Interview with Alex Naumann about lexoffice and COMMITLY

Alexander Naumann is a busy businessman and, among other things, managing director of Pro.Tec Solutions – a LegalTec platform for enforcing accident pension claims with the aim of supporting clients professionally when facing specialist insurance staff.

Alex uses COMMITLY to monitor and plan his company’s liquidity. At the same time he uses lexoffice for his accounting and the associated processes.

Today he talks to Chris in an interview about his experience after connecting the two tools. How does it work, what does it deliver, how much effort is it in everyday use, can he recommend it?

How long have you been using COMMITLY?

We have been using COMMITLY since March 2021.

How long have you had lexoffice connected to COMMITLY?

We connected lexoffice to COMMITLY right at the start.

What motivated you to use COMMITLY?

With Pro.Tec Solutions we have a very particular business, in the sense that we offer our clients maximum flexibility in paying their invoices. That means we offer various instalment models alongside the classic one-off payment. For our business model this means that in many cases everything we invest today only pays off after several years. To keep control of this model, I need flexible and efficient cash flow planning.

We soon realised that we would not get far with Excel spreadsheets, because they are complex, error-prone and time-consuming, and on top of that they are hard for several people to use together and provide almost no automated visualisation of liquidity scenarios.

It soon became clear that we needed a professional tool for this. That realisation was the starting point for looking around the market and trying out a few tools.

Alexander Naumann is a busy businessman and, among other things, managing director of Pro.Tec Solutions.

What finally tipped the balance in favour of COMMITLY?

There were mainly 3 reasons. First: usability. It was important to me that a tool is intuitive to use, reduces complexity and cuts the time required to a minimum. COMMITLY meets all of these points outstandingly well for me.

Second, the price. In my view COMMITLY offers an unbeatable price-performance ratio compared with the competition, and on top of that the lovely user experience I just mentioned. The price packages fitted our requirements well, so we quickly found the right set-up.

Third, customer support. Perhaps the most important point in the final decision was the quality of the direct customer support. I want to make this very clear: this support was exceptional. From the start we never had the feeling of being fobbed off as one of many. We received the right solution to every question immediately. We did not experience that with other tools, and so choosing COMMITLY was almost a no-brainer for me.

And why lexoffice — what makes it your tool of choice for automated online accounting?

As with everything I do, I look at different solutions on the market and check how far they meet my requirements. With lexoffice it was above all how intuitive the tool is to use. I also find it unparalleled how lexoffice works with categories, for example how easily items can be assigned to categories, but also the overview of all categories. I like that a lot. The good combination with the app is of course very helpful too.

All the functions really are nicely done. In my case the very attractive starting conditions from lexoffice were also decisive. At the time lexoffice offered me 12 months free of charge. It was a good incentive and therefore a very conscious decision. And it was a good decision, because I am still absolutely happy with lexoffice.

What motivated you to connect your lexoffice account to COMMITLY?

Among other things, we handle all our invoicing with lexoffice. That is where I see all our clients’ one-off and instalment payments. Thanks to the connection and the corresponding export/import function, I can transfer all these items into my COMMITLY cash flow planning automatically and do not have to check and enter the status of my open items manually. That saves me an enormous amount of time.

Because my actual incoming and outgoing bank payments are represented via the PSD2 interface, I therefore have an up-to-date overview of my actual liquidity, with the corresponding changes being worked into the forecast automatically. That works really well.

How did connecting lexoffice with COMMITLY work, what did it take and how much effort was it?

Honestly, I can only vaguely remember it. All you have to do is go to Integrations in the COMMITLY settings, click a button for “connect lexoffice” and log in to lexoffice as usual. And that is it. And as I said, given that I can hardly remember it, it must have worked flawlessly (laughs).

What does the workflow between the two tools look like in practice?

For ongoing operations too, the most important thing for me is having the open items available up to date and at a glance. For that I have to click “load lexoffice invoices” in COMMITLY; the synchronisation then runs through automatically and without any trouble.

That is particularly important for us when clients come back with questions or when investment decisions are coming up. Here it is decisive to have up-to-date figures. In other words, in that case the bank data and the open items list are synchronised. This workflow works really well and takes very little time.

Is there anything you particularly like about COMMITLY?

The categorisation, for example. What I particularly like about COMMITLY is the standard template that comes with it. Very little manual configuration was needed, because COMMITLY provides a very good foundation. I also think the visual presentation is great, I am very happy with it.

Something else I like a lot are the liquidity scenarios, how easy it is to create such scenarios and the ability to play through different scenarios and have them visualised in the dashboard. That really is well implemented, I think.

Very helpful for me is that I can set up several companies separately, but also consolidate them automatically via COMMITLY along with the associated lexoffice accounting and open items, so that I have an up-to-date overview at all times. That helps me manage the various companies and at the same time shows me where we stand in total. Very important for me.

Also very useful for what I need at Pro.Tec Solutions is the access control, which is very nicely done in COMMITLY. It lets me assign individual rights and access to particular companies, and to the accounts linked to them, to different employees. That allows me to make liquidity information transparent for different groups in a specific way and with different levels of detail. After all, not everyone should be able to see everything all the time. That really is great functionality and helps me enormously in my use case. Otherwise I would have to work laboriously with several accounts, which would be a nuisance.

In your experience, where does COMMITLY have room for improvement?

Something I would sometimes like is to be able to create liquidity scenarios for longer than 12 months; that would help us a lot.

Chris from COMMITLY: … you can extend the forecast yourself in the settings to up to 5 years

Alex: Ah, I did not know that at all, I must have missed it so far, that is of course very good (laughs).

It would be nice if I could simply move items in my plan when they are delayed, for example, without having to delete them and enter them again.

Chris: … that can be done very easily in COMMITLY by assigning the budget or item in question to a new date with a click. The plan is then adjusted automatically.

Alex: I have not even tried that yet, but I am pleased, because it will save me a lot of work and time again (laughs once more).

Well, then there is really only one wish left, regarding instalment payments on open invoices. Example: a client decides to buy one of our services for EUR 10,000. He also negotiates a down payment of EUR 3,000 and payment of the remainder in instalments spread over 3 years. When I connect lexoffice with COMMITLY, I see the invoice amount. So far so good. If I now want to use this amount in my scenario planning, up to now I still have to spread the remaining amount (that is, less the down payment) over the remaining period manually. That is not much effort, because I only have to enter the partial amount once and then choose the repeat frequency (monthly, for example).

But of course it would be even nicer if the instalment information could be transferred automatically and processed accordingly in the cash flow planning. Not a must-have for me, but certainly a nice-to-have. (Note from the COMMITLY support team: this feature has already been requested by customers several times, is already on the roadmap and will soon be available to all customers.)

And perhaps VAT as well: what would be cool is being able to enter the corresponding VAT rate for the items. At the moment I solve that in COMMITLY with a rule that assigns the percentages to the items and then takes 19% VAT into account with a one-month delay, for example.

Would you recommend the two tools COMMITLY and lexoffice?

Yes, absolutely. Both tools are essential for running my business and part of my economic decision-making. Especially when you connect them with each other. You have to try it out yourself and develop a routine. After that you can no longer imagine everyday business life without it. And I would like to stress once again: the personal support at COMMITLY was and is really exceptionally good.

Thank you very much for your time!

Credits: Photos by Pro:Tex Solutions