Finance in Plain Language

Lack of control over finances and unforeseen expenses can be a real Achilles' heel for every entrepreneur, undermining financial stability and reducing profitability.

Finance has always been key for me. Excel, while useful, does not always meet modern business requirements. But when we started working with more professional money accounting tools for business, everything changed.
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Dmytro Sheremeta, entrepreneur, owner of Сhystota.ua.

How to save $12 500 on cost optimisation

Dmytro's company delivers equipment in the form of a vacuum cleaner or a ladder for each cleaning, if necessary, which is included in the service price. They used to use taxi services, which did not provide a consistent price for the transportation of equipment: it varied depending on the weather, days of the week, and the demand for taxis at that particular time.

After analysing the costs in Finmap, Dmytro saw that they were spending an unpleasantly high price on logistics. Together with the team, they started looking for ways to reduce these costs. Eventually, they decided to completely change the type of delivery. They found a partner who delivers on electric scooters. This improved the logistics time, removed the fuel variable, and made the price stable.

One round-trip delivery cost $9 for the company, and after cost optimisation, it was $2.5.

Thanks to Finmap, we saved $9 000 on optimising the cost of equipment delivery alone. In total, we optimised costs by more than $12 000 over the year.

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Financial chaos? Forget it!

Finmap gives you control and order.

Try it — 7 days for free.

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What Finmap features help you save money?

Dmytro uses Cashflow and P&L most often. He needs Cashflow on a monthly basis to analyse the company's expenses, to quickly assess what costs they incur and to make optimisation decisions easier.

Dmytro reviews the P&L regularly, comparing it to the previous two months to identify changes in different cost categories. If he notices an increase in expenses in a certain category, the team immediately analyses the reasons for this growth and considers optimisation opportunities.

Save $12 500 or lose money? What will you choose?

The answer is obvious. But how to do it?

In the Finmap service, you can allocate all your expenses and income to separate categories, contractors, and projects.

Let's look at how it works using the example of categories.

You have fixed costs that recur every month, such as rent, logistics, advertising, etc. In the Analytics section of the Profit report, you can use filters to analyse your expenses for each period and each category.

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This way, you will see which expenses eat up a lot of your money every month. Understanding where exactly this weakness is in your budget, you can look for ways to optimise your expenses: change suppliers, give up a part of the office that is not used, etc. Thus, just by saving on expenses, you will already significantly improve the financial health of your business.

But uncontrolled expenses are not the only problem in the accounting of money for a modern entrepreneur.

What do entrepreneurs face every day?

A large number of business owners face the following problems:

• they do not see the real state of the business
• they do not understand how much money is currently on each account and in the company as a whole, the data is available, but in a bunch of home-made tables that  are difficult to analyse and almost impossible to bring together
• they do not understand how much dividends they can withdraw without harming their business
• whether there will be money at the end of the month to pay salaries, rent and contractors

How to solve it?

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Thanks to Finmap, you can easily put your business's money in order and keep your finger on the pulse, because from now on:

• All your invoices are on one screen, clearly
• All data gets into the service automatically, thanks to integration with banks and payment systems
• Easy to analyse money (Cashflow), profit (P&L), projects, bills, debts: not in complex chaotic reports, but in visual charts
• Thanks to the payment calendar, you can easily plan cash flow and prevent cash gaps
• Delegate routines to employees, deciding who can see what and who can edit what
• Also, you no longer need to search for invoice templates on the Internet: from now on, issue branded invoices directly in Finmap.

Don't wait until you start losing money. Try Finmap for free right now!

Serious Development Agency IT company — development of mobile applications and sites for startups

Web site: https://sda.company

Alex Shubin is the founder of Serious Development Agency IT company.
Has 12 years of programming experience
He started his cash flow management with Finmap 1,5 years ago

How can an owner of an IT company keep money in order in business if he works 17-19 hours per day and has literally no free time? And what if the company is located in Ukraine and, like most entrepreneurs today, he needs to take care of the team’s safety and continue to develop the business in conditions of total instability?

You could postpone the task until better times. Or you could lay the foundations for systematic accounting now by understanding the numbers, seeing the current state of affairs clearly, and making confident decisions about the future based on the data. Alex, the owner of the IT company Serious Development Agency, chose this way.

In this case, we will tell you how he managed to find the time and what results he achieved.

Given

The IT company, Serious Development Agency, has been developing mobile applications and websites since 2019. There are 16 people in the team, and they continue to grow. The number of projects and tasks from clients is also increasing.

If you don’t keep organized cash flow management, it is easy to drown in the chaos of incomes, outgoings, regular payments and debts. That’s why Alex, the founder of the company, decided that it was necessary to implement systematic cash flow management.

«I decided to get my business in order after all. Because I realized that I don’t understand what’s going on, how much money I could get out and so on.»

Task

We always say, keeping track of the cash flow for the sake of keeping track is a mistake. Therefore, before you systematically put your money in order, you need to determine why you need to keep track of it and how cash flow management will help you grow your business. Alex has set himself these objectives:

• Get rid of the financial mess

Clearly understand how much the company earns, how much dividends you can collect, and what is going on in your business.

• Monitor your account balances and planned incomes

It is to see how much money is there right now and how much you can expect in the future.

• To save time

Alex works 17-19 hours a day now. He doesn’t have enough time to focus on managing the cash flow.

«In general, there is more work now, because we are constantly hiring more employees and have to pay attention to them. Plus, we must devote more time to customer service in order to reassure our clients that even in spite of the war we are able to meet their needs».

