How Viva Reclaimed 8 Hours of Financial Admin Monthly with Float

THE CHALLENGE

Viva’s team was buried in manual administrative tasks related to reconciling expenses and approvals. Without corporate cards, the company relied solely on the co-founders’ personal cards, which meant the finance team had to spend hours manually reviewing credit card statements. Co-founders had to be involved in the approval and even the administration of team purchases, down to small but time-consuming tasks like entering credit card details, cancelling subscriptions, compiling receipts, and resolving fraudulent transactions. 

THE SOLUTION

Using Float’s all-in-one business finance solution, Viva could easily get physical and virtual corporate cards out to team members across Canada, the US and Latin America. This helped to simplify and centralize financial administration and accounting. Float’s Canadian focus made the platform the obvious choice for Viva, since the company was looking for a solution with features tailored to Canadian businesses. The free trial made Float an easy, low-risk option to test, and the hands-on customer support during onboarding and migration ensured a smooth, seamless transition from Viva’s previous platform.

THE RESULTS

• More purchasing autonomy and flexibility for staff
• 8 hours of manual labour saved redirected to budgeting, customer-focused, and team-focused activities that power growth
• Over $1.1k savings on foreign exchange (FX) fees—combined with cashback, that’s closer to $2k per month in total savings.
• 4% interest earned on funds held in Float with the flexibility of withdrawal anytime

THE DETAILS

As Viva Executive Assistants grew, the talent-as-a-service company spent a lot of time on labour-intensive financial admin tasks. Reviewing credit card statements, reconciling expenses and manually approving team purchases took time away from growth-related priorities.

Since team members didn’t have their own corporate credit cards, co-founders and co-CEOs Adnan Khan and Fineas Tatar were also bogged down by admin.

“Almost everyone had to request spending from us directly, whether that was $1 or $1000,” says Adnan. “We would have to take out our bank statements, then the accounting team would figure out the transactions from the bank statements. It was a very manual process.”

This also meant that Adnan and Fineas were tasked with remembering to cancel subscriptions. They knew this approach wasn’t sustainable.

So, Adnan started searching for a solution that would allow Viva to give a corporate card to each team member who needed one. He was looking for a platform that offered spend controls and a centralized system for easy accounting. 

Viva first explored options at all the major Canadian banks but found nothing that met its needs. The company then turned to more modern but US-based fintech solutions—only to quickly realize that either their offerings weren’t available to Canadian entities or lacked the features their Canadian business needed. The team faced inefficient QuickBooks integrations, delayed or missed card shipments and low credit limits.

“We saw that our last vendor started removing features for Canadian customers and adding them for other customers,” says Adnan. “We knew we weren’t going to be prioritized long-term and would probably get the short end of the stick of their product.”

Adnan knew about Float from billboards and mutual connections who worked at the company. He took time to explore the platform’s user experience, accounting integration, fees and interest, and customer service. The low-risk option to test the platform with a free trial made the decision easy, and the hands-on support throughout onboarding and migration made implementation smooth.

“It’s amazing that you don’t actually have to pay anything to get on the platform,” says Adnan. “It was low friction. We had a lot of support with the transition, too. Most vendors would not do that, but Float’s team did.” 

Initially, Adnan was nervous about migrating all of Viva’s finances from the company’s previous vendor over to Float. 

“We had to update every single SaaS subscription we used to a new credit card. Float helped with that. Setting up new cards for members and vendors was seamless, and the heavy lifting no longer had to be on me.”

Implementing Float has allowed Viva to give physical and virtual cards to team members across Canada, the US and Latin America. It also gives employees more flexibility and autonomy while reducing the administrative burden on Viva’s co-founders and accounting team. And, approvals and requests no longer go through the co-founders, freeing up the team’s time and energy. 

“Now we’re able to set manager expense limits,” says Adnan. “We can give out cards for specific purposes with credit expiration dates or limit expiration dates. This has decentralized the spend management process and given our staff more control and trust.” 

Thanks to Float’s centralized expense management solution, Viva now has clear visibility into all expenses and an organized location to track them.

Makeship

Float provides seamless management in both CAD and USD currencies, while decreasing time spent on month-end by 60%.

Coastal Reign

Float cards are issued to a quarter of their team, providing immediate access to spend capital in order to do their jobs more efficiently.

Practice Better

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