10 tools for CFOs in start-ups
- Iter Advisors
Contents
As CFO of a start-up, you are responsible for the financial health of your company, and play a crucial role in building sustainable growth. So it's essential that you're equipped with the best tools. These tools can help you centralize your administrative and financial information, digitize your invoices, manage your pay slips... and automate a multitude of tasks to boost your productivity considerably.
But there are plenty of tools out there. So which ones will really help you make the difference? Iter Advisors gives you its selection.
Spendesk, to manage your expenses
In the course of running your startup, you incur a large number of expenses. Whether it's supplier expenses, personnel costs, taxes, expense accounts...
A CFO is often faced with endless lists of expenses to be reconciled - with the corresponding invoice, the expense item, and all the necessary information. An extremely time-consuming process. It is therefore essential for a start-up CFO to equip himself with a good expense management tool.
Spendesk is a comprehensive business expense management platform that enables you to :
- Implement an expense validation system and digitalize expense claim management
- Generate virtual or physical payment cards to secure business purchases
- Process invoices 100% digitally, from receipt of purchase order to payment
- Monitor and control the budget in real time and obtain accurate, actionable expense reports>.
- Automate administrative and pre-accounting tasks
Equipping a start-up with Spendesk gives it greater visibility, enabling it to manage its financial activities more serenely. On average, finance teams using Spendesk save 4 days of working time each month, thanks to the tool's automated features.
How much does the solution cost? Spendesk offers 3 pricing plans: Starter, Essentials & Scale, with a fixed price for access to the platform and variable fees based on usage. There are no set-up fees, and the price is not based on the number of users...
Netsuite, one of the best ERPs for small and medium-sized businesses
As start-ups grow, so do their organizational management needs, and their information systems need to adapt accordingly. ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) or "integrated management software packages" are the answer to this problem. These systems centralize all information and enable the management of operational services, adapting to the company's needs.
CFOs need to bring together different tools, such as an e-commerce solution and an inventory management tool, to bring different processes together in a single system with data connectivity. Hence their need to rely on an ERP.
Netsuite is one of the most widely deployed ERPs in the world. It is a powerful, scalable tool, based on the Oracle cloud. Netsuite provides financial management functionalities, and streamlines an organization's operations, thanks to CRM or e-commerce modules.
The benefits of the solution are manifold: Netsuite helps you make the right decisions, thanks to access to customized dashboards, and optimizes your organization's overall productivity.
Rates are available on quotation; several hundred euros per month are required.
Holded, the all-in-one billing and accounting management software
While ERP systems offer a complete universe for managing all a company's operational processes, there are also simpler tools offering a wide range of functions for start-ups. A CFO looking for an online tool capable of covering all his day-to-day activities, without representing too great a cost or a complex implementation process, will be well advised to turn to an all-in-one management software like Holded. Particularly if its needs are focused on invoicing and accounting. Holded is a cloud-based tool for VSEs & SMEs offering a multitude of applications to manage a whole range of needs: invoicing, accounting, CRM, inventory, team & projects. It offers access to :- Automatic report generation
- Streamlining payment processes
- Automatic bank reconciliation of transactions
- Human resources management and project management
- Managing prospect contacts and sales opportunities
- Inventory management
Agicap, for cash management
Cash flow is the money available in a company's coffers to finance its activities. Managing a start-up's cash flow is a fundamental issue, as poor decisions can simply lead to the company going out of business. On the contrary, a positive cash balance is generally a sign of good financial health. Cash flow management can be a real headache for a CFO: he or she needs to keep costs and expenses under control over the short, medium and long term, but also set up accurate forecasting indicators to ensure healthy growth and a sound borrowing or investment strategy. Fortunately, effective tools exist to facilitate this work, and Agicap is one of them. It's an ergonomic, comprehensive tool that works in 3 areas:- Cash flow monitoring
- Supplier payment
- Customer reminders
Notion, steering and Knowledge Management
Knowledge Management is an increasingly popular concept. Behind this Anglicism lies a managerial approach to knowledge management, which aims to collect, organize and make available all the knowledge useful to a company. Every start-up faces this challenge: documents and information are scattered in multiple places, information is often not up to date or organized, and knowledge is difficult to transmit. And this has an impact on the company's overall productivity, particularly that of the administrative and financial team. Like any manager, the CFO needs to be able to capture the right information, and put it in the right place so that it can be found and shared. Notion is a tool forKnowledge Management and control system, which is particularly visual and intuitive, and offers a wide range of functions:- Shared knowledge base
- Asynchronous communication tool
- Project management tool
- Writing software
- Note-taking application
- Database utility
- And much, much more!
Asana, for task management and project tracking
A task management toolis a digital tool for managing the project lifecycle and helping teams to work better together, by centralizing the organization and distribution of tasks.
Such a tool is generally essential for any start-up managing complex projects, or wishing to gain greater visibility over the progress of its projects, particularly cross-team projects. The administration and finance department is no exception to this logic, and it is often essential for a CFO to rely on a task management tool once a certain stage of growth has been reached.
Asana is one of the most widely used tools for enabling agile project management and promoting fluid communication between team members, all the more so if they work remotely. Features include:
- Different project views: list view, Kanban, Gantt, timeline, tables...
- Automation of recurring tasks
- Integrations
- Process generation
- Reports & overview
- CRM
- Document management
- Project management models
A tool of this kind makes it possible to monitor teams' work on a daily basis, from A to Z, to better coordinate projects, and ultimately to save time and money.
Asana offers a free version, a Premium version at €10.99 per month per user (if billed annually), and a Business version, at €24.99 per month per user, with more features.
Zapier, for infinite action automation
Would you like to receive an email when a certain spending threshold is exceeded? Create a connection between your dashboards and your real-time transactions? Transfer answers to an online form directly into a Google Sheet? In short, do you want to automate your processes, financial or otherwise, without needing to code? Then you need an action automation tool.
As a CFO, you inevitably need to get certain applications to communicate with each other, in order to obtain the right data, in the right place, at the right time. A tool like Zapier lets you do just that, without having to manage tedious or repetitive import/export operations.
Zapier is an automation tool that lets you build automated workflows between applications, to create "Zaps", i.e. automation rules for actions sometimes performed on a daily basis. Very easy to use, Zapier offers :
- Connections to over 4,000 applications
- Zaps can be created and modified in just a few clicks
- Predefined Zaps templates
What are the benefits of Zapier? This essential tool enables you to eliminate an infinite number of simple, time-consuming tasks, so you can concentrate on higher value-added tasks.
Zapier offers a free version, as well as various packages ranging from €18 to €564 per month, invoiced on an annual basis, the price being defined by the number of automated tasks included and the desired functionalities. For example, for €46 a month, you'll get 2,000 automated tasks and an update every 2 minutes.
Conclusion
Anticipating the financial impact of recruitment is vital to ensure healthy, controlled growth. Drawing up a budget is a key step in managing your payroll, especially for start-ups and scale-ups who are planning to hire large numbers of people to support their development. It's not always easy, but it's essential!
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