Accounting is a drag especially if the tool of the trade happens to be a nausea inducing and visually sparse spreadsheet! And yet planning and interpreting financial trends plays a crucial role in keeping a business afloat. Even businesses that are profitable on paper and have a good product, die an undignified death by making uninformed financial decisions, or expanding too soon with no way to support the growth, or failing to keep their sales pipeline full.
Dryrun helps businesses visualize their cash flow and gleam important analytics like sales forecast using a simple cloud based tool with an intuitive UI that can make any Excel user cry tears of happiness!
About the Startup
Blaine Bertsch was in the creative industry for 15 years before he decided to create Dryrun. He talks about his experience, “When I was running a growing business, I battled ever increasing costs, bigger projects, more staff and more complications — it felt like chaos. I always had three questions constantly swirling in my head: will I be paid in time to cover my bills, do I have enough work coming in to stay in the black and if I expand can I sustain the cash flow needed to support the growth.”
Blaine spent years essentially prototyping Dryrun in spreadsheets, wipe-boards and notebooks, “I didn’t know I was building anything, I was just running my business and trying to figure things out.” But a structure started to evolve that gave him the idea to combine tracking and visualization of cash flow. After thoroughly laying out the functional and design direction, he contracted a team to flesh out Dryrun.
The service is all about giving business owners in the creative industry a way to visualize their cash flow, predict their sales and plan for growth. It’s a simple, beautiful, cloud-based tool that lets you see where you’re headed. As Blaine says, “Visualizing where you’re headed becomes addictive. It’s like shining a light into the dark corners of your business and reacting before ‘it gets real’ — a Dry run of sorts!”
Still, Why not Spreadsheets?
It is extremely difficult to see the big picture in terms of the cash flow of your business. Spreadsheets can be effective but there are no provision for forecasts and trend prediction. Dryrun provides a simple, clear and visual way to see where you’re headed, rough in numbers and compare ‘what if’ scenarios so that you make decisions with as much key info at hand as possible. These decisions are the ones that can fundamentally change your business and improve your chances of success. “Many of our customers have moved to Dryrun from using spreadsheets to help them visualize their cash flow. There are other terrific tools available to help people understand their cash flow, but we’re unique in offering a way to compare different scenarios in a single, clear place”, adds Blaine.
About their Plans
The service is targeting companies that work from project to project and struggle with highly irregular cash flow. That might seem like casting a wide net but instead, the company is focusing on the creative industry — comprising designers, photographers, illustrators and other creative shops from countries across the globe.
Dryrun is set to receive a bevy of new features and improvements with the next major release. There are subscription plans for using Dryrun, purchased either monthly or annually. Says Blaine, “We have three different plan levels that are distinguished by the number of users on the account. In the future, we will be further separating the accounts through access to advanced features.”
Head over to their website for more details.
