How Solaris simplifies its expense management with Circula

About Solaris

Solaris is Europe's leading embedded finance platform and holds a German banking license. With over 400 employees and offices in Berlin, Paris, Milan and other cities, Solaris enables companies to seamlessly integrate financial services into their products via APIs. In addition to technological innovation, Solaris attaches great importance to efficient and employee-friendly processes – Circula plays a central role in this.

The initial situation: Challenges in expense management at Solaris

Before the introduction of Circula, Solaris faced significant challenges in spend management. This mainly concerned the inadequate digitalization of the spend management process, which was inefficient, time-consuming and difficult to scale. This became an increasing problem, especially in view of the company's rapid growth: in 2023 alone, Solaris grew by 30 percent compared to the previous year. This resulted in five key challenges for our software solution: 

Challenge #1: Manual and time-consuming processes

Before the introduction of Circula, expense management at Solaris was time-consuming and cumbersome. Employees had to collect receipts, scan them and submit them manually by email. The result: a high susceptibility to errors and a high workload for the accounting department and employees.

Challenge #2: Scaling problems

The growth of Solaris to over 400 employees posed major challenges for the existing processes. The increasing volume of submissions pushed the finance team to the limits of manual processing.

Challenge #3: Compliance and data security risks

As an embedded finance platform with strict regulatory requirements, Solaris must ensure that all processes are fully compliant with data protection regulations. However, the manual processing of employee data posed risks to data security and significantly increased the susceptibility to errors.

Challenge #4: Lack of integration with existing systems

Solaris lacked a connection between the ERP system, accounting and tools such as Personio. Data had to be transferred manually, which made the work unnecessarily complicated and led to more errors.

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Why Solaris chose Circula

Solaris chose our expense management platform because it demonstrably simplifies expense management and makes financial processes more efficient. With our app, employees can quickly capture and automatically submit receipts. The integrated OCR function reads all relevant data - without any additional effort. 

This applies, for example, to the processing of the “meal allowance” employee benefit: employees simply photograph their receipts with the app and submit them directly. Ramona Simion-Scheindt, Team Lead Communications & Content at Solaris, explains: “Without Circula, I would collect invoices, scan them and only submit them at the end of the month. With the app, I do it straight after lunch.”

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Another decisive reason was the seamless integration into existing systems. New employees are automatically assigned to the right departments via the API link with Personio, and the ERP integration facilitates the further processing of output data. This reduces manual work steps and avoids errors.

How Circula impacts Solaris’ spend management

At Solaris, Circula has been the central solution for simpler and more efficient expense management for over four years - and for good reason. With over 400 users, Circula has become an integral part of everyday working life, saving both employees and the finance department noticeable time and effort. Below we have summarized the biggest positive developments at Solaris thanks to Circula: 

Circula’s Lunch Benefit‍

Employees use the Lunch Benefit on average two to three times a week. Receipts are photographed directly in the restaurant and submitted via the app - reimbursement is quick and uncomplicated. Without Circula, the process would take up to 30 minutes a day; with the app, it takes 5 minutes. “Without the app, I would collect invoices and not submit them in the end. With Circula, everything is done immediately,” says Ramona Simion-Scheindt. 

Easily manage training and travel expenses‍

The annual training budgets at Solaris are also managed via Circula. Employees upload their invoices and receive reimbursement after they have paid. The same applies to travel expenses, which can also be easily submitted via the platform.

More efficient processes in the finance department‍

Circula significantly reduces the workload in Solaris' finance department. Invoices are collected via the app, exported to an Excel format and seamlessly uploaded to the ERP system. Thanks to this automation, month-end closing now only takes 3-4 hours instead of several days previously. Franklyn, the Senior Accountant at Solaris, can save around 20 hours of manual work per month. Approvals are also handled easily and centrally by the finance team.

Seamless integration and customization options‍

Thanks to an API link with Personio, new employees are automatically transferred to Circula, which significantly reduces the administrative workload. In addition, Circula offers flexible customization options to map cost centers and department budgets individually. Each expense is automatically assigned to the correct cost center - perfect for the transparent management of departmental budgets.

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