Hire CFO is a fractional finance firm founded in the UK. Lauren Murphy, Director, USA Operations, leads the firm’s U.S. office, which focuses specifically on providing fractional finance support to tech startups.
Murphy has been recommending Mercury banking to the startups she works with because of how easy it is for new companies to set up an account, invoicing, and Bill Pay in one sitting. So when Mercury started building accounting on top of such a solid foundation, it wasn’t a hard sell. “This just seemed like a new evolution that would really tick all the boxes,” she says. To Lauren, having the bank and the books under one roof was simply the right way to set a startup – particularly those in tech – up for success. It’s no surprise then, that Hire CFO became one of the first accounting firms to join the Mercury Books beta.
This has to be the next shift: banking and books in one place.
Murphy has been in finance long enough to have witnessed some major industry shifts. Cloud computing was one, APIs were another. “This has to be the next shift,” she says. For the founders she works with — many of whom have never touched accounting software and don’t really want to — having banking and bookkeeping in one place matters a lot. “It’s even the user experience when you log into Mercury,” Murphy says. “You don’t need to have worked in accounting software to understand how to set things up or pull a report.”
So far, that’s played out the way she hoped. Her clients log in, see their finances clearly, and don’t need much hand-holding to feel confident managing their books. Murphy’s own experience has matched theirs — she describes recommending Mercury Books as an easy extension of a product she and her clients already trust. “I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Mercury Books to somebody,” she says.
Murphy is focused on growing the U.S. side of the firm, and she could see a world where using Mercury for banking and books is a requirement for her clients, given her experience so far. Her advice to founders is simple: keep the books updated, because the alternative is a much bigger cleanup exercise later. With Mercury Books, that habit is easier to build. It’s one less system for a founder to learn, and one more reason for Murphy to keep recommending it before a client even asks.