• To keep track of your cash flow in a systematic yet simple way

«When I was entering everything into Google spreadsheets, I realized that there were some things I might overlook and not take into account. You need to spend some time setting it up, the same reports and so on. And since I understand that time is money, it’s easier for me to keep all the documentation in one place and have multiple options to run different reports, integrations…».

Alex decided to implement Finmap to solve his business matters.

Solution

Alex first tried Finmap a year and a half ago. However, he did not manage to fully apply the features of the service to his business then and switched to another product. But Alex found many bugs that made his work more difficult. So he decided to go back to Finmap again.

«Why Finmap — because I was already a user. I had taken courses from both Ivan and Alex*».

* Ivan Kaunov and Alex Solovey are both co-founders of Finmap. Ivan led the course «Finance in plain language». Over time we expanded and supplemented the information, which resulted in Alex Solovey’s «Business Money» course on how entrepreneurs can get from chaotic finances to a system in just 5 steps.

With the service, Alex decided to use the help of a Finmap financial expert straight away* to save time on set-up and to see the focus points in cash flow management for his company.

* Our users can request the help they need from Finmap’s financial experts and choose an assistant, manager or mentor. You can book free consultation and find out more about this service.

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The first thing Alex did was to connect and add all the company’s accounts to Finmap, so he could see all the balances he have at the moment on one screen.

The next step is to synchronize with Privatbank and the Wise money transfer system. So that all incomes and expenses are automatically uploaded to Finmap and displayed in the financial reports.

The synchronization:

• saves time on manual data entry;
• makes keeping track of accounts easier;
• eliminates the risk of losing a particular payment.

Even small expenses that are often overlooked (such as transfer fees or payments for app and service subscriptions) will be taken into account automatically. As a result, users get a more accurate picture of the company’s financial situation.

As one of Alex’s tasks was to understand how much the company earns, he paid particular attention to the Profit and Loss statement ( P&L)*.

* The P&L statement shows a company’s profits and losses for a specific period, e.g. a month. It is generated automatically in Finmap based on the data entered by the user and fed into the service through integrations with banks and other services.

Alex also plans to introduce regular maintenance of the payment Calendar* to control future income and to track upcoming expenses in advance.

* By adding future expenses and incomes to Finmap, the user will see them in the Calendar and will be reminded to make the planned payment or collect client debt in a timely manner.

Plus, the Calendar will show whether there is enough money to cover all expenses for a particular date or if there is a risk of a cash gap (a temporary situation where a business does not have enough money to cover all necessary expenses).

‍*The data is provided as an example

However, the founder of Serious Development Agency also informed us of a feature of particular concern for his business.

«I have this issue. I receive one payment, but this payment is allocated for several people at once. I have to split it up manually every time and calculate how much of this payment relates to one specific project and how much to another? It would be cool if we had a large payment coming in, and we could specify that a certain amount of money from that payment applies to a specific project».

Our development team is now actively working on implementing the functionality that Alex is missing. This feedback is vital to us as it helps us develop Finmap tools that our users can use to manage their specific financial needs more efficiently.

* Our users can request the help they need from Finmap’s financial experts and choose an assistant, manager or mentor. You can book free consultation and find out more about this service.

What’s the result

✅ Alex sorted out the mess in his finances and set up systematic cash flow management.

With Finmap financial expert Karina, Alex was able to sort out what was going on in the company in January-February, including when the war in Ukraine began.

«We set everything up, looked at what was happening between January and February and now there is an understanding of the numbers».

✅ Thanks to the connected integrations, the transfer of transaction data is automated; Alex doesn’t have to transfer it manually and spend time on it.

✅ It is possible to see financial reports in a couple of clicks and understand what’s going on in the business. Reports are generated automatically in the form of easy to understand graphs and charts. There is no need to waste time putting tables together and then trying to make sense of dozens of columns of numbers.

«Graphs are quite useful. You can even present the data in percentages in them».

The P&L report is also important to Alex because it allows him to easily track the company’s profits.

✅ Alex plans to use a payment calendar within Finmap to monitor future incomes and expenses (e.g. to plan tax or loan payments). He also plans to test the soon to be released Finmap mobile app. Most importantly, with his finances under control, he can now monitor the growth of his business. After all, as Alex says:

«If we work in times of war, even from basements, what else can stop us?»

Are you the owner of an IT company? Understand the finances of your business, clearly, see the profitability of each product/project, and accurately calculate your investments in new product development with Finmap. Test the features of the service for your business. 14 days free of charge.

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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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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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Company «AIRT» — Turkish Association of Independent Realtors, sells and rents property in Turkey.  
Сайт: https://airt1.com

Ilgiz Yusupov — founder of the company «AIRT»
Instagram: @ilgizyusupov
For 7 years he has been involved in real estate in Turkey

Has been using Finmap in his business for about a year
For him, cash flow management with Finmap is an opportunity to reflect on his company’s financial health and plan for the future, while quietly enjoying a cup of coffee.

Best price, caring service, high quality… What other advantages can a business use to get ahead of the competition?

One Finmap user, the founder of a real estate company in Turkey, realized that orderly business finances could also help him get ahead. Why and how? We tell you in this user case study.

Given

AIRT deals with real estate in 4 cities in Turkey (Istanbul, Antalya, Alanya, Ankara). AIRT’s core business is the sale of flats in new buildings. However, they also deal with rentals, commercial properties and secondary housing.

