CASE STUDY
Events company keeps celebrating while Maxwell keeps the books
Challenge
SF Events* started small and grew quickly by putting on special events for companies and individuals in the San Francisco Bay area. The founder enjoyed the creative challenge of designing and delivering events with on-trend themes for technology start-ups. But she didn’t enjoy the cash crunch that occurred when suppliers had to be paid net 15 but clients paid up to 60 days after receiving an invoice. SF Events struggled with cash flow and had to use its line of credit to meet payroll during its ramp up and to cover advance costs. Denali, the founder of SF Events, was concerned about cash flow and frustrated by the lack of timely information that would help her monitor and manage the company’s performance.
Solution
Maxwell Money worked with Denali to help her make sense of SF Events’ cash flow cycle and to implement policies including timely invoicing, leading to faster A/R collection for avoiding issues in the future. Maxwell also created custom reports for SF Events, including a dashboard that makes it easy for Denali to monitor performance and cash forecasts to predict shortfalls and surpluses, and to see the overall profitability of the business.
Maxwell got us out of our continual cash crunch, so we can focus on creating special events without worrying about cash flow.
Results
With Maxwell providing tighter control of cash flow and shortening the A/R collection period by 8.7 days on average, SF Events was able to get out of the cash crunch and Denali was free to focus on delighting customers with excellent results. SF Events’ revenue grew more than 37 percent in its first year with Maxwell, and its net income increased by 149 percent.
“Maxwell bookkeeping got us out of the continual cash crunch, ” says Denali. “Now we can focus on celebrating without worrying about cash flow. ”
Customer Snapshot
Events company serving organizations and individuals in the San Francisco Bay area.
Solution Snapshot
Accounts payable solution utilizing job costing to facilitate timely invoicing, general ledger integrated into AP for customer and job matching, and Tsheets integrated into Gusto for employee time tracking and payroll allocation.
Products Implemented
- Xero General Ledger
- Bill.com accounts payable and invoicing solution
- Gusto payroll
- TSheets for time tracking
Measured Success
- All employees and vendors paid timely and accurately.
- A/R collection period reduced by 8.7 days.
- Supported revenue growth of 37% and net income growth of 149%.
- Owner’s focus shifted back to delivering creative events.
- Provided insight into the profitability of each event.
Names and some identifying details are changed to protect the privacy of our clients, but the stories are true.
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