Customer Stories
Small, but Mighty: How Cricut’s Accounting Team Helped Ensure IPO Success With FloQast
It might be almost four years later, but the events of 2020 should still be fresh in everyone’s minds.
Yes, there was the mass shift to working from home, quarantining, etc…but it was also an incredibly tumultuous time for businesses, as well. Many struggled; some failed. But at the same time, a ton of companies — anticipating and preparing for the worst — found themselves moving in the opposite direction.
In the case of Utah-based consumer crafting platform, Cricut, the company found that its goal of IPO wasn’t just attainable: With the market evolving rapidly, the business understood that it might actually be in a better position to go public. So, the team set a November deadline — pretty aggressive considering the shift to remote work and everything that needs to be handled from an accounting perspective in order to do so.
But Cricut’s small, but mighty, accounting team rose to the challenge. Embodying the spirit of “Small teams can do great things,” the team leaned on FloQast, streamlining their financial processes and ultimately setting the stage for a successful IPO.
Streamlining the Month-End Close
With 8.4 million users worldwide and $886 million in revenue (in 2022), Cricut aims to transform how people approach crafting and DIY projects. As the company prepared for its initial public offering in 2021, Ryan Harmer, Vice President of Accounting and Corporate Controller, recognized the need for a significant transformation in their month-end Close processes.
“Our Close was very manual and stressful, with 60 to 70 steps tracked in Excel spreadsheets, and we didn’t have a lot of precision and rigor around the process, or any ways to track which reconciliations were done or weren’t done,” said Harmer.
To meet the evolving demands, Harmer brought in Scott Christensen as Senior Director of Accounting, and together, they decided to automate and centralize their financial processes. FloQast Close and Variance Analysis to conduct its Flux Analysis were implemented to monitor and manage reconciliations and checklists effectively.
“The FloQast team helped us get our checklists into the tool and connect SAP S/4HANA, so our account balances would sync every hour,” said Christensen. “Now we know exactly what’s going on, what’s been reconciled, and what we need to prioritize.”
Ultimately, the team was able to streamline its Close process and get it to a place where it was repeatable, consistent, and less stressful than before.
“We used to go up to midnight on our last day of the Close, checking and rechecking entries and final reviews, but now everything is signed off by 3 or 4 in the afternoon, which is a big win for our team,” said Christensen.
The Keys to Compliance
With growing confidence, the team set a November 2020 deadline for going public. That gave them eight months to button things up — which they did in spades.
Post-IPO, Bryan Kant joined as Director of Internal Audit, emphasizing the importance of strong internal controls. FloQast Compliance Management became integral to managing post-IPO compliance reporting efficiently and cost-effectively.
“The FloQast Compliance Management tool allows us to link our work steps and manage our RCM (Risk Control Matrix) all within FloQast,” said Kant. “It’s made my life easier, and life a lot easier for our auditors, which means fewer billable hours in the long term.”
With FloQast, Cricut achieved more than a 30% decrease in Close time, centralized SEC and SOX filings, and established a robust framework for compliance reporting. The success of their IPO journey reflects not only the dedication of the Cricut team but also the value of adopting innovative tools like FloQast.
In the words of Scott Christensen, “There’s no reason to keep struggling with Excel for task management and workflow. If you want to automate your accounting Close and everything that goes with it, FloQast is a fantastic tool.”
As a publicly traded company with 680+ employees, Cricut continues to empower creativity and lead the way in the consumer crafting industry, showcasing how the right financial tools can significantly impact business success.
