Why Yobota Optimized Their Process to Manage SaaS Subscriptions
We recently caught up with Yobota’s finance team to see why they decided to optmize their process to manage their software subscriptions.
In this story
Yobota is a cloud-native core banking platform located in the U.K. Its cloud-based operating platform enables financial institutions and fintech startups to create their own products and services to serve their customers.
Michael Joyner joined Yobota in 2019 as Head of Finance and since then, the company has increased its headcount from 35 to 85+.
As the company grew, Michael looked for ways to improve and automate processes around their SaaS spend.
“We wanted to automate tasks so we could focus on more strategic things. As we grew to 85 people, we also wanted to stay as lean as possible from a finance point of view. And that's exactly why we chose Cledara.”
Setting up a process for SaaS subscriptions
Before moving to Cledara, Yobota used spreadsheets to manage their SaaS subscriptions and track month-to-month spend. The process was manual and unable to support the company growth.
“To find out what we were spending and where we would have to track it through transactions and bank statements, but we didn’t know exactly who made the transaction, to whom it was assigned and which departments were using which tools,” Michael states.
“We didn't really have visibility. We had to manually pull data out of Xero and put it into Google Sheets every time,” Michael explains.
How Cledara helped
Since implementing Cledara into their day-to-day operations, not only the finance team at Yobota has a reliable process to track all their SaaS subscriptions and spend, but the entire company can now easily request and see the software they need.
“I no longer get asked questions on what tools we are using and how much they cost. Anyone at Yobota can now see what applications are in use and what they cost,” Michael highlights.
Cledara also automatically detects any surprise charges before they happen, so they can stick to budgets and catch unexpected variances.
“It’s great because you can catch things in real-time rather than doing a retrospective at the end of the month,” Michael elaborates. “Also, when I do financial reporting for senior stakeholders, I now know the reasons why things may have increased,” the head of finance points out.
Removing the inherent risk of a single company card
Before Cledara, Yobota used one business credit card to pay for all their software subscriptions. That one card was tied directly to the main company account.
“Obviously, there's a bit of an inherent risk there. If someone were to gain access to our bank details, we'd basically have to get a new card completely,” Michael notes. Not to mention that all the software applications associated to that one card would be in jeopardy.”
The process of requesting a new application was different as well.
Employees would go to Michael when they needed a new tool and he would physically hand them the card to sign up for a new subscription. This was a manual, time-consuming inefficient process that could not scale with their growth.
How Cledara helped
With Cledara, Michael and his teams now assign a unique virtual card to every subscription, which has proven as a significant improvement in their processes and efficiency.
“The virtual cards are just so much better. I can now cancel any card associated with a subscription by just switching it off, instead of going through the traditional route.” Michael states.
Indeed, Cledara’s online Mastercards allow teams to suspend subscriptions payments in a click. Michael is also extremely fond of the new process for employees requesting new applications.
“The ability to spin up and send anyone a virtual card in a couple of minutes is super useful. Given that we've been working remotely for two years now, the process would have been quite different.” Michael asserts.
The company also has better control and security over its outgoing SaaS costs. “You can control the cost base a lot more because Cledara is a prepaid account, we transfer a certain amount there. And from a fraud point of view, it's a lot more controlled.” Michael states.
Simplifying SaaS invoice collection
Before Cledara, the team had a shared email inbox to which all invoices were sent.
From there, an outsourced bookkeeper would access it and manually upload those invoices to Xero, the company’s accounting software. Besides taking more time, the process was prone for error and incurred in expensive outsourcing fees.
How Cledara helped
With Cledara, invoices are now automatically uploaded to transactions, which helps reduce the time dedicated for manual accounting reconciliation tasks as well improving a process that was set for human error.
“Cledara is the best tool in its class from what I’ve seen because it focuses on a specific problem that finance people have,” Michael says. And he continues, “Cledara solves many operational challenges, like the monthly chase for SaaS invoices and bookkeeping inefficiencies. And, Cledara will grow with us as we scale.” Michael concludes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Tymit connected Cledara to its NetSuite accounting system and mapped the full reconciliation workflow in under 30 minutes. Native integration means the monthly close runs automatically rather than as a manual export and re-entry exercise.
It depends on volume and integrations, but the saving can be substantial. Tymit reduced its monthly software reconciliation from close to a full working day on a generic corporate card tool to between 15 and 30 minutes on Cledara, even while managing 102 subscriptions.
Spend management is organised around the transaction: what was spent, on which card, by whom, across the whole business. Software subscription management is organised around the subscription itself, tracking each tool's renewal, invoice, and owner. They answer different questions, so a company often needs the second even when it already has the first.
Shared corporate cards let several people spend behind one card, so a missing invoice or an unclear renewal points to a whole department rather than a person. Software subscription management changes the unit you manage from the card to the subscription, and assigns each subscription a single named owner, so finance always knows who is responsible for a given tool.
Pleo and Cledara are built for different jobs, so the question is less which is better and more which job you need done. Pleo is a strong tool for managing company spend and expenses. Cledara is built to manage software subscriptions specifically, organised around the subscription and its owner rather than around the transaction. Finance teams whose main problem is managing software, not tracking expenses, tend to choose Cledara for that reason.
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