Another string to their bow

With Swoop’s help, Sheffield’s Gravitate Accounting turned tracking down funding for clients into a selling point

CALL ON THE offices of Gravitate

Accounting and the last thing you’re likely to see is a pinstripe suit. At this thoroughly modern firm, the 10 members of staff would rather wear hoodies and merch.

“We’re probably a pretty perfect target client for Swoop because we’re a new, up-and-coming digital accountancy practice,” says Sam Newton, who founded the Sheffield company three years ago.

The practice is “quite hands on” with its couple of hundred clients, he adds. “We don’t just do a set of accounts. We’re in contact with them monthly, producing reports, KPI reports, management accounts and so on.

“At some point, they’ll have a need for cash. Historically, what we’d probably have had to do is speak to their bank, speak to [commercial lender] Funding Circle, speak to a number of other lenders and try to find them a good deal.”

That’s all changed since Gravitate started using Swoop last year. “We’ll say, ‘We’ve got a client who wants to borrow money for X, Y and Z,’ at which point Swoop will scour the market to find the best funding available.”

Sam cheerfully admits that he and his colleagues used to dread the thought of clients asking: “Can you help me find some funding?” The question placed them in an awkward predicament.

“As a smallish firm, we didn’t have that resource in house. Do you say you’ll charge them £100 an hour or whatever? And if you don’t find them any funding, can you really bill them?

“Now we just upload all their information on to a portal that Swoop provides, giving them everything they need to approach various lenders. With their in-house knowledge, Swoop can target specific lenders and come back with options for our clients.

“One of the deals I did, I just put them in touch with Swoop, because instead of being the middleman, the go-between, we’ve got a good enough relationship and trust in the guys at Swoop for them to run the conversation and do the best by our clients.

“So, it’s gone from being a ‘what do we do if that happens?’ to ‘yeah, we’ll happily help’. And we’ve got a really good solution in place where we can hopefully get some pretty quick answers.”

All in all, Swoop’s service represents another string to Gravitate Accounting’s bow, according to Sam. “Whenever we land a deal, we promote it on our social media and it gets people talking to us. They say, ‘Oh, I’ve tried through my bank and I’m struggling to get money. Can we have a conversation about how you can help us generate funds?’

“All the people we’ve dealt with at Swoop have been really good people. And the opportunity to add new services has been great for my business,” he says.