Fivestars is a small business platform that combines payment technology, customizable rewards and promotions, and automated marketing to drive sales and reach customers. Over 70 million people use Fivestars at more than 12,000 small businesses for over 100 million transactions every year. In 2021, Fivestars was acquired by London-based, leading global payments service provider SumUp, enabling the company to expand its offerings to small business owners globally.

Before Vareto, the finance team’s planning and reporting processes were manual and Excel-based. With the company’s growth and acquisition, the team recognized it needed an FP&A software solution. They found that Vareto’s solution and fast implementation was best suited for Fivestars’ dynamic and fast-growing business.

“It’s been a great relationship with Vareto,” said Director of Finance Luke Yuan. “With our Customer Growth Manager, it’s been white tablecloth service. We were able to get our first reports set up in three to four weeks. I have never seen a cloud-based FP&A software company more focused on my success as a customer. Vareto provided a lot of training and ensured that we didn’t have to figure it out on our own. With Vareto, we have a weekly touch-base on progress and constant engagement with our Customer Growth Manager. She started our relationship by asking about our goals and truly understanding our business. She ensures that we’re getting exactly what we need from Vareto.”

The relationship between Fivestar’s finance team and their Customer Growth Manager is also strengthened by their shared work experience in FP&A.

“Vareto has Customer Growth Managers with previous FP&A experience, which is really helpful,” Luke shared. “They’ve shared with us best practices and helped us implement the reporting in a way that makes sense for our business and ties the numbers together. Our Customer Growth Manager has been a thought partner. I see her as an extended team member of our finance team.”

Their Vareto Customer Growth Manager worked closely with the team to set up key business system integrations. Fivestar’s NetSuite and Workday data now automatically feed into business dashboards in Vareto, including department-level budget versus actuals (BvA) reporting. Previously, departmental BvA reporting was done manually with significant time spent researching and piecemealing how expenses rolled up by department. Now, the finance team can quickly see real-time actuals data and access historical spend rollups by vendor and department. These direct integrations have reduced time spent by at least 10% in every forecast process, allowing the team to use those time savings for more high-impact work.

With real-time data piped into Vareto, Luke and his team can better give leadership a holistic picture of the business. 

“With our dashboard, we have a better understanding of our business. We can get the data on the spot. We can see high-level, month over month, what is the company growth, what is the transaction revenue going on, and if there’s any seasonality. Vareto helps me put together the story for executive leadership. I’m able to drill in where we need to in order to deliver the data. Vareto has been the most effective tool for getting those key FP&A numbers.”

Vareto has also helped strengthen the finance team’s relationship with its business department partners. 

“If we get an ask about how we performed back in June for travel, we can get the data on the spot with Vareto,” Luke said. “We can instantly tell you the run-rate with travel, commissions, and salary. Vareto helps the finance team build credibility and get faster decisions.”