Climbing Higher at Month-End: Bergfreunde and FloQast

A passion for climbing and all things outdoors has helped mountain sports retailer Bergfreunde transition from a small business into an international brand. Founded in 2006 in southwest Germany, the company has scaled new heights every year, and now serves customers across Europe.

While Bergfreunde's reputation for quality, competence, and service has helped it summit both physical and figurative mountains, those factors also define its finance function, which has evolved over the years to ensure that the company maintained both high regulatory and accounting standards year on year.

And, just as climbers rely on the right gear to help them reach their goals, Bergfreunde’s accountants need the right software to sustain their performance.

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Our close process was a combination of external and internal work with a lot of manual emails and Excel sheets. Since we were growing, we wanted to bring the whole process in house and get a clear overview of everything. That’s why FloQast became an objective for us.

- Markus Kimmerle, Head of Accounting

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Before FloQast

Bergfreunde’s Head of Accounting Markus Kimmerle and Senior Accountant Alexander Kimmel set out the details of the company’s transformation with FloQast, which took place in 2018.

In 2017, prior to FloQast, Bergfreunde’s accounting team was relatively small. Closing involved a combination of internal and external manual work, email communication between stakeholders, and a reliance on Excel spreadsheets. In that environment, month-end tasks were prone to errors, difficult for managers to review, and often took over a week to complete; up to twelve days in some cases

At the same time, as the company was growing, leadership realised that the time had come to change the finance function. This meant bringing its accounting processes in-house to boost accountability and transparency while adding automated speed and efficiency to the close.

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Implementing FloQast

Following preparatory steps, the FloQast implementation took Bergfreunde just two weeks.

Markus attributed the speed of that execution to FloQast’s clear communication and depth of real-world industry expertise which ensured the new tools were always aligned with the company’s goals.

The Bergfreunde team structured the FloQast implementation around balance sheet items, using the platform to assign clear roles and responsibilities, and define steps for each part of the process, adding, deleting or adjusting steps as necessary.

That approach has enabled Bergfreunde to establish a clear, repeatable process for each close activity, from inventory and accounts receivable/payable to reporting and tax.

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FloQast transformed our predominantly manual close to a clean, automated process. And in addition to shortening our completion time, there was a huge increase in quality.

- Markus Kimmerle, Head of Accounting

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The structure that FloQast provides has also helped Bergfreunde manage its growing team: the platform ensures that every individual knows what is expected every month, and can take ownership of their tasks. Meanwhile, managers have a clear overview of close progress, can perform reviews efficiently, and identify emerging problems quickly in order to avoid bottlenecks.

Beyond individual accountants' roles and responsibilities, FloQast has also contributed to the collective cohesion and efficiency of the close, eliminating the need for individual task lists. The platform serves as a single source of truth that ensures everyone in the finance department is on the same page and can collaborate effectively at month-end.

Connecting Compliance 

In addition to efficiency and visibility, FloQast is playing a growing role in Bergfreunde’s compliance framework. While compliance was not apart of the initial implementation, the accounting team has since brought key internal controls into the platform, and now uses the system to match each control to a step in the monthly close process.

From a practical perspective, the FloQast implementation has helped the Bergfreunde accounting team achieve its close speed goals, reducing month-end completion time from twelve days to five days or less.

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Without FloQast, reducing the close to five days would have been challenging. It helps to have this overview, to see the different steps and responsibilities, and be able to organise from end to end -especially at a time when the company is growing quickly.

- Markus Kimmerle, Head of Accounting

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The Next Big Climb

Given Bergfreunde’s ambition and the challenges that business growth brings, the company is ready to take on its next big climb with FloQast.

Meanwhile, Markus pointed out that Bergfreunde also intends to leverage FloQast to add a tax compliance workflow in order to bring the same kind of speed, efficiency, and visibility into the company’s reporting process.

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On a team level, FloQast makes it easy to track progress and to identify problems and dependencies. But I also really appreciate the product feedback response: as a customer, I’m recognized and appreciated. I trust in the platform as a long-term partner.

- Markus Kimmerle, Head of Accounting

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Business growth inevitably brings change. But, while periods of transition are challenging for all companies, the strength of Bergfreunde’s partnership with FloQast is helping the finance team approach the close with confidence, strengthening operational foundations, and enabling the company to stay collectively focused on its future.

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With FloQast it’s all about usability and adoption. Customer feedback is taken seriously and the team puts in the effort to increase the product's quality for us.

- Markus Kimmerle, Head of Accounting

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