Accounting Seed and EMPAUA Aim for Their Customer’s Success in DACH Region

Accounting Seed has certified implementation partners to assist our customers all over the world. They specialize in taking the Accounting Seed product and molding it to their customers’ business processes, creating a custom accounting solution that enables 100% real-time visibility of their financials from lead to ledger. In short, our consulting partners work on implementing, customizing, and automating our customers’ Accounting Seed and Salesforce systems.

Salesforce Partners give you the peace of mind that you’re working with the industry’s brightest and most experienced. One of them is Germany-based, EMPAUA.

EMPAUA: A Salesforce-Only Partner

EMPAUA is a European digital consultancy, headquartered in Berlin with offices in four countries. With over 1,400 customer projects completed in just seven years, EMPAUA offers general business process experience and in-depth industry knowledge. They have a team of dedicated professionals with a combined total of 100+ years of Salesforce experience, known for their fast, effective, and reliable one-stop-shop service.

Founded in 2014, EMPAUA is one of the first Salesforce-only partners in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland (DACH) and the United Kingdom and Ireland (UKI) regions. They leverage the Salesforce Platform to help businesses progress to the next level. With Till Klotz, CEO, and Rico Marder, CFO, at the lead, the top-rated software implementation company has grown to six offices with 60 employees holding over 260 Salesforce certifications.

EMPAUA has serviced over 1.3k customers in a variety of industries such as financial services, real estate, professional services, manufacturing, and travel and hospitality. All of them report outstanding results and successes with EMPAUA’s Salesforce implementations.

The company’s core strength lies within complex multi-cloud projects with Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Community Cloud, and Pardot. They also specialize in implementing AppExchange platform solutions, such as Accounting Seed, Conga, DocuSign, and more. “As a Salesforce-only partner, EMPAUA has always sought and succeeded to find solutions for every use case within the Salesforce Platform or via integrations,” said CEO Till Klotz. “The partnership between Accounting Seed and EMPAUA is aiming to bring customer success in accounting to the Sales Cloud directly on the platform.”

EMPAUA and Accounting Seed’s Partnership

Before their partnership with Accounting Seed, EMPAUA utilized Sage Financials for all of their bookkeeping needs. But, in 2018, Sage Financials announced that they would be pulling their application from the European market by the end of 2020. This shocking announcement left many companies scrambling in search of a new accounting application.

EMPAUA needed to decide not only for their own business but for their customers, too. “We as a Salesforce consultancy had all of our things on Salesforce, and the last thing we tackled was accounting, we did so by using Sage Financials. It was a bit bumpy. In 2018, they pulled from the market, and we had to search for something that could fill the gap. We hoped that this gap would be filled with something better in terms of performance and simplicity because Sage was very heavily overloaded,” Marder said of the search for a new accounting application.

EMPAUA discovered Accounting Seed in August 2019 as they connected with Shane Deacon, VP of EMEA Sales. “As we were expanding our footprint in EMEA, it was imperative that Accounting Seed aligned with local (EMEA) partners who fully understood how to implement accounting solutions on Salesforce as well as the local, country intricacies and legislation. EMPAUA ticked all of these boxes and more,” Deacon said of the partnership.

He continued, “EMPAUA understands the demands of the German market better than anyone. Consequently, this amazing partnership gives businesses the power to adopt our Accounting Platform and have it meet their unique needs. We’re thrilled to have a German Implementation Partner with such a pedigree within the Salesforce and Accounting Ecosystems.”

Accounting Seed is Streamlined for Simplicity

The Salesforce consultancy group implemented the application to their Salesforce ecosystem themselves without any major hiccups. “The implementation process was interesting. We basically used it as a proxy for our future customers by looking for things to look out for. We also got great support from Accounting Seed. The Knowledge Base and all the technical documents really helped a lot,” Marder said of the implementation.

According to their CFO, the implementation process with Accounting Seed was easier because of its simplicity compared to their previous accounting application, Sage Financials. “It was definitely easier to handle compared to the Sage implementation. There was easier handling because the product is way simpler but in a good way. You don’t get this overloaded functionality and complex way of how the product works. The simplicity makes it way easier to integrate it,” Marder continued.

Accounting Seed Billing and Bank Reconciliation

After discovering Accounting Seed and implementing the application, they’ve noticed huge improvements in their bookkeeping across their four entities. “After five or six months now with Accounting Seed, we’re really happy with it. It’s really helped streamline billing processes in all of our entities. We have four different entities, so we have four different ledgers, and before that, everything was very separated. Accounting Seed is quite an upgrade, it’s smooth to handle, the user interface is so much faster, and overall, it gives us a really good feeling,” Marder said about their own experience so far with the Accounting Seed platform.

EMPAUA has also noticed greater efficiency and improvements in their bank reconciliation with Accounting Seed. “The integration of our bank statements and our bank rec is easier. It works pretty well compared to what we were doing before. Getting the bank transactions in and matching them to open positions is something that has taken a lot of manual work off our bookkeepers’ hands,” Marder continued.

Accounting Seed Enriches The Salesforce Experience

Accounting Seed has made immediate impacts in several areas of EMPAUA’s direct business. At the same time, it has allowed them to see their business differently, as well, enriching their overall Salesforce ecosystem. “It’s giving us another angle on how the business can be seen. We had sales, after-sales, operations, and the missing piece of the whole customer universe was payments, and I think that gap has been filled and enriched our overall experience with Salesforce,” Marder stated.

