About Yotpo

Yotpo is one of the leading global retention marketing platforms that helps e-commerce brands market themselves and retain customers. As a market leader, Yotpo simplifies everything from collecting and displaying reviews to creating customized referral programs for top global brands such as Steve Madden, Allbirds, Dossier, and many more.

The challenge: cash flow visibility & efficiency

1. Delayed cash visibility

Reporting on cash burn and cash flow took weeks because it was a manual task requiring the team to log in and pull reports from 20 different portals. They also had to wait until they closed the books to start this process. This not only meant that Yotpo lacked the ability to create cash reports without significant manual effort, but even more importantly they lacked mid-month cash visibility needed to properly manage cash and act on critical cash flow issues in real time.

2. Manual Reconciliation Processes

The Yotpo finance team had to reconcile bank payments to invoices manually every day. This means manually identifying each bank payment to the correct customer and applying to the correct invoice. This process caused delays in AR processes.

3. Customer billing experience issues

As cash application was manual, customers often made payments but still received payment request notifications via email, causing confusion and frustration. 

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The large amount of manual work meant that Yotpo had to continue hiring new bookkeepers to keep up with the real-time reporting and reconciliation demands as the company scaled its transactions.

“The company is scaling and transactions are increasing all the time,” said Moshe Sarusi, Yotpo’s Head of Financial Operations. “We don’t want to just continue hiring more people to handle it. Not just because it costs more, but because it’s only a short-term fix.” As such, financial automation was a focus for Yotpo and they had spent a couple of years looking for a solution before discovering Nilus.

"We have cash sitting across multiple entities, geos, and accounts across 20+ banks and processors. When we wanted to see a view of our cash positions in order to understand our cash flow, adjust forecasts mid-month, or track against our KPIs, this had to all be done manually by our treasury team and would take weeks from month end.”
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Rotem Landa, CFO of Yotpo.

Manual cash management delays critical cashflow decisions

“We have cash sitting across multiple entities, geos, and accounts across 20+ banks and processors” said Moshe Sarusi, Yotpo’s Head of Financial Operations. “When we wanted to see a view of our cash positions in order to understand our cash flow, adjust forecasts mid-month, or track against our KPIs, this had to all be done manually by our treasury team and would take weeks from month end.” 

This not only meant that Yotpo lacked mid-month cash visibility and insights needed to properly manage cash, but they lacked the ability to create cash reports without significant manual effort. For example, when creating burn reports, Yotpo’s team would manually categorize each transaction to understand what their cash is doing and where it’s going. This would take the team days to put together, making it challenging to optimize cash inflows and outflows in real-time.

Things didn’t get easier when it came time to close books at the end of the month. "Closing the books each month can take weeks, because of all the manual work involved,” said Rom Landa, CFO of Yotpo. Because bank reconciliation was performed manually only after the month end, it could take weeks from the end of the month to get any sense of where they stood financially. “We wanted to be able to make faster decisions to manage liquidity, adjust forecasts, and optimize cash in real time.”

Manual cash application creates customer experience issues

In addition to cash management, Yotpo also faced challenges with reconciliation. Prior to Nilus, Yotpo was manually reconciling all of their bank payments. While they were using Stripe to automatically reconcile card and direct debit payments, they were stuck when it came to checks and wires. Their bookkeepers would manually match the payment to an invoice, create and apply the payment inside their ERP (NetSuite), and then update their billing system (Zuora). 

This system created a myriad of problems for Yotpo, from inefficient collection processes, hours of work matching payments to invoices across collection and bookkeepers, and customer complaints. For example, customers would continue receiving payment request emails from their billing system until it was manually updated by the bookkeepers. “This would create a lot of noise and distraction for our billing teams and frustrated customers,” said Landa. 

After automating with Nilus

Yotpo came to Nilus with an aim to better manage cash flow while increasing operational efficiency with automation. 

“The implementation process was extremely fast and easy, with little to no effort on our side,” said Sarusi. “This meant that we had no errors and data we could trust, which was key for us.” From matching invoices to payments to creating invoices within the ERP, Yotpo now uses Nilus to automate all of its cash applications, replacing hundreds of hours of manual work with automation.

Additionally, Nilus Cash Management solution enabled Yotpo’s team to get real time cash visibility across 20+ connected bank accounts and real-time burn reports as the month progressed without any manual effort. “With Nilus we are able to see our cash in real-time without days of manual work required from our finance teams to reconcile, tag, and report on each transaction and account,” says Landa.

“With Nilus we are finally able to see all our cash in one place in real time. We see Nilus as a one-stop shop for automating all of our cash operations.”
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Rotem Landa, CFO of Yotpo.

Yotpo key benefits with Nilus:

1. Real-time cash flow visibility and insights – Instead of waiting for monthly reports, Yotpo’s team can now see where its cash is and what it’s doing in real-time. 
2. 100+ monthly team hours of manual work saved – Yotpo’s team estimates that they’ve been able to cut one hundred hours of manual work per month across their finance teams previously spent on reconciling payments to invoices and producing cash reports.
3. Dramatic reduction in billing tickets – Invoices statuses are updated up to 3 days faster meaning customers don’t get emails for invoices already paid.

What’s next for Yotpo’s financial ops

Yotpo’s team continues to focus on optimizing cash flow and efficiency, with Nilus as a key partner on this journey.  “We see Nilus as a one-stop shop for automating all of our cash operations,” says Landa. 

The next focus for Yotpo’s team with Nilus is to increase working capital efficiency and lower DSO by closing invoices faster, by further leveraging Nilus’ cash flow reporting and insights features. They already see significant improvements from their early work with Nilus, but by increasing automation and getting real time cash insights, they expect to see even more gains in these areas.