There are now 12 employees in the team. But as Ilgiz, the company’s founder, says:

«All of our brokers are independent individuals with their own life stories. They are not employees, but partners».

The company has a turnover of about $1 million a month. Ilgiz has ambitious plans for the business:

• to develop the company in other cities in Turkey and around the world;
• to make the property market more professional and reduce the level of fraud.

Among other things, the Association of Independent Realtors was set up for this purpose.

«Our aim is for the Association to be at a national level. We hold broker conventions and create workable rules in the market, so people can understand what is effective and what is not».

In order to work systematically towards these goals, Ilgiz, as the founder and manager of the company, needs to understand exactly what is happening in the business and make informed decisions. So, he decided to introduce financial management.

Task

Ilgiz was immediately looking specifically for a financial management tool. He already knew that just accounting was not enough.

«I was purposefully looking for a financial tool. Because in Turkey an accountant deals with many things,  but not with finances. He does some invoicing, some tax calculations, but he doesn’t keep the finances. As a result,  there is no way to understand where there are  expenses and where there is  income, even by using  Excel».

It was important for  him to:

• Clearly understand what the company’s expenses are and how much revenue the business generates.
• Keep track of this data regularly and, preferably, have it all in one place.

«I needed one programme where I could go in and clearly see the main indicators I needed in dashboard form, especially income and expenses. In general, any entrepreneur needs to understand income and expenses at least once a week. This helps to make decisions in terms of saving or, hopefully, expanding».

He found out about Finmap by chance: I came across an advertisement, looked at the information about the service and immediately began to implement it.

Finmap solution

Ilgiz manages cash flow in his business on Finmap by himself, without delegating to the staff.

«Finmap is an enjoyable activity for me. I try to set aside an hour or two a week, brew some fresh coffee, sit down and enjoy doing it».

So far, all the data is entered manually, including the company’s expenses and income. There are only 3 buttons in the service for entering transaction data: Income, Expense and Transfer. It is therefore easy to understand at a glance.

To make the analytics clearer and more accurate, user can specify not only the amount, but also, when entering transactions:

• Category — the type of income and expenditure, e.g. targeted advertising expenditure, income from renting commercial real estate.
• Counteragent, i.e. from whom income is received or to whom the company has made the payment — expense;
• Tags — further option to specify the data on the transaction. For example, you can add tags with brokers’ names so that Finmap can then filter out all revenues that came from a particular broker in its reports.

* Example of adding an operation to Finmap.

Since Ilgiz started using Finmap, we have added integration with Turkish banks, including  Akbank Direkt, DenizBank, Garanti, Ziraat Bank and Yapi ve Kredi to Finmap.

* This is what the features of connecting integrations with banks and services inside Finmap look like.

This will help our users from Turkey and those with Turkish bank accounts save time. Thanks to the integration, all bank account transactions (receipts and expenses) will go into the service automatically and manual entry of transactions will not be necessary.

The most important report for Ilgiz now is Money/Cash Flow*. It shows cash flow and allows us to systematize what amounts are received and what amounts are spent by the company.

* This is what the Money/Cash Flow report looks like in Finmap.

Ilggiz can now clearly see on one screen all revenues and expenditures of the business comprehensively or by specific parameters. For example, he can filter income by Category, «Sales in new buildings».

* This is how users can use the filters in the Money/Cash Flow report in Finmap.

«It’s so convenient and easy to read. Before I would get dizzy trying to understand endless columns on spreadsheets.  When deals go through and you start increasing your staff or buying some additional software without checking your financial records, there are consequences. In this respect Finmap is a wakeup call, alerting me to my business’ finances».

Ilgiz is still exploring how Finmap’s other reports can help his company (Profit/P&L, Projects, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable).

* This is what some reports look like in Finmap. They are generated automatically.

His plan for the future is to get additional training in order to gain a deeper understanding of finance to make the most of financial management.

What is the result

«Finmap is absolutely the right thing to do».

✅ All company income and expenses are now organized. They can be analyzed at any time without wasting a lot of time and without waiting for reports from the accountant/finance director.

«It literally takes  five minutes. I go into Finmap, look at my expenses and my income. That’s it. It really helps».

✅ It has become easy to make decisions based on numbers, not to inflate costs where they are unnecessary, but also not to save too much.

«It’s just the kind of time when I can reflect a little bit on the numbers, see what’s going on. Because in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, you don’t see what’s going on. But when you sit down and look at the numbers, and they are in a convenient format, everything is clear».

✅ Ilgiz realized that he could increase his advertising budget without falling into a cash gap (a situation where a business temporarily lacks money to cover expenses).

✅ Systematic cash flow management has become a competitive advantage for the company.

«Of course, this is a competitive advantage. Because if 50% of the market does not use cash flow management, they will get into financial holes, recruiting a large number of employees or increasing money for advertising when they can’t afford it.  In the meantime, I can  pull ahead by making sound financial decisions».

It is now much easier for the Association of Independent Realtors to move towards the goal:

«The plans for the future are for the Association to become a place where every foreigner can come, not just to buy a property, but to find one specifically tailored to their needs and objectives».

We are sure that with such a systematic money order everything will surely work out😊

If you too are setting ambitious goals for your business, you need a well-thought-out plan and a clear picture of your company’s financial situation. Connect Finmap to get rid of money chaos and make informed decisions based on numbers. 14 days free.

Nikolaj Mostovoy – 16 years entrepreneurial experience, 3 years doing business in Poland.
He is engaged in construction, retail and provision of services.
Certified financier.
Loves to help other entrepreneurs become more efficient and orderly with money.

