card limits also helps us stay on budget and reassess whether a specific vendor is still worth using. These pre-set spending limits have been a positive trigger point and encourage us to constantly question and stay on top of our expenses.

“If there’s one corporate card used across the company, it’s difficult to discern if there are fee increases or unauthorized renewals from a vendor. But Float makes it easy for us to monitor and avoid that altogether.”

“Float’s approval workflow feature is also really helpful because it enables us to structure spend approval based on job titles. We’re able to give department managers the authority to approve a specific dollar amount, while anything greater goes to upper management to approve. “

As a startup, it’s incredible for us to experience this level of financial organization by implementing a platform that doesn’t come with a hefty price tag or intense infrastructure. Not only has Float upgraded the way we keep track of how and where money is being spent but it has also improved our lives in the finance department. We’ve got multiple eyes on our dollars now. 

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

The ability to issue and assign individual cards to employees was incredibly useful for us. Before, our team would have informal discussions on corporate spending and there was no clear or documented form of communication for it. At one point, we started using Google Forms to formalize the way we approved spending but it didn’t hold a candle to Float.

Now that we are fully immersed in Float, we’re able to easily communicate cross-functionally about spending policies, card limits, and authority – with the added benefit of being able to instantly distribute cards and adjust spend as we need to. The entire process is speedy and efficient – it’s exactly what we needed.

“Float has also played an integral role in the way we monitor and prevent expense fraud. While we haven’t come across any grave instances, it’s reassuring to know that we have these controls in place. “

How did the PolicyMe team respond to Float? 

We received a really positive response from leadership.

There’s a general reassurance that Float offers – we know where funds are going and there’s more accountability being shared. 

Float makes our spending process less ‘top down’ and allows us to provide managers and employees more autonomy to make daily spending decisions.

Our employees were also very enthusiastic about the simple process of getting a corporate card and requesting spend. We also received a lot of positive feedback about being able to upload a picture of a receipt via text. Our employees value convenience and Float delivers every time.

What would you say to other companies that are considering working with Float?

Go for it! Float is a fantastic company. It’s really great to be able to issue cards, manage receipts, monitor spend, and integrate with your accounting software.

“The level of support from the Float team is unmatched. It’s been the best part about working with their team. They are extremely responsive, personable, and always address my questions and concerns without delay.”

It’s very easy for us to reach out to Float and have our questions solved in a timely manner. There’s zero down time because the team addresses our problems within an hour, as opposed to three days or more. If I have a problem, I’m able to get a solution quickly. This is important especially if I am troubleshooting something for someone else in the company. If you’re looking for a software that checks all the boxes, it’s definitely Float. 

About PolicyMe

PolicyMe offers a better way to buy life insurance in Canada with a mission to always put families first, protecting them with simple and affordable insurance policies.

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.

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.