As MILES grew, so did the demands on its financial processes. New tools were added and with them logins, import, and export of files. At the same time, the existing tools were not flexible enough or the customer support was insufficient. Florian went looking for an all-in-one solution that offered good support and was able to withstand MILES’ growth. Read here how finway was able to convince him.
Founded in 2016
Mobility & Travel Arrangements
Over 400 employees
MILES Mobility is the largest independent car-sharing provider in Germany. Vehicles ranging from VW Polo to Mercedes Sprinter can be booked in flexible hourly or daily packages on every corner in eight German and two Belgian cities. MILES has been working for 5 years to make mobility sustainable and accessible. Florian Schindler has been on board for 4 years and, as Senior Finance Manager, takes care of MILES expense management.
Challenges
Solutions
With over 400 employees, MILES has long outgrown its infancy in terms of financial management. As common in many young companies, Florian juggled various tools at MILES, to cover the financial topics.
The price of the auditing tool was rising along with the growth, and at the same time it was not very flexible and could neither cover multi-level approval processes nor allow for tax-free postings – difficult for a business where parking tickets and towing services are part of the daily business. Florian was overall happy with the provider for the company cards, but support requests often went unanswered for days: “You don’t want to keep paying more and more money for tools you’re not actually happy with.“
My problem: Many channels and each of them with flaws. Sure, it all worked, but not the way I wanted it to.
Florian’s requirements for the new expense management tool:
He spends more than two months searching, evaluating different tools. Even if he is not satisfied with the existing solution, he wants to take the time to make sure that the next tool meets his requirements. His first contact with finway? Through a colleague who had heard about the tool.
“We really wanted to have everything in one tool for the sake of simplicity. We have quite a few employees who have to work with it. This is where one login with cards and invoices in one spot helps.”
finway meets Florian’s requirements. The contract is signed after an extensive test phase: „In the beginning, we only used company cards and invoices, many functions that we use now didn’t even exist back then.” Florian spends about 4 weeks moving his expense management from the previous solutions to finway. Much of the information, for example from DATEV, can be conveniently transferred via copy-and-paste using an import sheet. Why then 4 weeks? It takes a while to clarify internally who wants and should get which rights and which employees need cards.
In his opinion, it is important to get finway properly explained once. After that, Florian was able to immediately train his colleagues in finway himself. Are they all fit in finance now? Florian shakes his head: „Finance is a difficult topic in other departments,” so even the best tool is of no help, „you know who you are dealing with.” But the tool provides good support:
„In the dashboard, I can see exactly what’s missing, invoice or approval.” His tip for finance managers to motivate even the sloppiest colleagues: „The only thing that helps is to block the card, and then it will work over time.” 😉
Who works with finway at MILES? About 50% of the workforce. Most of them use the company cards because they are on the go and cleaning cars, taking them out of underground garages or from towing yards. In addition, the controlling team checks the cost center evaluations in finway, which is much more convenient now than before in DATEV, where they could only log in via Florian’s access. The marketing team uses finway to keep track of all recurring expenses such as software subscriptions and their durations. What everyone then logs into finway for is the topic of travel expenses, Florian’s favorite feature in finway.
The travel expense report with finway is super easy, everyone gets along with it and I don’t have to mess around with Excel anymore.
Besides that, he’s also a fan of the workflows: „ I set them to accounts payable, for example. If OCR reads the vendor correctly, then all the other information is immediately filled in automatically and, in the best case, the request ends up directly with the person who has to approve it. With 100 invoices from VW, it’s a real time saver not to have to enter all the same information one by one.“
Florian has been working with finway for almost a year now. „Company cards and invoices, that’s the standard, it has to work and it does. Travel expense management and the workflows are what show me the added value of finway.” Has everything always worked to Florian’s satisfaction? There have been the hiccups in the system. Why that still didn’t become a blocker for him? „I address things immediately and the customer support is really top-notch.” While he was used to long response times from his old card provider, he gets quick answers from his personal contact at finway: „The things that didn’t work at the beginning, they work now, my contact was very diligent there and still is today.”
What he appreciates about finway is how quickly and flexibly it responds to customer feedback and its availability to offer a solution even for individual customer problems. At the same time, he finds finway to be reasonably priced, and the ability to add unlimited new users without having to adjust the price package is a great benefit. The biggest advantage? finway saves him time.
„It’s just one tool and not three, I don’t have to work with the Excel spreadsheet and export, convert and re-import files between tools.“
Would you like to follow Florian’s journey? Then network with him on LinkedIn.
It’s also “the simple things that save time, for example, when I receive an invoice it shows me ‘hey this invoice has been issued before,’ that’s a huge time saver. MILES has big plans, can Florian imagine finway keeping up with these plans? „The good thing about accounting is that either the number of employees or the volume of invoices processed increases, so if there are 2,500 invoices per month now, then next year there will be 5,000″ – being set up properly there is nothing to stop Florian from continuing to work with finway as MILES grows. „Maybe at some point we’ll be big enough to write our own solution,” he says. But until then, he wants to continue managing financial processes with finway.
Recently, MILES acquired VW daughter WeShare, a big step to further drive electrification. MILES plans to grow further in 2023, adding new cities in both Germany and Belgium and expanding its fleet in existing cities. MILES will also expand its car subscription and work on its B2B product.
Want to learn more about MILES? Click here to visit the website.
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