Author: Shawn Qanun

Getting credit can be difficult if you’re just starting out and many startups will often resort to using personal credit cards to make business purchases. While this might seem like the easier solution, it can lead to many hassles for your finance team down the line, especially in the case of a tax audit. If your company is currently double dipping in corporate and personal credit cards, here’s a list of reasons why you should keep these expenses separate. 

Managing your finances will be way easier.

We’re not saving the best for last here. Separating personal and business expenses can mean different things whether you’re an independent business owner, a startup or a large corporation. However, in any scenario, mixing up your personal and business expenses can make managing your finances way more complicated than it needs to be. By keeping these expenses separate, you are taking a major step to simplify spend management in your organization. Your finance team will no longer have to duplicate efforts and sort through various financial statements, adding years back to their life. 😜 When personal credit cards are eliminated from the equation, all company spending is coming from the same pot. This makes it easier to set spend controls, monitor employee and departmental spending and help companies stay on budget.

There’s endless tax-saving benefits.

Is there anything more motivating than extra money in your pocket? 💸 What if we told you that you could save more money each year and reinvest in your business by being more organized with your financials. When you take proper inventory of the money coming in and out of your organization, you’re left with accurate financial reporting to easily write off business expenses and capitalize on tax deductions. If your expense reports are a mish-mash of personal and business expenses, you could face the possibility of losing hard-earned tax savings – and no one wants that. Not to mention, Canada Revenue Agency requires all businesses to keep accurate financial records and stay on top of bookkeeping. Start making life easier by actively separating all things business and personal. Tax season will be a breeze and your finance team will be fully prepared in the case of an audit. You can thank us later. 😎

You’ll have more visibility of money coming and going.

Business credit cards make it possible to simplify the process of tracking and recording company expenses cross-functionally. In doing this, you can have a clear picture of the money coming in and out of your organization, granting better control on spending and the power to make more strategic decisions. It helps companies understand where they need to scale back spending, what areas of the business they can reinvest in, as well as identify any discrepancies or potential instances of fraud. When business finances are organized, up-to-date and properly tracked, companies will have a better grasp on where they are today and where they’re headed.

Float takes these benefits to the next level. ⬆️

It’s clear that creating a boundary between business and personal expenses has its clear benefits. But what if your company has trouble getting a corporate card? Look no further.

Float has taken away ALL of the headaches that come with financial management and created a simple solution. First, we make the process of getting a corporate credit card as fast as an Amazon Prime order. 💳💨 We’re not kidding, our corporate cards are approved in just 1 day and delivered to you within 3. Your employees will no longer have to carry the burden of using their personal credit cards to make work purchases. 

Next, Float saves you valuable time with our automated spend management software – doing all of the manual work for you. It’s designed to instantly record transactions, match receipts in real time and provide insight into when and why purchases are being made. Your finance team can also set spend controls and will no longer have to chase employees for receipts as they’ll be notified to upload them every time a purchase is made. Float makes it possible to get all employees aligned with company spending policies and goals by making corporate cards more accessible. So once you’ve separated those business and personal expenses, Float can take the reins to bring greater efficiency to your business and make spend management a piece of cake. 🍰 When it’s all said and done, we’re driven to bring a new level of visibility and control into capital spending so that companies are set up to grow and reach their highest potential. 

Connect with us today to learn more about how Float can help you. 

We often hear a lot about how companies are actively promoting a positive corporate culture within their organizations. It builds trust with employees, boosts engagement and ultimately creates a workplace people want to be in. But there’s another side to this coin that’s worth looking into. What are companies doing to promote a healthy spending culture in their organizations? 🤔 After all, taking care of your company’s financial health is really what makes everything else possible.

First, what is a spending culture and why does it matter? 🤷🏾‍♂️

A company spending culture is the infrastructure of processes, policies, systems and values that govern how, when and why an organization spends, manages and saves money. This infrastructure is essential as it lays the foundation for the success of any organization. Why? Well, it determines their financial stability, longevity and ability to invest in the right people, drive innovation and increase revenue for growth and expansion. ✅

It’s a way of being. 😎

A healthy spending culture needs to be embodied and promoted by management so they can lead by example and educate employees on why it’s important and how it relates to everything they do. When every employee operates with these values in mind, it will have a compounding effect by normalizing smart spending decisions company wide.

