Fulcrum3D is a classic startup story. Like many great businesses, the Australian tech company was founded by people who are passionate about providing a solution to a problem. Back in 2011, the problem was how to measure and provide reliable data for renewable resources, such as wind and solar. To solve it, a team of renewable energy specialists based in Sydney came together to invent technologies that could provide precise data to predict electrical output from wind and solar farms.
Fast forward to 2021 and Fulcrum3D’s products and solutions are being used by the renewable energy sector worldwide. In fact, its flagship Sodar wind monitoring system is one of only five remote sensing instruments globally considered to provide bankable wind data by leading independent consultants.
As the business has grown, so too has the breadth of products and services they provide. That’s the thing about inventors - they never stop innovating.
Finance manager, Stephanie Schreiber, explained that Fulcrum3D designs and manufactures their own products, deploys and commissions on-site systems, and operates its own data monitoring and analytics service. “This business is more complicated than any business I’ve worked at before, in terms of accounting.”
However, amongst all this complexity, there was a lack of formal processes - something that threatened to hold the company back from its growth potential.
“In a short time, we’d moved from a small company with minimal formalised systems to a medium-sized company with processes,” she explains.
“The amount of componentry and instruments we were building with was growing, and we needed tighter systems to keep tabs on it all.
“At the same time, the amount of people in the business was increasing and we needed to ensure everyone had access to accurate information.”
For the finance team especially, there was a third important factor: time.
“The time lags we were experiencing in the finance department were really holding us back,” she recalls.
“In particular, we needed to reduce the time lag between processing spend and income in the system and running reports.”
This was especially problematic when it came to revenue recognition.
“In a simple business, you build something and get paid 100 percent of the money in seven days, and that revenue is recognised in the accounts.
“In our business, it’s much more complex. Clients typically pay over a series of milestones so our revenue recognition isn't necessarily instantaneous.”
Sorting through the project spend and invoicing, Stephanie would spend one day a week on manual revenue recognition.
“And I was always months behind,” she says.
The game-changer was TidyEnterprise, a project, inventory and workflow management software that integrates seamlessly with Xero.
“Tidy has a feature called WIP, which calculates the revenue recognition for projects in progress. At the end of every month, all I need to do is run a payment summaries report and all the data is there and up to date.”
For Stephanie, the time savings are substantial. “Now I only spend one day a month reconciling projects and making sure they’re finished and entered in Tidy, and it calculates how much we’re allowed to recognise as revenue, instantly.”
“That was massive for us. Our books are now up to date at the end of every month. We can see all our costs, our spending, our componentry for projects, our profitability, and more, in one place.
“It’s so good going into Xero and knowing the balance sheet is accurate and what our assets and liabilities are. It’s reduced the stress.”
