“As we scale we need tools that are built to scale with us. Modernizing how we move and manage money with Atlar has been critical to the future growth of our business.”
THE CHALLENGE
Highly manual payments and cash management processes consumed team resources
Loomis Pay, the payments arm of cash handling giant Loomis, combines cash and electronic payments in one point-of-sale system to help merchants simplify operations and improve cash flow. Its core payment and treasury work includes:
- Running the daily payment cycle across banks in multiple European countries and currencies.
- Reconciling incoming payments from partners and matching them to bank statements.
- Managing cash at multiple banks, including monitoring balances and moving funds to keep enough liquidity in each account.
The finance team at Loomis Pay found its processes were slowing it down after the business grew to more than 600 merchants in a few short years. Incoming and outgoing payments were manually tracked and reconciled, turning the AR/AP process into a daily struggle that weighed team members down. As a lean team, Loomis Pay’s finance function saw that its legacy workflows and tooling would not keep up with the company’s growth.
Keeping track of balances and managing liquidity across banks was another source of friction. Instead of one central place from which to manage cash and make one-off payments, the team had to manually take action in separate bank portals and lacked a single source of truth for cash and liquidity. This ate up time and led to human error, a major pain point for a finance team at a regulated, publicly traded company like Loomis, where secure and reliable reporting is key.
As Loomis Pay grew and payment volumes increased, so did the number of errors and returns. Tracking and troubleshooting these returns consumed even more of the team’s time, especially during the month-end close. Finance and support teams couldn’t access the right information quickly since it was scattered across different systems.
Taken together, these bottlenecks meant the Loomis Pay team spent more than 100 hours each week on back-office treasury and payments work: managing and reconciling payments, initiating payouts, and tracking cash balances. Ultimately, this started to limit the team’s ability to help the business scale quickly and prepare for the next stage of growth.
THE SOLUTION
Replacing siloed systems and spreadsheets with one source of truth
Loomis Pay partnered with Atlar to simplify payment initiation, automate reconciliation, and improve cash and transaction visibility, so the team could focus on enabling business growth instead of manual operational tasks. It saved engineering resources too, since the team no longer has to maintain connections to multiple banks and finance systems in-house.
“Before Atlar, the finance team spent too much of its time on simple payment and treasury tasks like looking up specific transactions and manually reconciling different systems,” says Nils P. Lossius, CFO at Loomis Pay. “Now we have all the data from multiple banks and systems in one dashboard, ready at our fingertips, and the team has more time to focus on finance work that supports actual growth.”
The finance team now uses Atlar to automatically reconcile all incoming and outgoing payments, radically reducing the time spent on payments, and can manage its cash in one place. Cash balances and liquidity are easier to check, and the team is notified in real time about incoming payments and can make one-off payments in a few clicks. This simplifies things for the accounting team too, since all money movement is reconciled end-to-end and tied to bank statements.
Returned payments used to be a huge time sink for the finance team too, but are now fully automated through the Atlar platform. When a return does require attention, the right people can access the right information quickly with all transaction data consolidated in one clean, easy-to-use dashboard with user management tools built in.
THE RESULT
Over 120 hours saved, easier reporting, and a stronger base for growth
Implementing Atlar has streamlined treasury and payments for the wider company and set Loomis Pay up for the next phase of growth. It saved the team countless hours on menial tasks and made life easier for accountants and support agents, who now have payment and treasury data synced from all of the company’s banks and PSPs.
“The administrative work was a distraction from what we do best as a team – positioning the company to help stores and restaurants run and grow their business most effectively,” adds Nils.
The partnership with Atlar has brought full visibility over incoming and outgoing payments, centralized cash management, and an almost fully automated payment cycle. The team now has real-time insight into the financial health of the business and more time for higher-value work as the company expands.
Nils says it also turned what used to be a headache into a better experience for employees across the business.
“The feedback from the teams using the dashboard couldn’t be more positive. Everyone loves the experience.”
Discover how high-growth finance teams gain control and save time with Atlar. Reach out or request a demo.
