We’re (very) hard at work on some big things at Float at the moment, but we know that sometimes it’s small things that make people rather excited.

As such, I know that a number of you will be pretty pleased to see these two tiny little buttons on your Float cash flow:

Going to a meeting? Want to sit and think about your cash flow over a strong coffee away from your computer? That little print button is just for you.

Spreadsheet junkie? Hit that export to csv button as hard and often as you like!

Being able to get your data out of Float easily is just as important to us as getting your data into Float in the first place, so this is just the start. If you have any ideas about what you’d love to see in either printable reports, or CSV exports, just give us a shout in the comments or get in touch via email.

I’m delighted to announce that as of today if you are are a UK customer you can subscribe for Float by Direct Debit through GoCardless instead of through PayPal.

GoCardless is a great new service that makes it easy for companies (like us) to accept payments online via Direct Debit. And for customers, it’s much nicer to use than PayPal and because it’s direct debit you’re protected by the Direct Debit guarantee.

If you haven’t subscribed to Float yet, subscribing with GoCardless is easy, first just hit the button on the payment page (if you’re new to Float why not start a free trial now):

You’ll then be taken to GoCardless, which will take you through the rest of the setup process:

We’re pleased to use and support GoCardless, as it’s great to see companies making online payments easier in Europe. You may have also seen that FreeAgent recently announced that you can even accept payments online for your invoices with FreeAgent’s recent integration with GoCardless. This is a great move, as anything that makes it easier for your clients to pay you should be good news for your cash flow!

If you have any questions, or if you are an existing subscriber who would like to switch to GoCardless, just drop us a line.

Struggling to stay on top of your business’s financials? Float can help. Start managing your cashflow better today by signing up for a free trial.

Already using Float? Spaces on our Founder Plan are going fast. Help shape Float and get a bargain in the process by grabbing yourself a Founder Plan now.

As the busy owners of small businesses it’s easy for the months, weeks and even years to slip by without us noticing. Our businesses may continue to run, and everything may seem fine, but are we really on course for where we want to be in the next few months, or years? It is important not to forget about strategy, no matter how small your business is, and to review where you are at and where you are going from time to time.

At Float, we’re just back in Edinburgh after taking a few days out (in the wonderful setting of Balone Castle) to think through our own strategy for the next few months, and year, and it’s been really helpful for us. We are better aligned as a team, and have a much clearer focus on what is important to us over the next few months. If you haven’t thought about where you are at or where you are going for a while, now is a great time to make a start, before the pre-christmas crunch kicks in!

But where should you start? Here’s a few thoughts and tips based on what we’ve learned about thinking strategically.

Your first strategy session

First up, assemble a small team, ideally one or two other key people from the business, and an honest outsider. You want to have people who can all be open and honest about both the business, and their personal goals.

Give yourselves plenty of time to go over it all – perhaps two or three seperate sessions over the course of a couple of days if you can manage it. This gives you time to reflect on the discussion, and come back with new questions and suggestions.

A simple way to structure a strategy session is for each area of your business:

• Review: collect data, thoughts and notes on what has happened over the last 3/6/12 months.
• Analyse: based on what you have collected, discuss how you feel it has been, what was good and bad, and what could be worked on.
• Plan: look forward to the next 3/6/12 months and decide what you would like to change, and how, and how you will measure the results.

Five areas to focus on

Metrics

It’s hard to improve what you can’t measure. As you are doing your review of the last 12 months, think about what questions are hard/impossible to answer. Are there any simple things you can do to track the information that you are missing. You don’t have to be a statistics junkie, but it can be useful to know whether you win 90% of contracts that you pitch for, or only 10%. If you are a web/software development company perhaps you could start an internal project to improve your metrics.

Financials

Clearly a key part of doing business is making money. Tools like FreeAgent and Float make managing your finances much easier, but it is still important to review and question how things are going.

Think about:

• How visible are your finances? Are you keeping on top of your numbers from week to week, or are you just leaving everything for your accountant to deal with at the end of the year?
• How has the cash flow been? most businesses cash flow peaks and troughs, but did you have any significant crunch points, and what caused them? Did you get caught out by a big tax payment, or a client who never paid their invoice?
• How much profit have you made? Were any specific projects particularly profitable, or unprofitable?
• Is your income too reliant on one or two key customers?
• Are you charging enough? As inflation raises your costs, and your business gets more efficient at delivering it’s services, it’s okay to raise your prices. Think about how much you could raise them by, and how you would introduce the price increase to new and existing customers.

