Ulrich Svarrer, Founder & CEO: Bonzer saves 10.000 DKK (1,000 GBP) a month with Pleo

Founded in 2017, Bonzer is a specialised SEO agency that believes that the search dynamic is one of the most evergreen ways of ensuring that you are discovered as a business. 

Whether that’s Google or Bing or Youtube, the company prides itself on living in that dynamic and helping businesses across the Nordics connect with their audiences through search. 

We caught up with Founder and CEO, Ulrich Svarrer and CFO, Johannes Max Fichtner, to learn more about how Bonzer was able to bring its entire finance process in-house (and managed by one person) with Pleo.

Hej Ulrich and Johannes! Tell us – when did you first discover Pleo? 

Bonzer and Pleo go way back, we were Beta users, says Ulrich. I remember getting the cards hand delivered – we were even invited to the Beta graduation party at Pleo’s office several years ago. It’s been great being a part of all the new product launches and updates over the years. 

Johannes has also been familiar with Pleo for quite some time. 

I first got to know Pleo in my previous employment on the other side of the table, working on the audit team for Pleo. And then shortly after I joined Bonzer, where obviously Pleo was already being used for quite some time, Johannes tells us.

Sounds like Pleo and Bonzer have been growing together. How has the set up with Pleo evolved over the years?

When I joined the team at Bonzer in 2021, we had external accountants as part of the month-end process, Johannes tells us. 

It also was during this time that we opened up our Swedish and Norwegian subsidiaries, and rolled out Pleo and with external accountants in those markets as well. 

But I had the ambition to take all this in-house. So over the course of my first year, this was my main objective. 

With the introduction of Pleo’s multi-entity feature, we could set-up the accounting integrations for all three entities directly from the platform. With this, along with other automation tools, we essentially reached a point where everything related to our finance department could be handled by one person. 

Meaning I now handle all the accounting, all the reconciliation and so on. But thanks to Pleo, I still have time to focus on streamlining our processes, improve our reporting and providing more clarity to the business and in essence, be smarter about our financial planning.

In your opinion, what are the biggest benefits of using Pleo?

We have a pretty extensive tech stack, with around 200 receipts every month. A big benefit of using Pleo is that we can have all of that consolidated into one platform in addition to doing the accounting of those receipts really seamlessly. 

The fact that we can get transparency into what we are actually spending money on through the Analytic’s dashboard – this is very important to me when doing regular review of costs. 

I would estimate that we spend roughly one to two hours a month on the accounting of these 200 receipts with Pleo. Which means we save quite a lot of time. And that is definitely the biggest benefit in my eyes, says Johannes. 

And this is something that Ulrich echoes. 

The core benefit we’re getting from Pleo is more of Johannes, in a strategic context, says Ulrich. He has more time to engage with us in more strategic matters, and in the development of the business. 

Any other favourite features or functions?

Fetch (Pleo’s Gmail, Outlook & Microsoft 365 integration that automatically finds digital receipts)  is saving me and other operational leaders in the business a lot of time, which is very valuable. If I had to convert the time saved to monetary value, it would surpass what we are paying for Pleo by miles.

Want to learn more about how Pleo can help get complete visibility of expenses while your company scales? Book a commitment-free demo and ask us anything.