About MATHEMA

Mathema — is a math online school for students of 1-11 grades. We help improve math knowledge through individual lessons, where comprehensive schools couldn’t make it.

• Operating since January 2021
• Team of 20 people
• Around 350 students
• Sign up available for 10, 20 or 30 lessons.

«Our basis is a competent financial model. When prototyping, we took everything we liked most from our competitors, created own school format, and successfully sell our product»

Goals and challenges

«I wanted to start a big systemic business that includes a repetitive, forecasting, and clear business model. I like working in education sphere; however, I also understand that I need to be selling education to children. Because school for children is like going to work every day, they simply can’t not study. They can’t skip a 1000 USD course like adults (exactly what I did not like in my previous business of online courses creation). Here, LTV and retention are enormous, e.g., if you engaged someone in grade 5, you can keep them up until grade 11 – it is a very interesting business model»

Today, our main goals are scaling and increasing sales. We can achieve these goals successfully with competent cash flow management. For this, MATHEMA chose Finmap.

«I am lucky with finances, I always listened to smart people, and all of them told me to control finances»

Healthy cash flow management

In his previous business (custom online courses), Vitalii tried to keep records and statements, but those were “statements for the sake of statements”. On the other hand, when launching MATHEMA, he already had capability in business finances. He knew the difference between cash flow and P&L and understood why those are important.

«I have applied my knowledge in cash flow management to the new business, I made it financially healthy from the very beginning. Because I understood that finances are one of business diagnostics tools»

Why did we switch from Excel to Finmap

«Before Finmap, we used Excel. It lasted for whole 2 months until we reached 1000 USD and I realized that it is not convenient at all»

At MATHEMA, we chose Excel for cash flow management for its simplicity and availability, but these are also its downsides. For a company it’s simply a calculation tool. Whereas Finmap is a service that gives owners the helicopter view of business finances and can split access rights for employees.

Finmap gives me more opportunities. I very much enjoy Finmap 2.0 and see great advantages in it.

• Different levels of access. I have both manager access and admin access. Accordingly, my managers do not see the costs.
• Automation with bank accounts. We linked our bank accounts and stopped losing payments. Payments are synced, and managers categorize them. You know, before, on Mondays I constantly had to check if our current account balance and analytics matched. Once we even lost 300 USD and the whole team was looking for them for 2 hours. There’s nothing like that with Finmap, you can see all transactions in history at once.
• Everyone sees the big picture of business finances.
• And the statements! Although I don’t use them that often, only once a month, we still see the dynamics clearly.

«And also, I really want to support cool Ukrainian products like Finmap»

What has changed in MATHEMA with Finmap

We use Finmap since March 2021.

There’s a key metric of the online school that we check only in Finamp – it is the number of payments for the first lesson. Because the first lesson is an entry point for leads that get acquainted with the school.

«If the number of payments falls, it means that in 2 days we shall lose additional sales of the main packages. That is, if the income from the first lessons goes down — sales will go down after. In Finmap, I can check this in time»

• We check P&L and cash flow in Finamp once a month. After that, the owners make general conclusions and plans.
• Every day they look at what is happening with cash flow in general.

«Fortunately, we never got into a cash gap! For example, we have a separate teacher payroll. When I receive payment for a subscription package, I immediately reserve part of it for teachers. I don’t touch it at all, because if I do, there will be a mess. These are our accounts payable, and we don’t even think of using them».

Thanks to cash flow management in Finmap, we see our costs’ structure. All expenses are clear, we can compare everything.

«For example, we paid too high fees, I saw that and understood that we can optimize it and get a great budget. And so, we did»