THE CHALLENGE
Manual processes that cost the team more time as the business grew
Sellpy is Europe’s leading service for second-hand items. Helping everyone live circular is core to Sellpy’s mission and the seller experience needs to be effortless from filling one of the iconic blue bags with items to withdrawing your earnings.
‘Our mission is to make selling second hand as easy as possible, anywhere in Europe,’ says Philip Gunnstam, Chief Financial Officer at Sellpy. ‘As we expand it’s really important that we manage money efficiently so we can keep our finance team lean, agile, and focused on supporting growth.’
As the business expanded to 24 countries and counting, Sellpy’s finance team saw that manual processes were quickly becoming a drag on productivity. Their key treasury operations include payment runs in multiple currencies, handling returned payments, and managing cash and liquidity across multiple banks.
Running these operations meant having to use a number of siloed systems that didn’t talk to another. Instead of one central source-of-truth, team members had to traverse between bank portals, spreadsheets, and their ERP system to get the full picture. Simple tasks like finding a transaction involved multiple steps and took a frustrating amount of time.
Simply put: the setup wasn’t working. It became a priority for the team to centralize all things money on one platform and implement it in a matter of weeks without the luxury of using extra engineering resources.
THE SOLUTION
A single platform that connects all bank accounts globally and provides full cash visibility
The team at Sellpy opted to partner with Atlar and did, in fact, manage to consolidate all their bank accounts and surface cash balances and transaction data in a single platform without needing to call on their in-house engineering team.
The fact that all of Sellpy’s bank accounts were connected within weeks allowed them to get up and running fast with minimal work. Now the finance team has access to all the data it needs to make decisions in one dashboard and can track cash balances and make transfers in the same interface.
Consolidating bank data and payments in one place has simplified reconciliation too. Payments are automatically tracked and matched to bank statements, ensuring funds are reconciled without team members having to step in and perform reconciliation manually.
With customers in 24 markets, Sellpy’s support teams are a key part of the company’s operations but accessing the right data was difficult when it was siloed away in bank portals. Now the finance team is able to increase data access for operational teams without compromising security. Team members can manage users, set granular access levels, and enforce approval workflows all from inside the Atlar dashboard.
As well as empowering other teams, crucially the new solution provides the finance team with instant visibility over live cash balances in multiple markets. This was a key requirement as Sellpy continues to scale, helping the team in making decisions and simplifying reporting.
THE RESULT
Fast onboarding and 60 hours of manual work saved per week
Fast-growing businesses can often be held back by sluggish processes for moving and managing money that don’t scale easily. Sellpy expanded to 20 new markets in 2021 and, with plans to grow further, scalability was a priority. The finance team needed to consolidate its operations, automate busywork, and have the ability to quickly add new currencies and local banks. Sellpy found this in Atlar without having to use up precious engineering resources.
‘As a company we’re highly focused on bringing second-hand shopping and selling to more and more people,’ adds Philip. ‘To continue our growth, we needed flexible treasury tooling that would scale with us without the hassle of integrating new banks or maintaining connections in-house.’
Partnering with Atlar means Sellpy’s money management is now built for scale from the ground up. Automating reconciliation has let the team slash the amount of time spent on back-office work and, with bank data aggregated in one simple dashboard, they’ve been able to eliminate manual tracking in spreadsheets too.
Sellpy’s finance team now has the collaboration tools, cash visibility, and reporting it needs to make decisions and take action more efficiently. Ultimately, this lets them support the business more effectively and help ensure simpler second hand buying and selling for more and more people throughout Europe.
Want to see what convinced the Sellpy team to switch to Atlar? Book a demo and get a guided tour of the platform.
