Norman Meyer runs a real estate platform. He thinks about properties, clients, and growth. Expense reports? Not so much.
"Side-theatre," is how he puts it. The stuff that has to happen, but shouldn't take centre stage. So when Immobilie1 AG decided to switch to Pleo, Norman's bar for success was simple: make the admin quiet down.
What he didn't expect was how quickly it would.
The DATEV effect
If you've spent any time in German finance software, you know the feeling. You open the system, and before you've done anything, there's already a knot in your stomach. Not because the software is bad — it's often very capable — but because it was built for specialists, not for the people who just need to submit a receipt and get on with their day.
Norman wanted Pleo to feel different. Less a tool to be learned, more a tool to just use.
That meant onboarding had to do more than explain features. It had to actively prevent the kind of anxiety that makes people avoid a system altogether.
Three things, done well
When Norman sat down with Pleo Onboarding Manager Bart Schepan, they came ready. Questions prepared, edge cases mapped out, integration requirements in hand.
Bart's move? Slow it down.
The fastest route to confidence isn't answering everything at once. It's finding the three or four things that matter most right now, and making those feel effortless.
"It wasn't about the final details or flourishes," Norman says. "But about the key features that allow me to get started with a low threshold."
The approach kept the onboarding from becoming a feature parade. Each session had a job. Each session got it done.
What good structure looks like
It's easy to mistake thoroughness for quality. Cover everything, tick every box, leave no feature unexplained. In practice, that's a reliable way to overwhelm people who just want to process a few invoices.
Norman noticed the difference. "People are easily overwhelmed if you try to explain every cool detail," he says. "That wasn't the case here."
Our team kept pulling the conversation back to what would move things forward, away from the hypotheticals and toward the practical. By the time onboarding wrapped up, the DATEV integration questions had been answered, the team knew what they were doing, and, crucially, they wanted to use the product.
That last part matters more than most onboarding processes give it credit for.
The admin is quiet now
Norman got what he came for: expense receipts and invoice processing that just work, without demanding too much attention.
"I would recommend it to anyone with a similar use case," he says. "How to master expense receipts and invoice processing while getting these nuisances off your back as efficiently as possible."
Side-theatre, handled. Back to the main show.
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