Intelligent System, Warsaw – Nikolaj’s consultancy company that helps entrepreneurs with strategic planning, creation of financial models, pricing, marketing and everything else a business needs to grow. They also help companies from Ukraine to enter the Polish market.

Site: https://intelligentsystem.com.pl

Given

Before setting up a consultancy company, Nikolai was in the construction business. His projects were growing, with 10 crews plus managers who ran the sites.

Each of them had separate budgets for the purchase of materials and consumables. It all had to somehow come together in one place in order for Nikolai to understand:

• how much money was taken from the customer;
• how much was spent on procurement and salaries;
• whether each project was paying for itself;
• if his inventory was accounted for.

Plus, Nikolai wanted to see his daily cash flow, track profits, and identify areas of loss.

In other words, there was a need for systematic management accounting in Nikolai’s business, so he began looking for solutions.

Task

Can such important information be entrusted simply to an accountant? In Poland, outsourced accounting companies only do bookkeeping and tax reporting. But the main disadvantage is they submit the previous month’s data until the following month. In other words, you have to wait 2-3 weeks for a report in order to understand the situation in the business.

«We required a more timely management accounting tool that would show us where we are earning profit, where we are losing money, and where we could operate more efficiently», — says Nikolai.

Another option was to hire a financial director. However, in Warsaw, the salary of such a specialist starts at 8,000 PLN (about 2,000 €) a month.

Finmap could implement management accounting at a much lower cost. Nikolai identified the following objectives:

• Find a simple solution so that even someone without an accounting or economics background could use the system, and project managers, foremen, or drivers could deal with procurements.
• Keep all the management accounting in one place.

Previously, Mikolaj used a Polish accounting service. However, they could only cover a single task. For example, drawing up estimates, reporting cash inflows and outflows, or profit and loss (P&L report). Everything was in Excel, which was difficult to use and took too much time. In addition, there was not enough capacity to solve all the tasks.

• It was imperative that the service had a payment calendar.

Nikolai wanted to plan finances for the month ahead and beyond, and also anticipate cash gaps in order to avoid them.

• Select a multilingual solution.

The team includes people from Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Belarus and Poland. So, Polish services alone were not suitable, since not all employees know Polish. Therefore, he needed a service where he could choose from a variety of languages.

Finmap solution

Looking for a suitable option, Nikolai came across the Finmap website and registered to give it a try.

First step

To begin with, as a certified financier, he turned to his financial model. He organized his income and cost structure. He systematized the information about where his business money was, which departments and team members had it, and which clients owed it. Than he transferred all the information to Finmap.

Nikolai gave access to project managers, foremen and the drivers who make the purchases, because Finmap has the ability to restrict access and select which information an employee can add, which can only be viewed, and which is available only to the company owner.

After that, all transactions were added through 3 simple buttons: Income, Expenditure and Transfer. System accounting had started.

Stop losing money

It was not uncommon in Nikolai’s construction business for employees to lose receipts after purchasing materials or consumables. As a result, customers would not reimburse these costs and the company had to bear them. Thousands of euros were lost in this way.

«There was a situation in September when an employee lost an invoice for 4,500 PLN (about 1,000 €) and simply forgot it. When we submitted the documents to the accountants for settlement, it turned out that the invoice was missing. Consequently, we wouldn’t have calculated the 4500 and we would have lost the money. It’s a good thing he ran it all by Finmap».

Seeing on the report that there has been such an expense, you can simply go to the shop and recover the receipt to provide to the customer. Nikolai points out that they would have lost more than the cost of their Finmap subscription with these situations alone.

Important reports

As one of Nikolai’s tasks was to control cash flow on a daily basis, he regularly analyzes «the Cash/Cash flow» report*.

* «The Cash» report in Finmap shows cash flow and allows you to see which amounts are being received and which are being spent by the company.

The Payment Calendar* has also proven to be very useful. Thanks to it, the risk of a cash gap is now visible in advance and there is time to correct the situation. In general, it is very convenient to plan all payments in advance. It helps to budget for the next month and beyond to predict the future of the business.

* In the Finmap Payment Calendar, you can see balances and money movements for any date. This includes payments planned for the future. If you add future expenses or receipts, the Payment Calendar will show whether there is enough money or if there is a risk of a cash gap.

Force majeure

From time to time, there have been some force majeure, or unforeseeable, situations. Someone with ownership status* accidentally deleted the company’s Finmap profile. A huge amount of data seemed to have been lost. Nikolai quickly contacted the care service and our managers pulled the archive with the vital information from the cloud. Everything except the transactions from the last 2-3 days before the deletion was saved there. These were retrieved and the records were restored.

* No one on the Finmap team has access to our users’ data. Therefore, there is no risk that any of the managers could delete the company or any of the data.

The result is

✅ Nikolai now has systematic financial accounting for several companies.

✅ It is easy to keep track of cash turnover. Thanks to Finmap’s simplicity, Nikolai has quietly delegated this task to project managers and a driver who handles purchasing and delivery of goods. The employees enter all the transactions themselves and thus save a lot of time for the owner and managers.

✅ The payment calendar helps to avoid cash gaps. The service warns of the possibility of a shortage of money and Nikolai can plan in advance how to raise additional funds.

«The payment calendar helped us to plan our income and expenditure so that we knew whether we had a cash gap or where it might occur. We had time to react and avoid such a situation».

✅ In addition, thanks to the payment calendar, the owner always knows to whom, when and how much his or her business owes, and who owes how much to them. It helps to plan the budget for the month ahead and beyond.

