New in the company and the first thing to do is to introduce a new tool? Why not! Filling the first full-time position in the finance department of a start-up is an ambitious task. Structures and processes have to be set up new, existing processes such as the handling of company-wide corporate credit cards have to be questioned. Learn here how Florian prepared Blockpit’s finance department for growth and challenges and established financial processes with finway.
Founded 2017
Location Linz, Austria
54 employees
Blockpit is an Austrian company that provides a tax solution that allows people to calculate their crypto taxes. Blockpit has been working for 5 years on the mission to give people a simple tool to do their taxes securely and flawlessly. Florian Hasibar joined Blockpit in January 2022 and leads the finance department.
Challenges
Solutions
Auditing, corporate accounting and controlling – with this professional background, Florian started at the start-up Blockpit as Finance Manager. Florian came from an organization in which all financial processes were set up and ready to go. It was clear to him that this would not be the case in the start-up. That’s why it was important to him to set up these structures very quickly in order to be prepared for growth.
Before Florian joined Blockpit, there were neither dedicated people nor processes. The CFO took care of the financial topics. In practice, this meant that he collected all invoices, transferred them and sent them to the external accountant. Since some invoices were not pre-accounted, the external accountant booked them to the best of his knowledge and belief, which often led to problems afterwards.
When I came in, I thought to myself that with the planned growth, the finance division could not continue this way sustainably. Therefore, I took steps from day 1 to automate and professionalize the finance division.
The handling of the company credit card was also not very sustainable. At Blockpit, the phenomenon known in many small companies ruled that a few selected employees use the credit card and in the end the finance manager has to trawl through all the Slack channels to find out who used the credit card for what purpose – „extremely time-consuming”.
What were Florian’s requirements for a spend management tool?
Why was the time factor so crucial for Florian?
„I wanted to create a good database from the very beginning. The data basis from accounting is used to create analyses, forecasts, and reports. If the initial account assignment doesn’t fit and things are posted incorrectly, then you end up analyzing unusable data.“
Day 2 at the new company, Florian started researching spend management tools. He looked at three of them, but very quickly decided on finway, without long testing: „I was then and still am in close contact with my finway CS Manager. He set up the test version for us, I briefly presented it to our CFO and he said: ‘Okay let’s go’.“
Florian’s plan to map invoice workflows and pre-accounting into finway within a week worked out well. „Back then, finway was at a completely different stage than it is now; half of the features we use today didn’t even exist then. But it was clear to me that we weren’t buying a 100% finished product, but one that we could help develop.“ So it wasn’t a blocker for Florian that finway is geared to the German market in terms of interfaces: „I was in direct contact with the product manager and finway tailored a solution for us, with which we can easily transfer the data to our external accountant via a CSV export.“
What does financial management with finway look like at Blockpit? „I have defined pre-accounting information, accounts and cost centers for all vendors and employees. All invoices end up in finway via the invoice mailbox. From there, they follow the workflows, are first approved by the department heads, and then by the CFO or me. In the next step, I also pay most of the invoices via finway.“
What does Florian rely on the most? „On the fact that no invoices get lost. In addition, the invoices automatically slide into the export area when they are paid, I don’t have to worry about something being paid twice by mistake.“
I could no longer imagine working without an expense management tool. No matter how small the company is, that would be the first thing I would implement there, because the automation saves an extreme amount of time and on top of that you have a reliable archive for all invoices.
Who works with finway at Blockpit? In addition to Florian and the CFO, all department heads as approvers and finally all employees for reimbursements or the company’s mobility budget: “All employees who want to use the mobility budget receive a finway card. They can autonomously dispose of their budget and use it to pay for their company trips. Whether that’s by e-scooter or public transport.” In the tool, employees can see directly how much they have already spent and how much money is still on their card.
„Colleagues learn how to manage their own budgets. This has visibly sharpened their financial senses, especially among employees who otherwise don’t have so many points of contact with finance.“
A very positive effect for Florian. How does it work with submitting invoices at Blockpit? „Actually quite well, if something is missing, I can send people an email notification with the reminder function within finway. Approvers also proactively approach me when invoices are still missing because they can see what they need to submit thanks to the dashboard.“ Blockpit’s young and dynamic team is often surprised by what they can cover with finway. How well do they get along with the tool? „At the beginning, using finway was much more complex, but in the past few months, the tool has become much more intuitive, there’s not much training needed for employees.“
In the 10 months that Florian has been with Blockpit, the staff has doubled. Because he was able to implement finway so quickly, the finance department was ready for this growth. Florian is now Head of Finance for a team of four. „We’ve managed to build and establish the finance processes, and finway has become our ‘single source of truth’ for all invoices.” Collaboration with the external accountant has also improved enormously: „He gets all the information prepared and just has to input it.” Incorrect account assignments are a thing of the past.
„finway has helped me a lot to build the finance department scalable and ready for all future challenges. I don’t think we can get so big that finway would no longer be a useful solution for us.“
Would you like to follow Florian’s journey? Then network with him on LinkedIn.
Now that the financial processes and reporting are in place, Florian’s focus is increasingly on forecasting and reporting. In addition to the finance department, he now also heads the newly established data and analysis department and is committed to making Blockpit very data-driven. finway supports him in the finance area and provides him with a database on which he can create valid analyses, forecasts, and reports.
Blockpit wants to become the European market leader for all regulatory software solutions in the area of digital assets. What is so exciting about this? There are few regulations for cryptocurrencies and cryptoassets so far, once they are enacted, you can position yourself well as a partner. „Because of the dynamics in the digital assets space, our business may look very different in two years than it does right now. That makes planning more difficult, but day-to-day exciting“
Want to learn more about Blockpit? Go visit their website.
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