Klotz added, “All of our departments run on Salesforce, from marketing to sales to operations to finance. It all happens within Salesforce. One of the key components of accounting in the cloud is that we have four different legal entities all running on Accounting Seed. That, of course, is a huge benefit for us from an accounting and reporting perspective.”

EMPAUA Connects Accounting Seed to DATEV

Similar to Accounting Seed, EMPAUA can work with clients in every industry. This is because they understand the complexities of the DACH region and the German market better than most. The majority of businesses in DACH utilize DATEV software to comply with all of their tax regulations. DATEV is a cooperative of tax consultants, auditors, and lawyers that specialize in filing taxes for organizations in Hungary, Germany, Poland, Italy, and more.

The sync to DATEV was something they had to have according to Marder: “It was clear from the beginning that we needed to sync this with DATEV because that’s the solution every tech advisor uses for final year closes, reporting, and for sticking with compliance topics in German bookkeeping law. That was our main focus right from the beginning, like, ‘How can we make both of these systems communicate and get data from A to B?’”

With the power of Salesforce and Accounting Seed, EMPAUA mapped out a custom accounting solution that successfully connected Accounting Seed to DATEV. In doing so, data is exported from Accounting Seed to DATEV monthly for optimal tax accounting efficiency. In fact, they built a custom DATEV Connector that allows the refactoring of all bookkeeping-relevant data into DATEV readable records. Their custom connector also re-formats CSV bank exports into Accounting Seed’s OFX format via Salesforce based on the custom converter tool in Lightning Web Components.

Connection to DATEV Benefits Customers in Germany

EMPAUA is quite busy these days as they have already successfully implemented Accounting Seed for more than 100 customers. Their custom accounting solution using Accounting Seed and Salesforce is definitely secure and reliable and is equipped to help companies grow and succeed, “It’s well equipped to do that because we provided some additional functionality on top to close the gap. With the connection to DATEV, we were able to really close that gap. And also, in our existing portfolio, we have really small companies using it up to medium size businesses in the German economy. So, we’re really comfortable in supporting a wide range of businesses and process complexity,” Marder said.

In Germany, specifically, their custom connection and solution really helps fulfill VAT compliance and regulation requirements. EMPAUA has created a seamless process for compliance that assists every German business using their custom tool, “It’s super beneficial in many ways. The first and foremost is the VAT integrations. When you import all your bookings into DATEV, you can declare your VAT monthly. This is something that could theoretically be done out of Salesforce, but it wouldn’t be as seamless as importing it directly into DATEV because you would have to let DATEV handle it,” Marder stated.

Accounting Seed Increases Efficiency for German Users

The simplicity that Marder and Klotz speak of continues on with other aspects of their bookkeeping. All in all, they attribute the simplicity of Accounting Seed to a 50% increase in their bookkeeping efficiency. “The user interface alone gains 50% in efficiency because it’s really insane how overloaded the UI in Sage was and how slow it loaded. Whereas in Accounting Seed, being native to Salesforce, it’s just smooth sailing. Also, regarding the bank reconciliation and matching the open positions, it’s at least 50%,” Marder stated.

Their accounting life cycle is 50% faster as well with Accounting Seed, thanks to their custom exporting tool. That can only mean that their customers’ accounting life cycles are also closing faster as well, “For our customers, since they are using an exporting tool monthly, they don’t have to go back and look at the year-end. It’s going to be so much easier to do your year close because all of your bookings have been counter-checked, and they’ve been imported monthly via VAT redirection. So, your year close will be way more efficient because all the bookings will already be there. You don’t have to start getting all the bookings ready at the end of the year or do those checks. The efficiency gains in the year-end close will be quite substantial,” Marder said.

EMPAUA Saves Twenty Hours a Month with Accounting Seed

Klotz and Marder both agreed that Accounting Seed saves them about twenty hours a month. The efficiency gains in their processes and the tech have made the most impact. Klotz added, “We can see right now the monthly overviews are just there. Before, we had to wait a month to see if the numbers were really reliable. And now, we have our meeting on the first of the month, and we see how the business did. And that’s really key. It’s very reliable, and it really helps our shareholders understand what’s going on with the business.”

Collaboration Between Salesforce Partners is Key

Salesforce might be the golden thread of the partnership between Accounting Seed and EMPAUA. The willingness of both companies to help their customers succeed is apparent and highly important for the partnership. Both companies are very customer-focused and have won awards for their customer support.

“The relationship is very familiar with Accounting Seed. We have the right channels to approach certain topics and discuss customer’s feedback daily. Being able to pass that over to you guys ensures that we’re going to be heard and our customers are being heard. That’s just awesome and is completely different from working with a multi-national company like Sage. Like, did they even know who we were? This feels way more familiar with Accounting Seed and it’s really nice to work in that setting. We’re super happy about that,” Marder concluded.

The feeling is mutual for Accounting Seed, as we continue our growth and impact in the EMEA market. Accounting Seed and EMPAUA both prioritize customers and are dedicated to helping them grow and succeed from using the Accounting Seed platform.

All Accounting Seed partners are carefully audited and fully certified to focus on the overall success of your business. Rest assured, when you’re working with an Accounting Seed partner, your business is in good hands. Learn more about what it takes to become an Accounting Seed partner here.

A native Salesforce accounting app, Accounting Seed, provides a full 360-degree view of your business’ performance to help you and your team make the best decisions possible. Not on Salesforce? Our software can be customized to work with any system you have through a reliable connection.

Schedule a free demo today to explore how Accounting Seed helps you manage finances your way.