✅ Nikolai’s business does not now lose money due to mishandled receipts. Even if a receipt is lost after purchasing materials for a client’s site, the amount spent has already been entered into Finmap. This means it will not be forgotten and can be easily confirmed to the customer by simply restoring the receipt.

In addition, customers like this kind of systematic accounting. They can see how much was spent on their project and where exactly the money went. This adds credibility to the company.

✅ Businesses save money on the services of a CFO:

«At the level where we operate, we should have hired someone to handle the finances a long time ago. But with the Finmap service there is no need for that yet,» says Nikolai.

✅ One of Nikolai’s companies, which has implemented Finmap for fintech, has grown by 400% in one year. And last year, even despite the pandemic, there was ~150% growth.

«In particular it is a credit to Finmap, because even in difficult times we understood how much money we had, what we could count on, what we could buy and so on.».

P.S.
– Why did you decide to implement Finmap in your business?
– Because it is cool

To implement systematic cash flow management and see the full picture of your business at any time, connect Finmap at the link:

Try Finmap for free

14 days free. Our care service will help you find a deep solution and use maximum service opportunities for your company.

And to find out more about Intelligent System’s consultancy services, click here: https://intelligentsystem.com.pl

Present Perfect Agency is a language services agency that helps
businesses with translations, support, business documentation and everything related to languages.

Website: https://presentperfect.agency/
Facebook: @present.perfect.translations

Elena Mironik is the founder and head of Present Perfect Agency.
She first used Finmap while working for an IT recruiting agency.
In her business she has been keeping track of finances in Finmap since the first day.
Elena likes to keep track of money, especially when it comes in.

In your opinion, when does a business need to implement cash flow management?

1. After the cash gap, so as not to repeat the experience
2. When profits fall, to find the cause
3. When the business gets big enough
4. Before the cash gap occurs in order to avoid it

Of course, it is never too late to implement cash flow management, but ideally a smart entrepreneur will have a system for accounting for money from the first day of business. Elena, the founder of the language services agency Present Perfect Agency, agrees with this. “From the very first transaction, I started keeping all the records in Finmap,” she says.

In this case study, we explain why even though she runs a small business, Elena decided to keep system accounting right away and how Finmap helps her.

Problem

Originally, Elena worked at an IT recruiting agency, but at the end of 2020 she decided to strike out on her own and founded the Present Perfect Agency. Both then and now she trusted Finmap to account for business money. Why?

The deciding factor to try Finmap was its simplicity.

Elena learned about the service from Alexander Solovyov (co-founder of Finmap), whom she had known for a long time. She saw on social networks that he was developing a solution for financial accounting. Therefore, when the IT recruiting agency had the task of accounting, Elena immediately decided to try the product.

Before that, she had analyzed services to automate processes. However, she found only solutions suitable for large businesses, which were too complicated and expensive for a small company. Finmap, on the other hand, was simple, straightforward, and accessible.

When Elena decided to start her own business she knew from experience that she wanted to use Finmap to keep records.

Task

Elena had no difficulty in keeping a financial account. But there were three key tasks:

• Accounting shouldn’t take a lot of time. Elena knew that she was already going to be spending a great deal of time getting her business off the ground and didn’t have extra time to spare manually maintaining spreadsheets.

“The lack of scalability, the manual operations, and the limitations in the amount of data make the whole process around an Excel spreadsheet quite time-consuming,” Elena told us.

• She wanted simple to use and easy to understand data:

“Both Excel and Google spreadsheets require a certain amount of expertise. Every time I needed to calculate new values I had to reopen Excel, perform manual operations and recalculate. I didn’t start my business to become a spreadsheet expert.”

• Keeping records in one place. At her job at an IT recruiting agency, Elena encountered situations where she had to give someone access to a spreadsheet. But at the same time she didn’t want to open all the data. As a result, she had to create copies of the tables. Of course, afterward they got mixed up, and the meaning and logic of their maintenance was forgotten. It was easier to burn everything and start all over again, than to figure out what was what.

The Decision to go with Finmap

“I’m glad I don’t have to use some big-business solution and try to bolt it onto the smaller projects I’ve had to work with.”

After analyzing the financial accounting at her former places of work, Elena noticed that many important indicators were not taken into account. In Finmap, she started entering absolutely all data, including hosting and email costs. She categorized expenses and revenues*. In this way a system appeared and payments stopped getting lost.

* Categories in Finmap allow you to designate types of income and expenses. This helps you keep track of income and expenses in each specific type. For example, how much a company spends on Facebook ads, how much it earns on one particular project.

When she started her business, Elena also set up accounting by category right away. Present Perfect Agency has a small number of fixed costs (e.g. software for translators), as well as variable costs for paying translators depending on the projects.

All expenses can be planned in advance and tracked in the Payment Calendar* to avoid cash gaps.

* The payment calendar in Finmap displays all scheduled receipts and expenses by date. For example, you specify that you pay $500 in office rent each month on the 17th. The payment calendar will note each month on the 17th that you have $500 to spend.

Elena also finds the account panel very helpful. Present Perfect Agency clients pay to accounts in Ukraine, foreign banks, personal cards, cash, and can even do it in cryptocurrency.

All actual information about the amount of money in the accounts is displayed in Finmap. Elena doesn’t have to go to each bank and wallet separately. She can see at any time how much money is on hand and where it is exactly in the company right now.

