Who Crunch is for

Siân Fever

“Previously I’ve logged my own receipts and then pretty much thrown everything else at my accountant, so putting all sales and expenses into the Crunch system has been more work than I admittedly expected, but I have a feeling that is more to do with the aforementioned shoe boxes and my learning the system (by watching really well thought out, and easy to watch webinars) as I was carving my way through the gargantuan task of making sense of six months worth of five bank accounts, four credit cards and some very messy statements.

What I didn’t expect was for the experience to be empowering as a business owner. There are some things in business it is very sensible delegating, and I had long ago decided that finance was one of them, but in doing so, I wasn’t really making educated financial decisions so much as doing whatever my accountant told me. The Crunch system forces you to work a certain way, which means as a user you need to educate yourself on what categories your expenses fall into, for example, instead of just spending the money and hoping for the best. I can already see that using the Crunch system is making me a better, more financially-aware business owner.

I’m still not quite finished with the back log. I have director’s expenses to log, and the company credit card to reconcile, and THEN I need to work out how and what to pay myself BUT I’ve learnt more about accounting in the last five days than in the last five years of editing, so this is awesome.

Also, I got stuck the other night while I was trying to reconcile a refund, so I rang the Crunch office and the person I spoke to was really nice and helpful. It’s a genuine weight off my mind to know there is that support there.”

Decoded

“The world has gone digital and the building blocks of digital are code. It is designed for people with an involvement in or passion for the digital world but with zero knowledge of the code that underpins that world.

Crunch is a great example of the web being put to an interesting use and solving a problem. We evangelise the web every day through our work at Decoded so it seemed like a natural fit. How many other accountancy firms do you see with an API?

Traditionally you’d get your umbrella and go out for a meeting with your accountant, it would take hours. We don’t have to do that anymore, we can just call our account manager if we have any questions.

It’s completely transparent. When you’re a one-person business you usually know – roughly at least – how much money you have in the bank. When there are three other directors also spending company money managing a spreadsheet or desktop software would be a nightmare. With Crunch we always know what’s being spent where, and who is accountable.

The dashboard is fantastic. We can see straight away how much money is coming in, how much is going out, and how much tax we owe, with the option to dig deeper if we want to.”