This month at Insight Finance Solutions has been all about unfolding the new Float app and integration with Xero to our valued clients. Have a read of our review of the Float Cashflow Forecasting app here.
We met with the team from Float back at the Practice Ignition conference in Autumn and decided it was something that would prove valuable for our clients. After getting to grips with the clever intuitive software ourselves, we’ve been taking our clients through the power of Float on our monthly accountancy client calls.
What is Float?
Float is an award-winning cash flow forecasting, cash budgeting and cash management tool. It has been designed exclusively for use with Xero, QuickBooks Online or FreeAgent. Float allows you to view your cash flow on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, scenario plan at the click of a button and forecast up to 3 years into the future. It allows small business owners to see an overall position of their business finances now, and compare scenarios to predict cashflows of the future.
Why is Float Different?
In traditional accountancy it is all about spreadsheets and the numbers. It is the way it has been done for decades but a new emerging and evolving technology which makes the nbumbers and the formulas visually appealing is helping business owners properly visualise their potential growth.
While we at Insight Finance Solutions might adore spreadsheets and some of our clients do too, that isn’t the case for the majority. In our experience, our clients on the whole do not get fired up by formulas and spreadsheets. Many are not engaged and they switch off. That’s why our monthly coaching calls have been so powerful over the years. We are not leaving our clients to fend for themselves over Excel. We walk them through it together.
Now that we have Float integrated into our accountancy advisory service it is proving to be very valuable for those clients who appreciate a visual when it comes to business growth and explaining cashflow and potential scenarios.
The way Float presents the data in a graph is often easier to comprehend. If the line on that graph is going up, you instinctively understand this to be a positive thing. If it is going down, you can see it clearly and make a proactive plan to try and rectify, or understand that a downturn might be a temporary necessity during a period before growth or after investment into your business.
Float also blends budgeting and forecasting with actual income and expenditure. Because it links to accounting software, in our case Xero, it picks everything up from Xero in real-time so you can actually see what is happening in your business finances at any given moment with a click of a button. It is very responsive and having actual and budgeted data makes providing cashflow forecasting to clients a doddle.
Float is allowing us as an accountancy practice to combine the three elements of budgeting, cashflow and forecasting into one visual. So we have effectively stripped it back from three different spreadsheets into one easy to understand picture of your past, present and future business.
We love that you can do up to three years of forecasting and the ability to add in a scenario like taking on new premises, hiring more staff or investing in new equipment as examples. You can see very clearly that while there may be changes to your cashflow as you invest or change your business, you can clearly plot what this could mean in terms of future income. It gets to be very exciting when you see it all laid out like this.
There are also options to see what the future of your business finances could look like if you had say a 5% increase in sales or a 10% increase in sales. Or maybe you’re adding in a new revenue stream or a number of new clients or a new service into your business. You can plot that into Float and see what that could mean in terms of turnover and profit over an extended period.
Our Review of Float Cash Flow Forecasting
Well if you’ve read this far you’ll know that in the last few weeks of introducing Float into our accountancy advisory portfolio we have become big fans!
Not only is it intuitive, fluid and responsive but it is proving to help create a positive mindset shift in many of our clients.
We are not your traditional accountants and providing money mindset coaching to help get to the nitty gritty of why business owners have money blocks is what makes us stand out. Sometimes we have to believe in our clients until they believe in themselves and their businesses. Some people can have the greatest drive, ambition and ideas but on occasion, the fear of investing into their business or a lack of confidence around numbers halts that business growth.
Not everyone is confident around numbers, not everyone is truly comfortable with money and certainly many people are overwhelmed by spreadsheets. Float takes the numbers away and allows people to step back and see a bigger visual picture and prediction for the future. It can help us move a client past those initial fears of taking the necessary steps to grow the business and think more proactively in the long term, rather than live in a reactive state when it comes to their finances month to month. Once you take the numbers out of it, it isn’t as scary anymore.
Our verdict: Powerful, colourful, simple, responsive and empowering. We give it 5 stars! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