Mercury vs Relay: A Worksheet for Any Consulting Firm's Banking

A firm billing steady monthly retainers has a fairly flat cash position month to month, which makes either platform's account structure workable. A firm billing project fees or success fees, especially one that closes a handful of large engagements a year rather than many small ones, needs a structure that keeps a big payment from looking like spendable cash the moment it lands. If your revenue is lumpy, set up a dedicated distribution reserve account that only releases funds to partners on a schedule, not the day a check clears; Relay's free sub-accounts make that trivial to configure without paying for extra banking features you don't need.

Firms doing on-site client work carry travel costs that get billed back to clients, sometimes with a delay of a month or more between when a consultant expenses a flight and when the client reimburses it. That gap needs its own float, separate from payroll, so a slow reimbursement cycle never threatens a payroll run. A dedicated travel float account, sized to your typical reimbursement lag times your monthly travel volume, solves this regardless of which bank you're on; the only real platform difference is that Relay's instant free sub-accounts make setting this up a same-day task, where Mercury's account structure, while equally capable, is built more around entity separation than granular expense-category budgeting.

A firm that closed a large engagement and is sitting on cash before its next scheduled partner distribution is holding money that could be earning something in the meantime. The effective federal funds rate is at 3.63%¹ right now, and Mercury's Treasury sweep automates capturing yield near that level on cash above your operating buffer, which fits a distribution reserve that's genuinely idle for weeks or months at a time. The 10-year Treasury yield sits at 4.44%² as a longer-duration reference point, useful context if your firm is deciding how conservative to be with reserve cash that won't be touched for an extended stretch. Relay's savings sub-accounts pay a published rate too, just without the automated sweep into Treasury instruments specifically.

If your firm has an internal ops function that already builds tooling, tracking utilization, project margin, partner distributions, in a custom system rather than off-the-shelf software, Mercury's documented API gives that team a foundation to pull banking data into it directly. If your firm runs on QuickBooks or Xero with a bookkeeper or outside accountant handling the books, Relay lists both integrations on its free plan and offers ways to give that bookkeeper access, which can cover the same ground without custom code; confirm the current access options before you rely on them. Most small and mid-sized advisory firms land in the second category; the first is really a question of whether you already have, or plan to build, real internal financial tooling.

A firm with steady retainer revenue, modest travel float and no internal tooling ambitions usually lands on Relay: free sub-accounts cover the practical needs and the bookkeeping integrations keep the books current without extra effort. A firm with lumpy project or success-fee revenue, meaningful travel reimbursement float, and a genuine appetite for automating reserve yield tends to get more from Mercury, particularly once the idle cash between engagements is large enough that the yield difference is a real number rather than a rounding error. Run the actual math on your own typical idle balance and reimbursement lag before deciding; the right answer for a five-partner strategy boutique and a two-person independent advisory practice is rarely the same one.

Score your firm on the four worksheet questions:

1. Revenue lumpiness: steady retainers suit either platform, while lumpy project or success fees call for a distribution reserve that pays partners on a schedule.
2. Travel float: on-site work needs a dedicated float, sized to your typical reimbursement lag and kept apart from payroll.
3. Idle reserve: cash waiting for the next partner distribution can earn yield, which Mercury's Treasury sweep automates.
4. API appetite: an internal ops team building custom tooling favors Mercury, while a bookkeeper working in QuickBooks or Xero favors Relay.

A firm's answers to these four questions shift as it grows. A boutique that started with steady retainer clients often adds project and success-fee work as it scales, which changes how lumpy revenue gets and how large a distribution reserve needs to be. A firm that grows enough to justify an internal ops hire may suddenly have someone who wants API access where nobody did before. Set a standing reminder to run through the worksheet again at each fiscal year planning cycle, rather than assuming the setup that worked at five people still fits at fifteen, since the banking relationship that quietly outgrows a firm's actual needs is easy to miss until a partner asks a cash question nobody can answer quickly.