Case Studies

Float: Giving Clutch a Better Way to Spend

At Clutch, bookkeeping and reconciliations have never been easier – all thanks to Float.

February 17, 2022


We sat down with Ben, the Finance Manager at Clutch, Canada’s first online car-buying and vehicle trade-in platform, to discuss the company’s experience with Float. In 2022, Clutch’s finance team is leading with a mantra to “simplify and automate” with a company-wide goal to service up to 90% of Canadians in 2023 – and Float is helping them do just that. Here’s what Ben had to share about Clutch’s experience with Float.

Q: How long have you been using Float and why did you choose us?

“When I first joined Clutch, our credit card reconciliation process was extremely frustrating and time consuming. Today with Float, we’re on a 5-day close schedule at month end and can report to our execs in just 5 business days.”

We’ve been using Float since June 2021. Before, our team was using software that lacked efficiency and never really gave us a strong receipt management tool to reconcile our books. We were also limited to only 15 credit cards across the company or otherwise would incur additional fees. One thing about accounting in the automotive industry is that it’s very labour-intensive. It comes with a lot of invoices, P.Os and manual data entries and transactions, and at the rate we’re growing, it can easily get out of hand. By choosing Float, we’re able to quickly issue an unlimited number of cards to our growing base of employees. Out of 200 employees, 120 were able to get Float cards – everyone who needs a card now has one. This has really helped our day-to-day operations as it’s given our employees greater autonomy to spend and make decisions.

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

“Float gave us the final source of truth to reconcile our accounting and it only takes 5 minutes – whereas before it took the whole day.”

From an accounting perspective, Float has made our lives a whole lot easier. Before, employees were uploading receipts in group chats and the accounting team would manually punch them in at month end. We had a 10%-to-15% margin of error and oftentimes didn’t even have the right receipts. Today with Float, we’re able to get a clear snapshot of all transactions made in real time and have seen a significant decrease in errors. Employees are also empowered to upload receipts all on their own and provide descriptions of transactions, while accounting is able to track everything and identify any discrepancies. 

“Being able to put accountability on spenders to attach receipts to specific transactions made our expense management a whole lot easier.”

A great thing about Float is that we can now keep up with our credit card transactions on a day-to-day basis. We’re able to download easily digestible reports with all the information we need and it’s all integrated within our external systems. Before, our accounting team would spend the entire day reconciling all of our credit cards. Just eight months ago, we were operating at a tenth of the scale that we’re operating now. If we were to continue under our old process, we would have to hire additional people to handle this. Obviously that’s not efficient and scalable – which is exactly why we turned to Float.

Q: What was the best part about working with Float?

Fast & easy onboarding

It only took a few days to familiarize ourselves with the software. After that, we were able to hit the ground running and get everyone set up with a Float card. It really didn’t feel like we lost a whole lot of time, and we quickly made up for the time spent on implementation just from the efficiency we gained.

Enhanced the platform based on our needs

Float took our feedback in stride and used it in their next product launch. There were a few unique things that we wanted to see in our credit card platform and they were on it right away. One thing we really wanted was a mass download receipt option so that we didn’t have to manually input 3,000 transactions a month. When Float added this simple button to the platform, it easily saved us 20 hours over the course of a month.

Q: How has Float helped your business scale and grow?

With our previous provider, we only had 15 credit cards, which wasn’t sustainable at the rate we were growing. Giving new employees access to a company credit card with no spending limit obviously subjected us to a lot of risk. Being able to issue Float cards to employees with specific limits and having the flexibility to adjust them, reduces our risk exposure significantly and allows us to better track how money is being spent in the company.

There’s so much movement in our production facilities every single day, we needed the agility of a credit card that the right people could access – which is exactly what Float provided. We would not have been able to keep up with the level of Clutch’s scale growth in 2021 without Float.

About Clutch

Clutch is on a mission to reinvent the way Canadians buy and sell cars. Founded in 2016, Clutch’s vertically-integrated business model is modernizing the auto market, giving customers a smarter and easier alternative – all through the click of a button. 

If you’re quickly scaling or looking to automate and improve the way your company spends, book a demo with our team to learn more!


Written by

Shawn Qanun

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