It is also important for Elena to keep track of the movement of funds, to understand where they are coming from, and where they are going. The company has accounts in different currencies, not only in Ukraine but also abroad. The “Money/Cash Flow” report helps her in this.

* The “Money” report in Finmap shows your cash flow. It allows you to see how much money is coming into the company and how much is being spent.

Another key report at Present Perfect Agency is the “P&L “* statement. With its help Elena can identify profit for a certain period, which departments are generating profit, and where she is incurring loss.

* P&L report is a profit and loss statement. Shows the company’s profit and loss for a certain period, for example, a month. To do this, all expenses for the same period are subtracted from all income for that period.

It is also important to Elena that she can enter all the data in just a few minutes, not only from her computer, but also through a Telegram bot. Therefore, the information is not lost and is always as up-to-date as possible.

Because business has been going well, Elena recently hired an assistant. As a result she is now able to delegate some of the record keeping. With Finmap it is easy to set restrictions and choose what information the employee can add, what information can be viewed, and what information is reserved for Elana’s eyes only. This means she doesn’t have to make copies and create chaos in accounting for the sake of confidentiality.

Because business has been going well, Elena recently hired an assistant. As a result she is now able to delegate some of the record keeping. With Finmap it is easy to set restrictions and choose what information the employee can add, what information can be viewed, and what information is reserved for Elana’s eyes only. This means she doesn’t have to make copies and create chaos in accounting for the sake of confidentiality.

As a result

“It’s that headache you take off yourself and you don’t have to think about it along with the other issues in the OP that come up every day.”

✅ When Elena worked for an IT recruiting agency, she learned that Finmap was an efficient, easy-to-use system for recording money. She saw that with Finmap not only was incoming money from clients and expenses for recruiters’ bonuses recorded, but also many fixed costs, such as hosting fees, corporate e-mail, etc. were organized and easily accessible. This past experience was the reason she chose Finmap when she opened her own company.

✅ It is convenient for Elena to create useful reports. Finmap itself generates them on the basis of the data entered in the form of clear charts and graphs. Reports can be exported to PDF or Excel.

“In our last job (at an IT recruiting agency), we had a tradition of managers also reporting to employees. And, of course, it’s convenient when you can just upload a PDF and that’s it,” Elena shared.

✅ A systematic accounting of finances is also set up at the agency. Elena sees at any time how much money is in each account, which payments from clients have been received and which are pending, how much has been spent, and what payments are planned.

✅ Accounting takes minimal time. This is especially important in a small business when the owner has many tasks on a daily basis and no large team to delegate to.

“Everything is in front of your eyes, you press 2-3 buttons, and you can enter/receive all the information.”

✅ To enter data, all you have to do is use a Telegram bot. That is why nothing is lost, because you can add incoming or outgoing data even when standing in traffic or drinking coffee.

✅ And most importantly, Elena notes, thanks to Finmap there is “an understanding of where we are going, how we are developing, whether we are scaling and what is worth paying attention to.”

To implement systematic cash flow management and see the full picture of your business at any time, connect Finmap at the link:

Try Finmap for free

14 days free. Our care service will help you find a deep solution and use maximum service opportunities for your company.

You can learn more about the Present Perfect Agency at: https://presentperfect.agency/

Finmap, a cash flow management service for businesses, closed a new round of investments amounting to $1.2 million. Presto Ventures, Sturgeon Capital, SID Venture Partners, startup incubator Startup Wise Guys, as well as the investment companies BRISE Capital and TBI Bank CEO Peter Baron, all took part in the round.

The investment will be used to expand the team of developers, increase marketing, and extend service into Central and South Europe. Finmap will continue to develop and adapt to meet the needs of users in these markets. Further integration with new banks and CRM systems, as well as adding an invoicing option, are also planned for 2022.

Finmap is a simple and convenient cash flow management service for modern businesses, with accessible functionality and a user-friendly interface. It synchronizes with user accounts via API, allows business owners to set up a payment schedule, makes it possible to delegate the data entry process, and provides in-depth, easy-to-understand analysis of all financial transactions.

The service ensures anonymity and security of data storage, as it does not require clients to provide official data about the company (for example, USREOU code). The data is stored on cloud servers using the banking standard of data encryption. In addition, the transmission channel from the browser to the server is encrypted using SSL protocol.

Subscriptions for small and medium-sized businesses cost from $14 per month.

“Cash flow management is an important part of the business for entrepreneurs from all over the world. Understanding the amount of money that is generated and consumed is the only real way that you can see and understand the true state of your company in order to make critical growth and development decisions. Technological approaches in money management will help to effectively control and develop your company. Currently, we are working with companies from 12 countries, with plans to expand into Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain, and Turkey,” report Finmap founders Alexander Solovei and Ivan Kaunov.

Until they discovered Finmap Presto Ventures, one of the investors, assumed there was a lack of innovative solutions for cash flow management services.

“In 2021, Finmap showed rapid growth in business performance, completely relaunched the product and expanded the team. Such results aroused investor interest. In this round, the company was further strengthened by core innovation capital from the Czech Republic and the UK. Finmap has new markets ahead, many growth opportunities, more to offer their clients, employees, and investors, and therefore an even more exciting adventure. We at BRISE are happy to support the team and be by their side on this journey,” said Alexander Yatsenko, Managing Partner at BRISE Capital

“Sturgeon Capital is pleased to be part of Finmap’s funding round. The product is elegant in its simplicity, powerful in its functionality, and clearly solves a pressing business problem. We believe that with a strong team and experienced investors, Finmap will continue to strengthen its position in existing markets, while also reaching out to new markets to drive growth. We look forward to being part of that.” comments Robin Butler, Partner at Sturgeon Capital.

