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Laura Beales is an ex-chartered accountant who started her career at KPMG. After qualifying, she narrowed her expertise to work in technology-led businesses, building up experience in boutique accounting practices as well as high-growth startups.
During the pandemic, she quit her job as Head of Finance at Florence, a company providing modern workforce tools for social care, and started Tally Workspace with her best friend, Juels Robertson.
Founding Tally Workspace
Nick Levine: What inspired you to start Tally Workspace?
Laura Beales: When Covid kicked off, Jules [my co-founder] and I were both working at startups. Jules was frustrated that her office was completely closed and was camping in coffee shops to work. And with my background in finance, [I was mindful] that we were paying lots of money for an office space that nobody was using…we both came from the mindset that there must be a better way to do this.
Nick Levine: What does Tally Workspace do?
Laura Beales: Tally Workspace began as a platform for booking hot desks and meeting rooms locally, but since Covid, we have grown into one of the UK’s leading office consultancies. Today, the majority of our revenue comes from placing clients in full-time offices, and we have built a strong specialism in leased offices.
At Tally Workspace, we specialise in helping scaling startups navigate the complex office market and secure the right space on the right terms. Whether it is a fully serviced solution or a long-term leased office, we provide the expertise, market knowledge, and personalised support to make the process faster, simpler, and more cost-effective.
Going Into Business with Your Best Friend
Nick Levine: What is it like to found a company with one of your best friends?
Laura Beales: It definitely makes it fun as you are with your friend all the time, and that’s nice. You know that person so well and trust and respect them, so you start your founder relationship quite far in compared to other people.
Nick Levine: Would you say you have a complementary skillset?
Laura Beales:. We like doing completely different things and have completely different skillsets.
Nick Levine: She is more business development and sales, while you are more focused on finance, right?
Laura Beales: Yes, I hate stuff like that, so it means we really appreciate what each other does. We are lucky as we didn’t think much about [complementary skills] when we started.
Nick Levine: Would you recommend starting a company with one of your best friends to others?
Laura Bales: Yes. It has definitely made it a more enjoyable experience.
Running Finance and Operations at Tally Workspace
Nick Levine: Your formal role in the business is Chief Operations Officer (COO). Am I right in thinking that this covers everything related to finance and operations?
Laura Beales: The core things I cover are finance, HR, operations, and tech. My focus is primarily strategic, so I oversee the projects that different teams should be focusing on. I have to make sure the numbers add up, that we are making the right decisions, and also [ensure we are implementing] process automation. Finance has been a really useful thing to do before, as a lot of those skills are around financial planning and process automation, and are key to the [COO] role.
Nick Levine: I’m seeing an increasing trend for companies getting their COOs to oversee both operations and finance. Why do you think this is?
Laura Beales: A lot of the skills you need to do both of these roles are very similar. It’s all about building structured processes that work. Having a background in audit, where you think about what could go wrong, is a strong background for operations. While finance and operations are different departments, with process design, the objectives and skills associated with them are similar. Also, by having finance looking at operations, you are always thinking about the financial payback of decisions.
Using Automation to Streamline Self-Billing
Nick Levine: Regarding building structured processes, are you able to share an example of how you have introduced automation into the business to help streamline the overall finance function?
Laura Beales: Self-billing was a huge one for us, as we have a booking platform. Clients come onto our platform and book hot desks and meeting rooms. They pay us, and then we have to pay venues. The venues invoice at different times and in their own way, and deduct our commission. It could have become messy quickly, so I identified [that self-billing] was something we needed to fix immediately.
Nick Levine: How was billing executed when you first started?
Laura Beales: I fixed it quite early because it was a headache. If we hadn’t done it, every single venue would be sending us their own invoice in their own format to their own timeline. It would have been a whole mess of invoices…every single one would have come in a different format, and it would have been a full-time job to get someone to check whether the commission and VAT were correct and pay them to their own time schedules.
Nick Levine: How does your automated self-billing system overcome these issues?
Laura Beales: With our self-billing system, invoices are created automatically, then sent to the venue and to our payment timelines. All of that is automatic, and then we just make the payments. We make payments based on that, and it has saved us hours.
Nick Levine: Are you able to quantify the time saved?
Laura Beales: I think you could say it would be [equivalent] to 50% of a junior person’s time.
If you’ve been inspired by Laura’s journey of quitting her job to start her own business with her best friend, check out the other posts in our Next Gen Finance Leaders series.