It’s a team effort. 👫👫

To be successful, this requires effective communication and collaboration across all departments to ensure the entire company is aligned on spending expectations. If one department falls short, it can have a domino effect (and not in a good way). 🎲

It’s a non-negotiable. 🙅🏻‍♂️

If growth is on your priority list, keep reading.🧐 How you manage and spend capital can literally make or break you if it goes unchecked over time. That’s why it’s important to have the infrastructure in place to give you clear financial oversight at all times. 

Healthy spending culture vs. unhealthy spending culture

Healthy Spending Culture 👍🏼	Unhealthy Spending Culture 👎🏼
✅ Robust financial policies in place to govern company spending	🚫 Teams are not aligned with corporate spending goals due to lack of communication and no policies in place
✅ Foolproof processes that use automation software to monitor, track and manage daily spending and expenses	🚫 Manual and tedious expense processes that waste time due to errors and delays
✅ Finance teams can easily approve spend requests for employees and promptly collect receipts	🚫 Employees can lose a sense of responsibility for work because they’re relying on approvals from someone in another department
✅ Leaders can set spending limits that align with departmental budgets for various employees and teams	🚫 Leaders have little to no control or visibility of corporate spending
✅ Employees are empowered to make spending decisions mindfully, responsibly and quickly so that they can progress in their projects	🚫 Employees choose to make impulse decisions without approval to spend simply because they want to move forward with projects

When you have the system, everything falls into place. Float has the system.

We weren’t going to tell you all of the amazing things that come with a healthy spending culture, without a REAL solution. 😆 Cause we sure have one for you! Float’s automation software and corporate cards are designed to bring every organization into their financial prime.

Our automation spend software serves as a core component of the infrastructure needed to achieve a healthy spending culture. Why? It empowers startups to establish financial policies, simplify complex processes and garner more visibility into company spending so they can keep a pulse on their finances at all times. Leaders can set category spend controls, maintain project budgets and drive operational efficiency in their financial departments, with full insight into financials and reporting in real time. 

They can authorize transaction and category spending in advance, giving employees greater freedom to act on innovative ideas and make critical purchase decisions faster. Not to mention, they can have a closer eye on where their money is going, who’s spending it and what it’s being spent on. 💰👀 This creates a workplace where employees feel empowered to take action, make valuable decisions and have a hand in driving the company toward growth. Bonus: startups in particular can motivate their employees to view corporate spending as a team effort that should be done mindfully, honestly and strategically. 👍🏽

At Float, a big part of our mission is promoting a healthier spending culture by simplifying the way your team spends, tracks and manages your money. Backed by automation software, our corporate cards are approved in one day and delivered to you within three! No long wait times. No complicated processes. No headaches.

If improving the spend culture in your company is top of mind, connect with us today to learn more about how we can help!

Companies in nearly every industry have fallen prey to the manual, time-consuming tasks that come with finance and expense management. From chasing receipts and tracking expenses to endless hours of reporting, these archaic processes have been causing headaches and delays for far too long. But don’t worry, you can automate that! When we add automation to the equation, companies not only eliminate this grunt work, but their finance teams gain greater visibility and control into corporate spending (in real time). 

If you’re a company looking to streamline your financial processes, automated spend management software will flip your biggest pain points right on the head. It successfully optimizes these processes by allowing finance teams to easily acquire corporate cards (physical and virtual), set category spend controls, track purchases in real time, record receipts and more. It cuts the guesswork, saves time and removes the frustration of managing company financials. 

Don’t wait, automate! 💨

The drawbacks of manual expense management are all too clear. So, let’s talk about the advantages and how automation boosts productivity and helps companies and startups perform at full speed. 

⭐ Say goodbye to human error

Receipts get lost, expense reports are incomplete, submissions are past due and the list goes on. 😴 According to the Global Business Travel Association, 19% of expense reports come back with errors and take approximately 20 minutes to fix. If time is money, this can’t be good. 🤷🏾‍♂️ When companies automate their financial processes, they can ensure 100% attention to detail without lifting a finger. 

⭐ Happier, more productive employees

If a startup has yet to introduce corporate cards, an employee might find themselves having to use their personal credit card to make business-related purchases and wait to be reimbursed. 🕰 If every employee has access to a corporate card that’s integrated into your automated expense software, companies can empower employees to make valuable spending decisions, reduce back and forth on requests and approvals, and eliminate the stress of having to use their own credit cards. 🎉  Financial controllers are able to set clear spending limits with category controls, and employees don’t have to worry about keeping track of their own purchases since everything is recorded instantly. It’s a win-win for everyone. 

