The Viennese start-up campus weXelerate has become the focal point of the Central and Eastern European start-up scene over the last two years. In one of the coolest locations in Vienna, an ecosystem has been created that supports start-ups from all over the world in taking the next steps. COMMITLY is part of the weXelerate ecosystem as an alumni and service partner. We spoke to Andreas Herrele, Head of Finance at weXelerate, about finance and Cash flow planning .

Mr Herrele, you are Head of Finance at weXelerate. "Home of Innovation" - that's what it says on your website, and indeed weXelerate has moved the scene in Austria quite a bit in a relatively short time. What exactly does weXelerate do?

We bring interesting start-ups together with our large corporates and, with the help of the ecosystem, support the start-ups in developing more quickly. To this end, weXelerate accompanies the corporates in their innovation process. According to the respective needs discovered in the process, suitable start-ups with interesting business models are scouted and then accompanied for a period of time in the accelerator programme, the so-called batches, in order to promote their development.

In our building at Praterstraße 1, right next to Schwedenplatz in the heart of Vienna, an interesting ecosystem of investors, the innovation departments of leading corporates, service partners, mentors and interesting start-ups has developed, whose joint actions have already produced some interesting success stories.

In the meantime, weXelerate has become an established and well-known figure in the start-up scene. I was positively surprised myself at how high the level of awareness was in my own network.

That speaks for success in the market and in the scene! 

weXelerate thus also fulfils a very important task as a community builder. COMMITLY is also one of your service partners. And if I read it correctly, a new location has just been opened in Austria?

Yes, that's right. We want to take the idea of the ecosystem to other areas of Austria, and Vorarlberg with its very interesting business landscape with so many "global hidden champions" was our first choice. The project was presented to the public in a press conference on 29.5.2019. A building was rented from the Bank für Tirol und Vorarlberg (BTV), which is currently being adapted and will become the home of our ecosystem in Western Austria from September 2019.

BTV will also play a role in this ecosystem, and a first well-known tenant from the start-up scene has already been found. We are therefore confident that the ecosystem will revive quickly, similar to Vienna, and produce visible successes as early as 2020. There will also be some innovations in our range of services, more about which will be announced at the office opening.

What challenge does this business model pose for you as Head of Finance?

Our offer is free of charge for start-ups. The Accelerator Program is largely financed by the annual contributions paid by the corporates. This leads to a highly cyclical inflow to Cash position, but a relatively linear distribution of expenditure. As a consequence, long-term planning and regular monitoring are required to avoid running into a bottleneck. To reduce complexity, we have tried to organize and largely automate rental activities independently of this. In this area, both income and expenditure are almost linear, so only the deviations need to be managed.

You are an interim manager at weXelerate. That's not an easy task either, because especially the start-up has to be very fast and efficient. How did it work out for you?

I actually started relatively "softly". My predecessor noticed that there were several important construction sites that needed to be worked on before she left and immediately brought me in to help. Tasks were agreed between weXelerate and me in a contract for work. My initial task was to work with the management to create a business plan adapted to the current situation, which would also serve as the budget for 2019. This made it possible for me to enter the business model very well and then also to take on the succession in an orderly manner. In this way, the points could be worked through bit by bit over the last few months.

In the meantime, I have reached the last To Do: the training of a successor. This means that my commitment to weXelerate is already coming to an end, at least for the time being. I am honoured to be part of this great team with such an outstanding spirit, so that the always clearly defined day of farewell is simply difficult.

In any case, I will stay with the weXelerate network in the long term, and further joint projects are expressly not excluded!

How have you organised the finance area and what role does COMMITLY play in this?

In terms of size, we are a typical Austrian SME with a staff of about 20 and a growing trend. Logically, the team cannot be particularly large and the division of labour is not yet very advanced. However, due to the necessary substitution arrangements, everyone has to be able to stand in for the others anyway. The core team for administration consists of three people. One colleague is in charge of facility management and takes care of all aspects of the building, from the investment to the rental contract. In addition, there is a colleague who is responsible for invoices, incoming invoices and personnel administration. Bookkeeping and payroll accounting are outsourced to the tax consultant.

I am responsible for classic controlling tasks, financing and legal matters. COMMITLY serves as a central tool for managing my Cash flow plan and for ongoing expenditure control. Regularly checking the tool is therefore a must. I also use it as my main source of information about transactions, as it is much more user-friendly for information purposes than our bank's online tool. As an additional feature, COMMITLY is also available to me as an app on my smartphone, making it relatively straightforward to use anytime, anywhere!

And how important is the topic of Cash position in general?

We are still a start-up ourselves, so the question almost answers itself. Of course, this is a big and permanent challenge. Since our income is highly cyclical due to our business model, but our costs are almost constant, forward-looking planning and ongoing control are essential. And that's where COMMITLY comes in. It allows me to constantly monitor expenses against the budget target. In addition, I can get a good feeling of where we stand in the accounts even before the month-end closing.

You use the Team Edition. How have you integrated COMMITLY organisationally? Only in the financial area?

The power user for COMMITLY is myself due to the distribution of roles. Regularly, at least once a week, we synchronise the account data and categorise the expenses. Thanks to the flexibility of the tool, we have modified the categories in such a way that it is very similar to our chart of accounts and thus enables very good reconciliation.

In addition to the finance team, we have also integrated the management and offer them a self-service with the tool. Thanks to the dashboard, they can immediately see where we stand in comparison to the plan and also immediately check which payments we have received.

It is not uninteresting to be able to immediately check the truthfulness of claims about payment behaviour made in discussions with customers or suppliers...

What advantages do you see for weXelerate by using COMMITLY? 

Thanks to the flexibility of the categorization, we were able to roughly estimate the result even before the actual month-end closing in the accounting department. Added to this is the expenditure control function thanks to Cash flow plan and the documented variances. The information functionality for the management is of course also a great advantage, as it helps to deal with some queries quickly without taking up scarce team resources.

And the fact that the whole thing is also available as an app for the smartphone crowns this effect as a real top feature.

As an expert and interim manager, you look after or will look after several clients. Will you also use COMMITLY for other companies in the future?

Every company needs a good overview of its Cash position . While large companies with integrated ERP systems and an extensive in-house team have completely different options at their disposal, software such as COMMITLY can provide real support for smaller companies.

Especially in a constellation like ours, where the bookkeeping is outsourced to the tax advisor, COMMITLY is a great help in maintaining an overview and keeping track of the most important information in real time.

Thank you very much for your time!

Credits: Photos by weXelerate