Startup Wise Guys made their first investment in the project in early 2021, when the Finmap team joined their acceleration program and continued their support after the release.

“While the team initially focused on scaling in Ukraine with very promising results, during our acceleration program they invested their time to re-launch the product, taking many first-user ideas into account in preparation for an international launch. This launch in several Eastern European countries looks very promising. And the way Ivan and Alexander coordinated their teams in scaling (and doing it all completely remotely) is impressive and a strong indication of their managerial potential,” said Cristobal Alonso, Global CEO at Startup Wise Guys.

Dmitry Vartanian, Managing General Partner at SID Venture Partners, believes “the Finmap project has a good combination of funders with expertise in IT solutions and business aspects. A strong team has created a quality product that provides effective solutions to common problems of the largest SMB segment of the market. Financial accounting for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs becomes easier, which opens new opportunities for their development, while the educational component of the service allows them to influence the general level of financial literacy. Finmap became one of the first portfolio investments of SID Fund I, as it not only corresponds to our investment focus, but also has a predictable potential for scaling, in particular, outside of Ukraine.”

Finmap integrates with 2000+ European banks and PayPal, Wise, Revolut, ApiXDrive, Fondy services, as well as 1C and Western Bid data import.

Integration with PrivatBank, monobank, PUMB, Alfa-Bank and Raiffeisen Bank Aval statements import is available for Ukrainian users. It is also possible to add accounts in more than 30 cryptocurrencies (BTC, ETH, LTC, ADA, BNB etc).

In addition to the desktop version and Telegram bot, this year it is planned to launch a mobile app for iOS and Android

About the service:

Finmap was founded in 2019 by serial entrepreneurs Alexander Solovey and Ivan Kaunov. At the beginning of 2021, Dmitry Dubilet, who is also the co-founder of the fastest-growing neobank in Europe monobank, joined the team. In the same year, the company attracted a round of investments from Ukrainian and European venture capitalists.

Over the past year, the Finmap team grew eight-fold, from 7 to 58 specialists, all working entirely remotely.

Try Finmap for free

14 days free. Our care service will help you find a deep solution and use maximum service opportunities for your company.

Modern business faces numerous challenges that often require innovative solutions for success. When entrepreneurs launch new ventures or projects, financial management becomes critically important to ensure the stability and growth of the company.

In this context, the experience of Anita Solovei and her financial director Bohdan Puzansky is particularly interesting. With the help of Finmap, they successfully implemented a systematic financial management process. In this case study, we will examine in detail how Finmap helped address the challenges posed by business expansion and how significant results in financial management were achieved.

Key Business Projects of Anita Solovei

Anita Solovei is an entrepreneur who manages several businesses across various fields:

1. Instagram page Be My Guest, which specializes in short-term apartment rentals in Kyiv, allowing tourists and business people to stay in comfortable apartments for short periods.
2. Instagram hotel Live.Here.Hotel offers guests comfortable rooms and an individual approach to each client, highlighting style and atmosphere.
3. Online camp "The Path of the Orange Blogger" is a project offering educational courses for bloggers and those who want to develop their online presence.
4. Instagram page Blog of Anita Solovei, a personal blog where Anita shares her experiences, ideas, and advice with her followers.

Anita Solovei actively develops these projects, combining traditional and innovative approaches, which requires efficient financial management and precise accounting.

Challenges faced by the business

As Anita's business grew and the number of directions increased, Bohdan Puzansky, the financial director, faced numerous difficulties. Initially, financial accounting was conducted using Excel. However, with the expansion of projects that cover both offline directions (real estate rentals, mini-hotel) and online activities (educational programs, Instagram blog), this approach became inefficient. Managing expenses was especially problematic, as funds were often withdrawn from personal cards, leading to data confusion and complicating financial analysis.

Before the pandemic, the business was actively engaged in short-term property rentals, managing 60 apartments, which required daily accounting of large volumes of income and expenses. The pandemic forced a re-evaluation of priorities, with the focus shifting to the blog and info products, which increased the number of directions and complicated accounting for the 20-person team.

Project Specifics

Anita Solovei and her team manage several businesses, each with its own characteristics:

1. Be My Guest Apartment Rentals
   Short-term apartment rentals require constant tracking of income and expenses, which change daily. The need for accurate accounting of each transaction is critically important to determine the profitability of each apartment.
2. Live.Here.Hotel
   The hotel business requires not only financial management but also client service, which complicates accounting. Expenses may include staff wages, maintenance, and other operational costs.
3. Online Courses
   Running online courses requires systematizing expenses for advertising, learning platforms, and other services related to the course.
4. Anita Solovei's Blog
   The blog also has its own expenses: content creation, promotion, technical maintenance, etc.

With the appearance of several directions, there was a need to simplify the process, as managing Excel spreadsheets began to take up too much time. The large amount of data made it difficult to understand what was really happening in the business.

Therefore, Finmap was tasked with the following:

• Systematize accounting to see the overall picture of the business and data for each direction separately.
• Simplify accounting and spend less time on it.
• Make the data visual, so that at any moment, the financial picture of the business could be quickly understood without spending time on analysis.

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Establishing New Financial Principles

Bohdan immediately decided not to create several companies in the service but to manage accounting in one, dividing it into Projects. After all, the company is essentially one. There is a general bank account from which money is distributed across different directions. Therefore, it was more convenient to create several projects within one company to see:

• how much money the business has overall;
• how financial flows are distributed;
• which direction is working well and which is not.

