How Lauren Harvey Uses Float to Sell Her Clients on Cash Flow
Lauren Harvey is the founder of Full Stop, an accounting firm based in Cardiff. Full Stop is a progressive firm that describes itself as the accountant for “movers and shakers”.
Here’s the story of how this Xero Gold Partner uses Float to give her clients more control and more opportunity in their plans, full stop.
Two very different clients that use Float
Not every business is built the same. And Lauren knows that better than anyone. When she first signed up to Float, Lauren thought of ten clients that she could onboard immediately.
But things change, and business waits for no accountant.
It’s part of the Full Stop process to have frequent conversations with clients, and straight after embedding Float in their process and just a few conversations later, Lauren was able to identify some of the businesses that would really benefit from Float.
“There are only so many hours in the day, so keeping an eye on cash with Float has been really great to know that we are helping businesses plan and pivot really efficiently.”
Client one: planning for investment
“Have you heard of non-alcoholic spirits that are just like gin?” Lauren begins, and then laughs when she receives a response of, “What?”
“I mean, I hadn’t until we took on this particular client. But it’s designed to make you feel like you’re drinking different spirits, without getting you drunk.” This client is part of a specialist Incubator and approached Lauren to help them with funding from drinks giant Diageo.
“They came to us to see if we could help, and so we offered them Float! We showed them their runway, their burn, and it’s just been so useful for the incubator.”
Cheers to that!
Client two: big projects, no problem
The next client is a stationery company. This company, Lauren explains, were offered two large contracts, one with ASOS, no less. The offers came in overnight and two huge orders were required almost immediately.
The client approached Lauren with every accountant’s favourite question, “how on earth am I meant to afford this?”
So Lauren ran it through Float.
“We were able to show them exactly how she could do it and give the assurance that they’d be okay.”
For Lauren, this client was particularly interesting, not just because Lauren is a self-proclaimed “stationery addict”, but because without Float, the first port of call may have been a lender or a bank.
“Because of Float, we just didn’t have to seek lending options. It showed us that she just needed better management of the cash already in the business.”
These two examples are just a few of the ways in which Float has helped Lauren to better serve her clients.
“It’s been so interesting to see the variety of reasons that Float is used. I’ve found that we’re using it more and more often for so many different reasons and so many different clients.”
Planning for the future with Float
More than simply providing an efficient cash flow service for her clients, Lauren has used Float to make her clients more confident in their financial management.
Business plans aren’t just made 9-5, Monday to Friday. “If an idea comes up out of office hours, when they’re watching telly or talking to their partner, I want to make sure that they can plan for it.”
With Float, that’s exactly what her clients can do.
“Float’s scenario planning gives them the opportunity to see the impact of their ideas and plans without having to mess with the current situation.”
For Lauren’s clients, this means that Float provides both control and comfort. Without either, they’d be unable to go ahead themselves and check the feasibility of their plans.
“Messing around with a spreadsheet can just be too complicated, and by the time it’s set up correctly, either the plan has become less interesting, or too many mistakes have been made to make it viable.”
Allowing her clients to take control of Float in this way means that they can share their plans with the team at Full Stop to see whether or not they may want to go ahead with their plans.
Less time selling, more time using
For Lauren, in many ways, Float has no longer become a thing that she has to sell to her clients. Instead, it’s much more of a “you need this” rather than, “do you want this?”
“It’s been proven time and time again that you can’t always tell who will need Float, but for the majority of my clients, they all need it at some point.”
“As soon as we start talking plans, growth plans, etc. we just go straight to Float.”
It’s about helping her clients to understand the power of cash flow forecasting. Without Float, keeping forecasts in a spreadsheet would mean less control for her clients and more sleepless nights of Excel-related stress for Lauren.
“We were actually chatting about this in the office the other day; about the joys of doing what we do. We all agreed that it’s all about being able to work with so many different people, different businesses, and share it all together.”
If you want to see what Float can do for you can your clients, sign up to our partner programme today!
