User case card
Storypoint — IT recruitment company
🌐 Website: https://storypoint.team/
Andrei Alekseenko — Co-founder & CEO of Storypoint
Knows how to build cool teams in IT companies
His goal is to improve the recruitment process in Ukraine
Does not like to manually enter data into spreadsheets
📱 Insragram: @alex__andrew
Most entrepreneurs agree that scaling a business is always a challenge, accompanied by the possibility of chaos and failure. Yet, the hero of our today’s case study, Andrei Alekseenko, the founder of Storypoint, does not agree at all😉
He managed to scale his business in one year and increase his income almost tenfold while avoiding financial losses and mistakes. He did it with systematic cash flow management, of course (otherwise why would we be here, right?). In this case study, we tell you how cash flow management helped Storypoint and how you can adopt their experience for your business.
Given
Storypoint was created by Andrei and his partner Diana in 2021. It helps to recruit and hire talented people for technology companies, as well as facilitates outsourcing and outstaffing in Ukraine and abroad.
Prior to launching his business, Andrei worked in IT-companies and built teams from within. Therefore, he knows well what problems both business leaders and employees face.
For the first 2-3 months of work, the company used spreadsheets to manage finances. However, as the business grew, so did the expenses. They had to dedicate extra effort to enter each transaction into the spreadsheet, and eventually the task became too time consuming. Andrei started looking for ways to automate the processes.
«The problem was that all transactions had to be entered manually into our Spreadsheet, where the entire budget was stored. It took a lot of time, so we decided to automate the process and that’s why we chose Finmap».
Task
When choosing a solution for automation of cash flow management, the following was important to Andrei:
1️⃣ Financial management should not be time consuming. Business owners and finance managers have enough operational tasks every day. He didn’t want to spend more hours on entering all the transactions manually.
2️⃣ It must be possible to connect bank accounts into the cash flow management tool, in order to save time on entering transactions, as well as to avoid losing costs. It was especially important for Andrei to be able to connect the tool with Monobank, because the company’s account was with this bank.
3️⃣ Clear analytics for systematic understanding of the company’s expenses and incomes.
Finmap solution
Andrei learned about Finmap from friends. At that time the tool was still in beta testing, but the businessman was not intimidated and decided to give it a try. The crucial factor for Andrei was the possibility to link Finmap with the bank so he would not have to enter all the transactions manually.
«One of the reasons was that we have Monobank, and Finmap works with Monobank. It was perfect. Because such an integration between a bank account and Finmap is exactly what we use it for, it’s a major feature for us».
Implementing Finmap: Was it difficult?
It was not difficult at all. The implementation of the service did not take long. All that was needed was to register, create a company and connect the bank accounts*.
«Finmap has the coolest onboarding. I signed up for the service, linked the company’s Monobank account, and imported all our transactions».
* This is what the features of connecting integrations with banks and services inside Finmap look like. Integrations with 2000+ banks around the world are now available in Finmap.
Setting up finance management: Maybe this was difficult?
At the time Storypoint connected to Finmap, the service was still in beta. That’s why Andrei did face some difficulties with the currency conversion*. Payments in USD and EUR that came to the company were not always displayed at the correct exchange rate.
«There was only a few cents difference, but because of that discrepancy the debit and credit didn’t add up».
* Now, Finmap pulls current exchange rates from national banks of different countries. For example, for Ukraine from the National Bank of Ukraine, for the Czech Republic from Czech National Bank, as well as from Mastercard.
This means that for users who have transactions in different currencies, information about exchange rates is always accurate. In addition, it is possible to set your own exchange rate if needed. This, for example, is how the exchange rate is displayed when you enter Income in USD into a UAH account.
To solve it, Finmap offered Andrei the advice of our finance expert*.
«The finance expert showed our accountant how to properly structure income and expenses in Finmap. After that, all the statements added up perfectly. Plus, they helped us correctly organize everything, add categories, subcategories, tags. Since then, we are able to analyze our expenses and income in different categories: per employee, per project. That, in turn, helped optimize costs and drop unprofitable projects».
* If you prefer, our users can get help from Finmap’s financial experts and choose an assistant, manager or mentor for themselves. You can book free consultation and find out more about this service.
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Data systematization: Was it at least difficult here?
After the consultation, Storypoint set up their own expense and income categories in Finmap. This is necessary to structure transactions and then see in the statements detailed information about everything that happens with money in the company. For example, exactly how much a business spends on Facebook ads and how much it earns from customer X.
Now, this is how the Money/CashFlow report will display the ratio of expenses by different categories:
By the way, the service generates reports automatically. That is, users do not need to spend time organizing data. All they need to do is enter Incomes, Expenses, and Transfers.
Based on this data, Finmap will generate easy-to-read and visual reports.
This also helps to save time and bring awareness to what is happening in the business at any moment. This includes easily showing the reports to a business partner and not wasting time explaining what each indicator means.
What is the result?
«We’ve been using spreadsheets for two or three months. Then we switched to Finmap and solved all the problems we had».
✅ Automated cash flow management in the company. Now, the co-founders and the accountant have far fewer operational tasks to run and routine tasks to do. Therefore, there is much more time to develop the business.
«Finmap helps us run our operations. And since everything is okay with the operations, we have more time for the core business».
✅ Better understanding of the company’s expenses and incomes. As advised by a Finmap financial expert, the company set up its income and expense categories in the service. After that, it became clear to the co-founders where the business spends and where it earns.
✅ Stopped losing expenses. This means that the data on company expenses became more accurate and reliable, allowing for objective decision making.
«Previously, if we had a transaction and didn’t enter it in the spreadsheet, we just forgot about it. Now, all our transactions are linked to Finmap, and that’s very convenient».
✅ Avoided financial mistakes. Thanks to Finmap’s systematic finance management, the company’s growth during the year was seamless. Andrei notes that over the year the business has grown tenfold in revenue, with almost five times the number of employees😉
Storypoint has plans for further growth:
«We want to expand. We want to change the recruitment market, help our clients get rid of staffing shortages and release products on time thanks to the talents on their team».
Try Finmap to implement systematic cash flow management and easily scale your business. 14 days free.