Marketing

• Are you actively marketing your business, or are you just relying on word of mouth from your existing customers to bring in new leads?
• Which marketing channels have been effective at bringing in new leads, and which ones haven’t? If you have a blog that is sitting on your site never being updated, would it make more sense to just remove it?

Personal and business goals

• Is running the business meeting the personal goals of you and the other directors?
• How is your work/life balance?
• Are you happy, or are you just busy?
• Do you want to grow the business to be something bigger, or are you happy with where it is at now?

Culture and Employees

Even in very small businesses, culture is really important. A great culture hopefully means happier, more productive people. And happy staff are also less likely to jump-ship for a new job, meaning you have to re-hire, which can be a disruptive and expensive process for small businesses.

• How is the office mood? How about on a bad day?
• Are your employees learning, growing, getting pay rises, and other good benefits?
• Are you concerned about any employees in particular?
• Are you keeping your staff in the loop with how the business is doing, and where it is going?

How does your small business do strategy? Share your tips in the comments.

Struggling to stay on top of your business’s financials? Float can help. Start managing your cashflow better today by signing up for a free trial.

Already using Float? Spaces on our Founder Plan are going fast. Help shape Float and get a bargain in the process by grabbing yourself a Founder Plan now.

Nobody starts a business for the thrill of managing their books, and chasing people for money. Still every small business struggles with with cash flow from time to time. Below are seven pointers to help with getting your business finances in shape – and hopefully you’ll ride the waves gracefully and get to focus on the business rather than stressing about the bank balance.

1. Build a basic cash flow model: Make a list of all your recurring costs and income,

The number one rule of cash flow planning is to know as much in advance as possible what is coming out of your bank accounts and when.

Here are a list of common outgoing categories to start with:

1. Salaries / Wages / Subcontractors
2. Payroll expenses (taxes, insurance, pension contributions etc)
3. Office costs (things for the business that aren’t for resale) e.g… stationery,
4. Software (e.g subscriptions to software
5. IT (computer rental,
6. Advertising and PR (google adwords budgets, etc)
7. Travel (petrol, trains, meals and accomodation )
8. Accounting, Bookkeeping and Legal
9. Rent and Rates
10. Phone, Mobile and Broadband
11. Utilities (Water, heat, light and power)
12. Insurance (employers liability and business)
13. Taxes or Savings for tax
14. Bank Charges and Interest
15. Miscellaneous (always good to put something in for this)

Make sure you include your own drawings or dividends and salary in this. If you leave anything out here, the likelihood is that you’ll spend it elsewhere. You can do this in Excel a basic spreadsheet can be downloaded here http://www.tsbc.co.uk/sbo/hsbckn/viewLesson.aspx?Lid=35

2. Build your Sales forecast.

What invoices are due or overdue? Is there anything that you’ve forgotten to invoice for? What milestones do you need to hit to generate the next payment. Then – what sales have you got in the pipeline? What pitches are you waiting to hear back on?

Factor in the costs of a sale

Make sure you factor in all potential cost of sales and taxes to a potential project straight away (i.e anything that costs you more because you’re doing the job)

So If you’re a web design company – taking on a copywriter or a photographer as part of the project make sure you have those in your forecast – ideally next to the project as on the flip side if the project falls through you’ll want to take those costs out of the picture too.

3. Are you regular?

The most basic metrics you can run on your cash flow is looking at your bank balances on a regular basis just to be sure. This isn’t a figure you can rely on, but if you check in at a specific time every week, you’ll get an idea of what is “normal”. And how your cash matches up with your expectation. At the end of each month you ideally want bank account to match your forecast just to make sure you aren’t missing something. This is a really good discipline, and you’ll be amazed at how many times you find something you’d forgotten to factor in.

4. Setup Saving Automatically.

One of the best ways of ensuring you’re ok in a cash dip is to have a pot of savings that you can rely on. Without a doubt the best way to do this is to set up a regular payment each month that goes out automatically into another bank account. This account should be for emergencies only.

