Cloudfloat Pro Is Live: What $300 a Year Gets Your Business

Cloudfloat Pro is a membership for businesses that use Cloudfloat regularly. It's $300 a year and it starts today. Members pay 1.5% to pay any supplier or the ATO by card, 1.5% for the first 30 days of funding (half the standard rate), and 0.4% to get paid on an invoice. They also get a funding limit that's set the day they join, up to $10,000 for a company and up to $5,000 for a sole trader, plus access to Working Capital and redraw. If you already have an approved limit with us, you've been moved onto Pro at no charge. All rates are ex GST.

How the membership works

If you've ever shopped at Costco you already know the idea. You pay a fee to get in the door, and once you're inside everything is priced much closer to what it costs them. The membership is what pays for the low prices.

Pro works the same way. You pay $300 once a year. After that, every card payment, every funded invoice and every invoice you send goes through at member rates, starting from your first payment. There's no minimum volume and no tiers.

All rates are ex GST. International supplier payments and payroll are on the way, and members will pay less for those too: free international payouts instead of 0.5%, and payroll processing at 0.5% instead of 1%.

A funding limit you know about before the bill arrives

On the standard plan we work out how much we can fund each time you make a payment, up to $7,000. Most of the time that works. The catch is you don't find out the number until you're already sitting there trying to pay the bill.

Pro members get their limit set on the day they join. It's up to $10,000 for companies and corporate trustees, and up to $5,000 for sole traders, partnerships of individuals and trusts with individual trustees. So you know what you've got to work with before you need it. If that isn't enough room, you can apply for an increase, up to $500,000.

Pro also gets you two things standard accounts can't use. Working Capital puts a lump sum in your balance the same day, and you pay it back in fixed monthly instalments over 6 or 9 months. Redraw takes an invoice you've already paid and turns it back into cash, repaid over 60 to 120 days. That one's handy when you paid a supplier early to get the discount and then something else came up.

Paying suppliers by card, now that surcharges are gone

Since 1 October, businesses can't add a surcharge when you pay them by card, and some have dealt with that by taking cards off their invoices altogether. We wrote about the ban in more detail here. If you've been paying suppliers on a company card for the extra time and the points, it's a real problem.

With Pro, you add funds to your Cloudfloat wallet by card at 1.5%, and we pay your supplier by bank transfer. They don't need to take cards or have anything to do with us. They see a normal transfer with your invoice reference on it, and we send them an email so they know it's coming. Your card is charged the same as any other purchase, so it earns at whatever rate your card earns on business spend. It's 1.5% on Visa, Mastercard and Amex, and it stays 1.5% however much you put through.

If the card's already at its limit, your Pro funding limit can pick up the rest, and your supplier still gets paid in full today.

The ATO is where this tends to make the biggest difference. Most card issuers pay reduced points, or none at all, when you pay the ATO directly, and the ATO adds its own card fee on top. Paid through Cloudfloat, your BAS, PAYG and company tax earn points like any other bill. There's a calculator on the card points page if you want to see what that's worth on your own spend.

Who should join, and who shouldn't bother

I'd rather you join because the numbers work for you, so here they are.

If you fund payments, Pro pays for itself quickly. One $10,000 invoice over 60 days does it, as above. And if you want Working Capital or redraw, you need Pro to get them.

If you send invoices through us, member invoicing is 0.4% capped at $10, against 1% capped at $25 on standard. Send 20 invoices of $2,500 or more in a year and you've saved the $300.

If card payments are all you use us for, check before you join. The member card rate is 0.15% lower than standard, which works out to $150 on every $100,000. You'd need to be putting around $200,000 a year through on card before that saving alone covers the membership. Below that, standard is cheaper for you, unless you want the funding limit sitting there for the months when the card is full.

And if you only ever pay suppliers by bank transfer, stay on standard. Bank transfers are free on both plans.

If you're already a Cloudfloat customer

If you already have an approved limit with us and your account is in good standing, you've been moved onto Pro today at no charge. You don't need to do anything. Member rates apply from your next payment.

If you'd already paid the $300 subscription, that carries straight over into Pro. You won't be charged again until your one-year anniversary.

Everyone else can upgrade from their dashboard whenever they like. Membership starts the day you join and renews each year.

We've never put our rates up, and over the last three years we've kept bringing them down. There's only so far you can go doing that one transaction at a time. A membership lets us go further. You pay us once a year, and we can price everything after that a lot closer to what it actually costs us. See everything included in Pro.