“Float Really Enhances FreeAgent as a Package!”
Gordon McLachlan is the Managing Director of Primate, an award-winning web agency based in Edinburgh, UK. Now a team of 11, Primate work with charities, professional services, food and drinks brands and startups to create end-to-end digital campaigns, applications and products.
Forecasting income
Gordon has been a FreeAgent user since starting the business 7 years ago, but quickly recognised the need for an agency like his to have a cash flow forecasting add-on.
Gordon says, “We signed up to FreeAgent when we were just starting out, and we use it for all our accountancy, but because we are a project-based business our recurring income is low. I needed to be able to see exactly when money was going to come into the business.
“We use FreeAgent for our accountancy and Float for all our forecasting.
“I’d been looking for a forecasting tool for a few months when I came across Float. There is no feature in FreeAgent that lets you plot your predicted sales and get an estimate of what that will do to your bank balance. As an agency, seeing when money will come in is essential.”
Making educated decisions
Although cash flow forecasting had always been on his radar, it wasn’t until he started running his own business that Gordon realised just how important cash flow was. “You always hear that cash is king, and it’s true, it’s incredibly important to keep track of your sales and expenses. For me, cash flow forecasting is about insight and confidence.
“Thanks to Float I can now make educated decisions on hiring, moving office and expanding the business. I can easily go into Float, and put in our sales estimates to get a rough idea of what our bank balance will be over the next few months, which is very useful for planning. As the Managing Director, seeing the pipeline for ‘cash in’ puts me at ease, otherwise it’s sort of like you’re staring into the unknown.”
Sharing Float with the board
Gordon also finds Float useful for reporting on cash flow at Primate’s monthly board meetings. He finds that Float’s visual layout helps to quickly convey what’s happening in the business. He says “The graph makes it really easy to share with our other directors. It’s much better than showing them a spreadsheet, we can all just look at Float and know what’s going to happen in the next few months.”
Gordon goes on to say that linking Float to FreeAgent makes his accounting package go further. “I love the Float integration for FreeAgent as it automatically pulls through all the information we need on bills and invoices. We use FreeAgent to record all our billing, but Float is great for predicting our in-goings and outgoings, which is harder to do in FreeAgent. Float really enhances FreeAgent as a package.”
Primate is an award-winning web agency that creates digital campaigns, products, and applications.
For your chance to see what Float can do for you, sign up for a free 14-day trial today!
The Ultimate Agency Cash Flow Guide
Optimise and grow your agency today.