Start it off small and as you get more confident in what you can bring in each month, build it up. As a goal £500 a month will give you £6000 by the end of the year. As a rule its a great principle to try and save 3 months of no income, so if you have £10k of costs each month. Try and get to £30k before you work on your next pot.

5. Keep up to date with tax liabilities

In the same way you set up savings for emergencies – if you can afford to its really worth putting aside cash each month for PAYE, VAT and Corporation Tax. Hopefully this is something your accountant will give you advice on. Or if you’re using a tool like FreeAgent or Iris OpenBooks you’ll get this information in the tax timeline, and can add it straight in to your forecast.

6. Get paid on time!

Its important to review your invoices and add expected payment dates to them. As much as we’d all love “Terms 30 days” to mean something to our clients – in reality it means very little. What matters is understanding the payment process for each client or purchaser. Some will need a phone call, some need a Purchase Order before they will pay (and won’t tell you). You have to be proactive here and follow up this week every week. If you’re using an invoicing system like FreshBooks or FreeAgent, its really worth setting up automatic email reminders so you don’t have to do this yourself.

7. Phasing and Milestones

One lesson someone passed onto me early in business life, was to never start a project without getting some initial payment up front.

This stood us in good stead time and time again. It separates the time wasters from those who are serious, and it works wonders for your cash flow. If you’re running a service based business rather than getting one payment when a job is complete, breaking a project into a number of phases helps get cash in quickly. It works for the clients too. Also having milestone like, site won’t go live until final payment can really help incentivise a larger company to fast track an invoice rather than leave it to go through the normal channels.

Ultimately get these systems in place and let your focus get back on to doing what you’re actually in business for!

Struggling to stay on top of your business’s financials? If you’re using FreeAgent or OpenBooks, Float can help. Start managing your cashflow better today by signing up for a free trial.

A key part of building a good cash flow forecast for your business is having a good understanding of what income you are going to bring in over the next few months. This is often called something like your “sales pipeline”. A sales pipeline is useful for your business as it helps you keep track of:

• How much you hope to bring in each month (in Float we call this your sales target).
• What money you’ve actually brought in each month (these are the invoice receipts that Float imports from your accounting system).
• How much money you are currently owed by customers, and when you should receive it (these are your invoices that Float imports from your accounting system).
• What money you might make in the future if you win certain jobs or projects (in Float we call these projections).

Many CRM (customer relationship management) tools try to help you track some of these things, but no CRM tools actually tie these sales and potential sales back to your bank balance, to tell you how much money you will actually have in the bank in the future if you win/lose the work. This is why we have been building an improved sales pipeline screen for Float, and it’s looking great!

On top of the four items above, Float also adds projects, which let you group projections and invoices, to make it easier to find them, and see the effect on your cash flow if you do or don’t win projects.

Float’s new pipeline screen

Here’s the new pipeline screen in Float. At a glance, you can see your current cash flow forecast, as well as a more detailed breakdown of your sales pipeline for the next few months showing your sales targets, projections, open invoices, and paid invoices. In the table below the graphs you can also see any projects you have added to Float and how much they are worth.

If you want to see what happens if a project doesn’t happen, you can just untick the checkbox next to the project, and it will be removed from your forecast instantly and the graphs will show you what that means for your cash flow.

Detailed project view

If we jump into a project, we can see all the invoices and projections associated with that project. It’s really easy to add extra projections to a project (useful if you charge your customers in multiple phases), and you can also add any associated costs for the project (like sub-contractor costs).

You can also add any relevant notes about the project to help you keep track of what’s happening with them.

We think the new pipeline screen is going to really simplify the way you deal with upcoming projects, and let you really easily see the effect they will have on your cash flow – which is a crucial part of business planning. If you are an existing Float user, we haven’t turned it on for all accounts just yet, so just give us a shout if you would like to try it out!

Struggling to stay on top of your business’s financials? Float can help. Start managing your cashflow better today by signing up for a free trial.

Already using Float? Spaces on our Founder Plan are going fast. Help shape Float and get a bargain in the process by grabbing yourself a Founder Plan now.

There are a lot of clichés in business. “Cash is King!” – we hear this all the time.  ”There is a a big difference between Profit and Cash” – another statement that business commentators love to bestow on to new business owners.