⭐️ Lower risk of expense fraud 

Many fraud incidents are often associated with padded travel and expense claims 🙅🏻‍♂️ With automated expense software, financial controllers can instantly prompt employees to submit receipts after a purchase is made and automatically match the purchase with the receipt. This is an actionable way to prevent false or inflated claims by tracking expenses in real time and holding employees accountable through notifications. It also gives startups a better look into purchase and reimbursement history so they can detect duplicate expense reports. ✅

When businesses automate their financial and expense management processes, they can unlock the full potential of their finance teams. They are able to drive operational efficiency and accuracy and gain a full picture into corporate spending at any given time. 

At Float, we support companies by giving them a simplified solution to optimize the way they spend, track and manage their money. Our corporate cards and spend management software are one step businesses can take to improve their financial processes, give employees greater access to capital and fast track onto the expressway of growth! 🏎

Want to learn more about how Float can help you take advantage of expense management automation? Connect with us today!

Canadian startups are always looking for better ways to drive efficiencies in their business. More recently, many startups are exploring new ways to automate their financial and accounting processes. But, how can they do this? It all starts with a financial controller. 🤓 This is an individual who acts as the company’s lead accountant and oversees all financial transactions and data as it relates to corporate spending.

What are their responsibilities?

It’s important for financial controllers – especially in a startup – to have strong attention to detail and lead with a bigger picture in mind. Their job is integral to the growth of a company because they provide greater insight into their cash flow and how to best manage it. They create the financial policies and processes for a company, and generate the reporting required for management to make strategic business decisions. 

Some of their responsibilities include: 

• General accounting oversight 👀
• Creating internal policies and spend controls 💵
• Coordinating external tax accountants 🤝
• Approving and distributing corporate cards 💳
• Setting up bank accounts 👨🏻‍💻
• Ensuring payment is received from customers and other debtors 🧾
• Chasing people down for receipts 🏃🏻‍♂️

Why automation is a financial controller’s best friend 👫

In a nutshell, a financial controller is responsible for managing all of the money coming in and going out of the company, which means they are the ones validating major spend decisions and ensuring employees are properly reporting expenses. This is crucial given the fast-growing nature of many startups. 

The traditional process of managing financials is time-consuming with a great deal of manual data entry and back and forth with employees. Smart spend management software like ours at Float can change that by automating complex financial processes and helping startups make better strategic decisions, especially in earlier growth stages. Not to mention, Float also allows startups to act quickly by making corporate cards available to employees in 3 days or less! 💨 

Why Float is a game changer for financial controllers

• No more wait times for corporate cards from archaic banks ⏱
• Gives companies greater visibility and control over the spending in their organization and opportunity for cost savings 💰
• Our spend software is integrated with your virtual and physical corporate cards 💳
• Float collects real-time transaction data and generates reports on company spending 💸
• We’ve eliminated expense reports and manual tasks like reconciliation, reducing your month-end labour by up to 97% 🎉
• We give you the power to adjust workflow approval policies and set spending limits 📑
• Our software ensures greater accuracy by minimizing human error and expense fraud ✅

At Float, we know firsthand just how complex managing a company’s financials can be, especially for a startup. That’s why we created a corporate card and spend management software solution that not only automates your finance and accounting processes, but saves valuable time and resources. We want companies everywhere to have the tools needed to make strategic financial decisions so that they can grow and expand at rapid speed. 🤜🏼🤛🏼

If you’d like to learn more about how Float can help your organization, connect with us today!

Recently, many U.S. software companies have started adding sales tax to their software-as-a-service (SaaS) subscriptions. If you’re a Canadian startup who often uses U.S.-based software, then you’re probably wondering how this will affect the way you purchase, monitor and record these types of expenses. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. 👊🏻

When a SaaS company sells its product or service, they are required to comply with the tax laws in the region in which they are located. Depending on the state they’re in, these subscriptions may be taxable. For example, New York and Arizona require sales tax on all SaaS purchases, while California and New Jersey do not. Given that these tax rules are constantly changing, it’s important to keep tabs on how your SaaS subscriptions may be impacted. 

How are we supposed to keep up with varying tax rules on SaaS subscriptions? 