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At the first implementation of Finmap 1.0, each apartment in the short-term rental business was made a separate project. There ended up being 70 projects. On the one hand, this helped track the profitability of each apartment.

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On the other hand, such a number of projects complicated accounting, as expenses were often shared. For example, the purchase of towels, bed linen, and cleaning supplies. There was one expense, but it had to be distributed across 70 projects. Therefore, the first use of Finmap was quite challenging.

Evolution of Management Strategies

With the start of the pandemic, the demand for short-term rentals significantly decreased. Anita and Bohdan noticed that business efficiency had dropped, although time expenses remained high. The decision was made to rent most of the apartments for long-term leases and abandon part of the real estate. The main focus shifted to educational courses and the blog.

Now, Bohdan manages 7 projects in Finmap instead of 70. All apartments were combined into one project, as most of them are rented for the long term, and the data doesn’t change much from month to month. However, thanks to the ability to divide one payment across several projects, they can effectively manage the finances for each apartment individually. Tags are used for detailed accounting, which allows for a quick view of the information on each property.

Categories and Payment Calendar

Bohdan actively uses the Categories functionality in Finmap to clearly allocate expenses and income among different aspects of the business. This functionality allows him to easily structure financial flows, separating payments related to real estate management, educational projects, and the blog. Thanks to this, Bohdan can see not only the overall picture but also analyze each business direction in detail.

Categories help him quickly identify where financial performance changes are occurring, enabling him to respond promptly and adjust strategies. This is particularly important as financial flows can vary greatly for each of his projects: real estate has stable long-term income, while educational courses and the blog may experience more dynamic changes due to seasonality or market demand. Thanks to such financial organization, Bohdan finds it easier to manage the business and make well-informed decisions quickly. He also uses the Payment Calendar to plan income and expenses, which helps track cash inflows and avoid liquidity gaps.

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It is very convenient to label them with categories and track how much money is being spent where. This also helps to notice when some variable expenses become fixed, so they can be planned in the Payment Calendar for future reference.

In the Payment Calendar of Finmap, you can plan Income and Expenses. Moreover, if you add future expenses or receipts, the Payment Calendar will show whether there will be enough money or if there’s a risk of a cash gap.

How to Simplify Financial Accounting: Bohdan’s Lifehacks for Effective Financial Management‍

Financial accounting can seem like a daunting task, especially when projects and expenses accumulate. However, Bohdan shares practical lifehacks that can help streamline finances and avoid unnecessary stress:

• Enter information daily. But if that’s not possible, at least make notes; otherwise, things are forgotten even by the evening of the same day.

• Connect accounts and cards in Finmap so that transactions are entered automatically.

• If you have several projects or directions, but the same employees work in them, it’s better to separate salaries from projects and make them a separate category of expenses. For example, if you have a hotel, a blog, and a course, but the same marketer handles social media for all of them. 
• If this is not done, it’s difficult to allocate each salary to all projects. And tying it to just one direction is wrong because one project would bear the costs for all.
• Don’t hesitate to reach out to Finmap's support team.

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Transparency and Control: The Results of Using Finmap in Anita Solovei's Business

The implementation of Finmap allowed Anita Solovei and her team to systematize their financial accounting, combining all the data in one place. Now, it is convenient to track both the overall financial status of the business and the indicators of individual projects. Thanks to automation and transparent reports, financial control has become much simpler, and expenses—more understandable.

• Financial accounting for all 7 projects of Anita Solovei has been systematized. Now all the data is in one place. It’s convenient to view both information about the financial state of the entire business and individually for each project.
• At any moment, Bohdan can check how much money is in each account and on each card. He no longer needs to log into the personal accounts of each bank separately. Plus, it’s immediately clear how much money on the card belongs to the business. This is especially convenient when there are cards that are used for both business and personal needs.
• Now, Bohdan and Anita know exactly what expenses the business can afford. Finmap has information about planned expenses and how much money is currently in the accounts. It’s easy to assess what will remain at the end of the month and whether they can spend on something extra.
• Now, small expenses are accounted for, such as bank fees, which were previously not tracked because the amounts were insignificant. However, over a month or a year, they accumulate into large costs.
• Reports no longer need to be made manually—the Finmap program performs the analysis on its own. Now anyone who needs to can access and view the entire picture of the company. And thanks to the clarity of the reports, even those who don’t understand much about finance can see what’s happening in the business.
• Accounting has become simpler. Now, less time is spent entering information and analyzing it.

Watch the full episode of "If Only I'd Known Earlier" with Anita Solovei and find out:

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• What questions every entrepreneur should answer.
• How Finmap helped her avoid the theft of $4,000 and 20 sets of bed linen.
• What Anita wishes she had "known earlier" about finances and business management

^{*The interview was recorded before the full-scale invasion by the russian federation. Currently, the participants in the video communicate exclusively in Ukrainian.}

Bohdan Puzansky, the financial director, and entrepreneur Anita Solovei were able to successfully solve their financial management issues by implementing the Finmap system. This program allowed them to organize their accounting, simplify financial processes, and achieve significant results in controlling expenses and income. Finmap helped Anita Solovei and her team focus on business development and implementing new ideas, ensuring stability and transparency in financial processes.

Thanks to the systematization of financial data and convenient tools for financial management, Anita Solovei's companies can now effectively plan and control their expenses, ensuring stable financial growth.

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