Lots has been written on the subject of profit vs cash, so I won’t delve into it here, the classic scenario being a business that is in profit on the books, but due to a late payment they could be severely in debt to the bank, and in the worst case forced to close, even though they are technically in profit.

The other common scenario is that a business has a decent amount of cash in the bank, but doesn’t realise they have to pay a significant amount of tax, or a large bill or credit card payment that quickly drains that cash.  The cash in the bank didn’t accurately represent the state of the business.

The trouble is for most business owners that while they know all of this, actually keeping on top of both of these metrics is the difficult part.  Looking at a P&L account doesn’t always make sense, its not clear where the numbers have come from and what is and isn’t included. Running an excel spreadsheet to manage all of this isn’t a simple task either.

Thankfully accounting is going through a radical shift at the moment with the amazing work that the likes of FreeAgent and Xero are doing for small businesses in that space. Its so much easier to understand a balance sheet and a P&L now that we have those tools, and they are live and dynamic.

For us at The Float Yard we’re passionate about building something that helps small business owners understand cash flow, and what it means to look ahead and know what your bank balance will look like at the end of the month, or in 6 months time.

Cash flow forecasting is a moving target. It changes almost every day, and keeping up to date with or without a spreadsheet is a huge headache (I did it that way for years), and ultimately it gets neglected and becomes a significant amount of work to bring it back up to date.

We’re building something that helps small businesses finally get a grip on cash flow forecasting, in a way that doesn’t require any training or financial qualifications. We wanted to build something that was quick to set up and easy to come back to after a couple of weeks without being defunct. Something you could understand at a glance, and could refer to on a day to day basis.

Why hasn’t anyone done this before?

With the arrival of cloud based accounting, finally we can get hold of the data that will make good forecasting possible.  And we hope that with the feedback we get from Float users, we’re effectively getting a multitude all working on the problem together.

Of course, every business is different, but the key thing is that by learning from business owners we can find better solutions than the traditional accounting style spreadsheet, which isn’t wrong, but just isn’t working for the majority of people we talk to.

Check out our latest video to see what we’re talking about.

We have been big fans of FreeAgent for a long time here at Float, so it was great to get a shout out from them on their blog last week. It has been great to work with the FreeAgent team over the last 18 months, and the recent updates to their API (which is what Float uses to connect to FreeAgent and see your data) will enable us to do some exciting things in Float. One upcoming feature that I am particularly looking forward to in Float is automatic updating of your cash flow with your FreeAgent data – so that as soon as you login, your forecast will be up to date – no updating and waiting required.

We are proud to be a part of the FreeAgent ecosystem, and excited that so many businesses are finding Float useful and are seeing the benefits that having a good handle on their cash flow can bring, both financially and emotionally! But there is still so much more we can do to help business owners see into the future – and we are still hard at work. We are currently working on improving sales forecasting in Float, so that you can keep an eye on which projects you may have coming up, and how they affect your cash flow.

So if you are a FreeAgent user, and have yet to try Float out, why not start a 30 day free trial today.

Bank manager freaking out? Don’t worry, help’s on the way! In this guest post, Paul Ainley—Partner at marketing and communications agency Chatter and a Float founder member—explains how his company is planning more effectively for the future.

Chatter

Along with two partners, I run Chatter, a marketing and communications agency based in Leeds. We specialise in HR communications and help businesses like Skype, MTV and Telefónica to build and manage their employer reputation. We’re particularly strong in terms of digital communications, so get involved in lots of careers websites, employee portals and social media stuff.

Taking Charge of Our Finances

We set up Chatter in April 2011 and were using FreeAgent as our finance and accountancy tool from day one. We quickly realised we needed a forecasting tool that was equally simple to use. Float was the natural choice because of its strong integration with FreeAgent.

When we first started using Float, we could see it had the potential to help us manage the business more effectively, but, to be fair, it had a long way to go. The main reason we decided to buy a subscription was because of the way the Float team engaged with us, sought our input, and fed that into their development plans.

A few months ago, we finally ditched all the spreadsheets and moved to Float as our sole forecasting tool. Being in at the beginning has meant we’ve had the opportunity to help mould the software from a user perspective, making clever technology simple and easy to use.