Well, with virtual cards we don’t have to. The truth is, physical corporate cards and traditional expense management software aren’t designed to track and monitor the growing use of SaaS subscriptions and the changing tax rules that come with them. Using virtual cards, startups don’t have to worry about these types of legal changes and can instead focus on what really matters — growing their business! 💸  When startups use virtual cards, all of the heavy lifting is done for them. When integrated with smart spend software, SaaS subscription purchases and applicable taxes changes are automated and calculated for you — it’s that easy 😉! For Canadian startups purchasing U.S. software subscriptions, each transaction gets processed and recorded instantly upon purchase and the tax is converted from USD to CAD in real time. This not only reduces mistakes in tax calculations, but it minimizes the overall time spent on expense management. 

And for those who may be weary about virtual cards due to the potential risk of fraud, not to worry! If your card is compromised, you can instantly cancel it with a click of a button and your remaining balance will be completely secure. 🔐

At Float, our virtual cards support startups with all of the above. Tedious changes like tracking SaaS purchases and monitoring tax rules are all taken care of through our smart spend software. We’ve removed all of the guesswork, so you can officially put your calculators away. 🎉 

We also understand that time is of the essence, especially in the startup world. That’s why our virtual cards are issued instantly and on the spot. Say goodbye to snail mail 🐌. Not to mention, Float enables startups to distribute as many cards as you need in less time, giving you the power to establish employee spending limits for greater control and oversight on your company financials.

Oh, and let’s not forget…Float’s onboarding process is quick and simple – so fast that we can have your entire team onboarded in one week! 🏃🏻‍♂️💨

To learn more, contact us to sign up for a demo today!

One of the biggest hurdles many Canadian startups face is a lack of capital. In fact, approximately 20% of them can fail because of this. With things moving so rapidly, it can be difficult for startups to manage accelerated growth, increased spending and simply knowing where all of their funds are going. 

The good news is that we have a solution and it’s a compact one. Corporate cards — virtual and physical — serve as a key tool that many startups can use to manage business and employee growth, easily make purchases and effectively monitor their spending. And, when integrated with smart, automated financial software, the benefits are on a completely different scale. Here are a few:

It increases operational efficiency so your team can actually get stuff done

For many startups, finding an optimal solution for financial and expense management can be a challenge. From long expense reports and employees forgetting to submit receipts to tracking purchases from multiple sources — the list is long and it goes on and on. However, it doesn’t have to be this way. Corporate cards linked to smart, automated spend software can simplify those daily accounting tasks by centralizing your expenses and financial data all in one place. 

This gives employees the freedom and flexibility to make critical purchasing decisions faster, without having to wait for management approval on purchases or spend requests as transactions and category spending can be authorized instantly. Corporate cards are also an express ticket to innovation, giving startups the capital to quickly act on their creative ideas and go to market with them. ✅

It increases financial accuracy and reduces human error

As we know, the traditional process of managing business expenses is manual, time-consuming and not exactly efficient, leaving more room for error and in some cases, financial loss. When employees pay for items themselves and submit expenses through screenshots and loose copies of receipts, it becomes difficult to track, monitor and validate real-time spending.

Luckily, when corporate cards and smart spend software come together, they’re a force that can’t be reckoned with. 💪 All transactions on these cards are recorded in real time and automatically matched to their respective receipts. Not to mention, this technology also prompts employees to submit receipts upon making a transaction so no one has to be chased down come month end. Having your books in order on a monthly and quarterly basis grants startups more strategic oversight to plan for the future and more opportunity for cost-savings. Your VP of Finance will thank you later.

It creates a culture of healthy spending

Promoting a healthy spend control culture is critical for startups – one where a team can focus on providing value, while also being mindful of how their daily spending decisions can impact the overall business. Having access to capital – especially for startups — is essential for their ongoing growth and stability. By providing every employee with a corporate card, startups can empower their teams to make valuable spending decisions, while instilling greater trust and encouragement to view corporate spending in a more collaborative, mindful and honest way. 

On the flip side, leaders are able to create spend controls for specific categories, departments and employees to both limit and monitor spending. It’s a great way to keep day-to-day business operations running smoothly, prevent expense fraud and keep a close eye on where funds are going and why.

At Float, we provide startup companies with a hassle-free solution to simplify and optimize the way your team spends, tracks and manages your money. Backed by automation software, our corporate cards are approved in one day and delivered to you within three. No archaic banks, no wait times and no complicated processes involved. (We weren’t kidding when we said hassle-free 😉).

If you’re ready to take action and get the Float cards you need to elevate your startup, connect with us today!