sværm GmbH

The easybill success story of the online marketing agency svaerm

Maxim Bollig

Digital Marketing Manager

1. life before easybill

I won’t beat around the bush for long: Accounting and I are not friends.

In my studies there was a module that was composed of “classical” accounting, public law and cost accounting. To pass the module, you needed at least 50% of the total possible points. With top marks in Public Law and a basic understanding of Cost Accounting, it was just enough to slip through the course like a car roof under a slamming barrier that was supposed to let only the car in front through.

Of course, my destructive attitude toward accounting would eventually take its revenge. Maybe not today, not tomorrow, but someday.

When I was a digital marketing manager at svaerm GmbH and had to set up a new project one day, I had to create a quote. Without a template, just with Microsoft Word. At that time, I didn’t know anything about easybill and our small, young company didn’t yet have a specialist department for accounting.

The bidding process, including all the formulas, corrections, and paperwork, was painful, inefficient, and even a tiny bit embarrassing.

2. The way to easybill

I found out about easybill by total chance. We cooperated with an influencer, and something about her invoice didn’t fit. The VAT ID was missing, I think. To check whether everything was okay now, she sent me a screenshot from the backend of easybill.

“Invoices, quotes and delivery bills in just a few clicks with easybill,” I thought, “that sounds like it was made for me!” Briefly looking around the website and calling support, I spoke to Daniel Großkopf, from whom I requested a telephone briefing.

“With easybill, we’re seeing a huge increase in efficiency and, with very few exceptions, the documents are error-free – although we’re not yet fully using all the features.”

3. Onboarding

But I didn’t get a “telephone briefing” – that would definitely be the wrong word. It’s better to speak of holistic onboarding: Daniel Großkopf configured most of the settings for us, the whole thing on demand. Using a live model, he immediately explained what he was including where and why, and how we could adjust it ourselves if necessary.

In the process, he asked which system our agency uses to assign quotation and invoice numbers, whether we only sell services or also products, whether we calculate with fixed hourly rates, how many invoices we write on average per month, and a few other details. From our art direction Daniel Großkopf got the svaerm stationery and fonts so that all documents would be compliant with the corporate identity.

After an hour of setup and another half hour of cosmetic corrections – as befits a design-competent online marketing agency 😉 – the complete onboarding was complete and we could work directly with the software.

4. Our advantages with easybill

• Fast familiarization: Even my colleagues who did not participate in the onboarding found their way around super quickly. The operation of the drag & drop builder is very intuitive.
• Fewer sources of error: In offers and invoices without easybill, calculation errors can creep in or the document layout can be “shot up” due to incorrect operation. easybill handles the calculation without errors and the documents always look good.
• Big time saver: Setting up offers is much faster than using the “manual” method. Text modules as well as products and services can be preconfigured and loaded from the clipboard at any time. Invoices can be created on the basis of quotations, so that only the scope of services needs to be adjusted if not all services have been provided exactly as quoted.
• Simple corrections: svaerm is the online marketing agency that thinks for itself. That’s why we often change something in the original briefing, or our clients add something towards the end of the negotiation phase. With easybill, corrections no longer feel like “open heart surgery, Microsoft Word Edition”, it’s actually quite easy.
• Overview from anywhere: The documents are protected in a cloud. After logging in, they can be accessed browser-based from anywhere, even on the road via smartphone. The tax office can access them and our sales department uses the storage as a “second repository” for simplified reconciliation.
• High level of customization: User-defined service modules and text extracts, your own stationery, layout according to specifications, intelligent procedures for assigning customer, quotation and invoice numbers, and much more adapt to our requirements and processes.
• First class support: Daniel Großkopf provided us with excellent support during onboarding. But even afterwards, he and his colleagues were and are always there for us. We had requested that a second list level for enumerations be implemented. With the next update of easybill, the feature was implemented and we were informed. They also accompanied us through the change of VAT from 19% to 16% during the Corona crisis.
• Fair prices: easybill is inexpensive and the packages grow with the size of your company.

5. No disadvantages with easybill

• Unchanged chic: Support occasionally stresses to our high standards that easybill is not design software, but we have no reason to complain. Our quotes and invoices look exactly the same as before they took hours to put together in Word – but it’s just much faster.
• All formalities are correct: The documents meet the requirements of the legislator and internal peculiarities can be mapped without loss, provided that no gross negligence is committed during operation.
• It also works analog: The local in-house repository can continue to be maintained as usual. All documents can be exported to PDF format and printed.

6. Closing statement

Thanks to easybill, accounting has not become my passion, but to be fair, it is much, much more bearable than before. The overall easybill package convinced us so much that our partner company Mai Communications – agency for brand communication and design, founded in 2000 – also introduced it.

We have to say that our utilization rate is a maximum of 30%. easybill can do much more. For example, there is in-app emailing, automated dunning, a DATEV interface, a number of extensions for online stores and so on.

Although we only use a part of the functionalities, the investment has paid back many times – at both agencies.

In a small speech of thanks at the Christmas dinner, the management honored my commitment to the introduction of easybill in front of the entire staff. This personal recognition made me very happy and I am happy to share this joy with easybill in the form of this success story.

My recommendation for your company: Introduce easybill. Don’t let “digitization” be an empty buzzword in digitization-developing Germany, but start now – with digital offers and invoices.

7. About the author

Maxim Bollig works as Digital Marketing Manager at svaerm, a Frankfurt-based online marketing agency with core competencies in marketing strategy and content marketing. The agency was founded in 2018 with the mission to build swarms of followers around brands.