No More Bank Manager Freak-Outs

We use Float to help us keep track of any opportunities that have been scoped, but not signed off. It helps to focus and drive our sales activity, and keep track of anything that’s outstanding and needs attention. It also helps us to forecast and budget with greater confidence. Like most start-up businesses, we find cash-flow our biggest challenge. Float helps us plan more effectively for the future without freaking the bank manager out!

One final thought: this type of software will enable even the smallest enterprise to manage their business more efficiently, but it’s important to really commit to using it to get the full benefit.

Paul Ainley, Partner at Chatter
0113 3572083 | hello@welovechatter.com

Struggling to stay on top of your business’s financials? Float can help. Start managing your cashflow better today by signing up for a free trial.

Already using Float? Spaces on our Founder Plan are going fast. Help shape Float and get a bargain in the process by grabbing yourself a Founder Plan now.

Cashflow is hard. Here to save the day is one of our founder members, Madelyn Postman of Grain Creative. In this guest post, she talks about how and why she stays on top of her agency’s financials.

Grain Creative

To start—I am a creative director at Grain Creative, a branding and design consultancy founded 10 years ago in Marylebone, London. We work mostly with high-end lifestyle clients on naming, branding, packaging and print and digital work including websites and apps. Our clients include Gucci, Burberry, Qantas and Nokia. For a taste of what we do, see our newest employee’s view on brands.

A Finger on the Pulse

I got my invite to Float in July last year, and became a founder member not long after. I use FreeAgent a few times daily to log time and to keep an eye on everything going on in the business, and I check Float every couple of days—again, to keep my finger on the pulse of the business, the pulse being its cash flow and budgets.

Before Float introduced the budget functionality, I was using a cumbersome cash flow spreadsheet (and I usually love spreadsheets!), bringing over the figures from the FreeAgent P&L every month or quarter. Float and especially the budgeting aspect immediately shows us how we’re doing on forecasted expenses and income, and allows us to set realistic monthly income targets.

Cash is King

I am a designer, but I think that deep down I am really a coder and an accountant waiting to be freed. So seeing Float’s interface design and functionality evolving has been interesting, and helpful to our business on a practical level: it makes budgeting and tracking cash flow easy even for less geeky people too.

If I can coin a new phrase: cash is king!

Madelyn Postman, Grain Creative
020 7524 7550 | madelyn@graincreative.com

Struggling to stay on top of your business’s financials? Float can help. Start managing your cashflow better today by signing up for a free trial.

Already using Float? Spaces on our Founder Plan are going fast. Help shape Float and get a bargain in the process by grabbing yourself a Founder Plan now.

When managing and forecasting your cash flow, you need to be able to see what your cash situation is like across all your accounts – not just your current account.

I am glad to announce that as of today, Float officially supports multiple bank accounts, and everyone can set it up easily.

Adding more accounts:

You can now easily add any extra bank accounts that you have in FreeAgent to your Float account by clicking the link next to your graph on the cash flow page:

Just follow the instructions on that page to add accounts.

Net Transfers Section

For every account that you have pulled in to Float you will now see a line in the Net Transfers section, and all your transfers into or out of those accounts will appear in here. Here’s an example:

In this example you can see that last month, a total of 3000 was transferred out of my Savings account, and into my Current account. Because they are just transfers between my accounts, the net transfer is zero, so it doesn’t affect my cash flow.

By moving transfers into this section, it keeps your expenses section much cleaner and easier to understand.

Credit card payments

Float also now has improved support for your credit cards. If you add your credit card to Float (see the “adding more accounts” section below) you will see a new line in the expenses section of your cash flow, here’s an example:

This row acts much like a budget, so that you can easily forecast future credit card payments from your current account. Float does not pull in the actual transactions or the current credit card balance yet (we’re still working on that), but this should help you handle forecasting of your credit cards more easily.

Bank Accounts Panel

The panel next to the graph, as shown above, lists the current balances of all your Current/Savings accounts. You will also notice the checkboxes next to the accounts. 

If an account is ticked this essentially means “I would like to include the balances and transactions on that account as a part of my cash flow”. 

Some people like to think of their available cash as only what’s available in their current account: by unticking the savings account, you can still see how much money is available in it – but not have the balance be included in the forecast.

Have a look and let us know what you think!

Float is the easiest way to create a cash flow forecast for your business that is always up-to-date – no spreadsheets required!

If you aren’t a Float user already, you should sign up for an account now.