Float, the award-winning cash flow service for Xero, QuickBooks Online and FreeAgent, today announced the completion of its £1.5m seed round led by Marchmont Ventures. The deal follows the formation of a new C-Suite team last year and is the first time that Float has accepted venture capital investment. The funds will enable the company to open a new office in Australia, capitalise on the growth of the cash flow forecasting sector it created, and perfect its forecasting solution for the needs of modern accounting firms.
Float specialises in a highly accurate cash flow forecasting and budgeting solution for small to medium-sized businesses and accounting firms. It is trusted by thousands of businesses worldwide that need to know their cash status in real-time, to facilitate reporting, decision making and planning. It also helps users understand the financial impact of business decisions via its “what-if scenarios” tool. In 2019, Float launched its partnership programme as a value-add service for accounting firms. It helps firms improve their advisory services by giving clients more control/insight into their business, as well as increasing firms’ customer retention and revenues. The funding will help Float continue to enhance its partnership programme.
With Float approaching profitability in 2019, the new funding was based on its revenue potential. It is seen as a means of accelerating Float’s growth so that it can take advantage of the burgeoning global market opportunity for financial planning and business insights, an industry that has expanded considerably in the last two years. Float will open a new office in Sydney in January 2020, with the Aus/NZ market widely considered to be one of the most forward-thinking regions for Cloud accounting. The company is planning to make 12 new hires across its Sydney, global sales, product development, and marketing teams.
Float recently won the prestigious Accounting Excellence award for its cash flow forecasting product and will use the funds to continue improving its product, making it even more responsive to what modern accountants need.
“Cash flow management is critical to the survival and success of SMEs, and it remains the number one issue keeping business owners awake at night,” said Float co-founder and CEO, Colin Hewitt. “We’ve seen a huge increase in demand with businesses looking for solutions to manage and forecast cash flow. As such, we’ve raised the funding required to grow our team and expand both locally and internationally. This demand is coming from the shift from desktop and paper-based systems to digital bookkeeping and Cloud accounting solutions. Accounting firms are now able to move beyond compliance work and offer additional advisory services. We’re not trying to be all things to all businesses, we know financial management is a difficult issue to get right, but we’re confident that we have the most accurate and easy to use forecasting solution on the market. Our mission is to help businesses make better financial decisions. Offering accountants new ways to improve their advisory services helps them to add value and boost revenues. We’re excited to have found a great professional and cultural fit with Alan and Hugo at Marchmont. Their experience in building a highly successful and values-based company is unique in the investment community and was exactly what we were looking for.
“We are building an ecosystem of exciting growing companies like Float,” said Alan Martin, Managing Director of Marchmont Ventures. “We are keen to work with businesses aligned with our values, who are able to grow fast but in a way that’s sustainable in the long term too. In that regard, Float is a perfect fit. We were struck immediately by the global market opportunity for digital accounting services, cash flow in particular, and have been really impressed by the Float product, which their users genuinely love.”