Specialized accounting service provider for the housing industry
Maximilian Funke-Kaiser is revolutionizing many property management companies in Germany with his company. His concept: the billing service takes over the entire accounting process for property management companies.
"This allows property managers to concentrate on the technical administration and not have to deal with the tedious bookkeeping," explains Managing Director Funke-Kaiser. The company launched with this idea back in 2016. But for the past year and a half, the accounting service has been expanded - with Impower as a software partner.
Outsourcing accounting has many advantages for property managers, explains the 31-year-old. Managers can not only concentrate on their core business, but also leave the bookkeeping to professionals. "With us, they have top accountants doing the work for them," says Funke-Kaiser. This also allows property managers to avoid the problem of a shortage of skilled workers.
In order for the billing service to manage the large number of units from the property management companies in terms of accounting, the company has to automate - on a large scale. "With the old software, we had to work very manually. That took up a lot of time and caused costs," says the 31-year-old. The provision of documents: was limited. Invoices: Had to be filed by hand.
Then Impower came along - and the property management software ushered in a wave of automation. "The program is like a data hub," says Funke-Kaiser. "Like a platform that I can dock onto and pull out lots of data." This is possible thanks to the open interface system. For example, invoices are now automatically transferred to Impower and direct debit payments are automatically triggered via the system.
"Impower is like a data hub. Like a platform that I can dock onto and pull out lots of data."
The onboarding of new customers and properties was also standardized. "If you constantly have to add new properties to the system, this is only possible with standardized processes." The billing process is also much simpler now. "In concrete terms, Impower offers much more automation and efficiency than the old program."
With the new administrator software, the billing service has saved over 100 percent of the time spent on accounting tasks. "We have perfected our internal processes," says Funke-Kaiser. Impower is like a Ferrari, he says. "You can drive it on the road and to the nearest supermarket. But we don't take it for a drive, we take it to the racetrack."
The company invests the time freed up in growth. "We need far fewer workers per unit. But because we are constantly adding new properties, we need more employees." Getting them is not a problem for them, he says. "We are very digitalized and people enjoy working for us. The ability to work completely remotely is also a plus point for us." Finding new employees is therefore not a problem for the billing service.
The new employees can be trained very quickly, says Funke-Kaiser. "Depending on their previous training, they can pick up the basics after a few days. It only takes four weeks for them to become fully familiar with the system. By contrast, familiarization with the old programs was much more time-consuming." And working with Impower is also more fun. "The difference in user-friendliness is like night and day."
"Growth would not be possible without Impower"
With Impower, he also has the opportunity as Managing Director to work from home. This suits him very well, as his wife is expecting a second child. However, most of the time that has been freed up since the introduction of the new ERP has gone into growth. "We want to grow and we are doing so. That wouldn't be possible without Impower." The software for property managers is the technological basis for the success of the billing service.
