Libeo's user:Capucine Frèrejean, co-founder
Company:The Cali Sisters
Location:Paris
Industry:Catering
Number of employees:60
Features:Invoice automatic collection
Aggrement:Traditional catering services
Capucine Frèrejean founded The Cali Sisters with her sister Juliette – a group of restaurants serving Californian cuisine and featuring all things Californian. The two sisters also launched a second restaurant and published a recipe book. Capucine looks back on how Libeo has simplified and streamlined her daily life as an entrepreneur.
“Eclectic, difficult to define, but both healthy and tasty”– that’s how Capucine Frerejean defines Californian cuisine. With her suppliers, she keeps the same philosophy close to her heart. Essentially, it means locally-sourced food.
So you have the coffee roaster at one end of the street, the bakery at the other end, the meat comes from Boucheries Nivernaises (Paris, 8th arrondissement), and everything else comes from France or not too far away.
The Cali Sisters – a few figures:
Two restaurants in Paris
60 employees
Between 3,500 and 4,000 meals per week
£500,000 monthly turnover
Between 50 and 60 supplier invoices per month
Before Libeo, Capucine Frèrejean processed her supplier invoices the old way. She would receive them by email or even by post. Then, she would have to store them, make sure she can locate everything, print it out, scan it, then categorise it before sending it to accounts at the end of every month. A dreary and time-consuming process!
These tedious steps would bring two significant risks:
Either losing an invoice,
Or paying it twice.
Back then, the first Cali Sisters restaurant had just opened. Capucine and Juliette could have done without the burden of managing invoices manually.
“Compared to how things worked before Libeo, now we’ve reduced the amount of time we spend on collecting, paying and analysing supplier invoices by two thirds! It means I can focus on business – setting up future restaurants, team management and cash flow.”
Things are different with Libeo, and in a good way: no more sheets of paper lying around, no more folders to sort out, no more hours spent scanning and entering invoices into our accounts, etc.
Of all the features that Libeo offers, there are two in particular that Capucine appreciates:
Invoice collection: it sounds trivial, but being able to offload this task by enabling suppliers to send their invoices directly to Libeo, has “changed (Capucine’s) life”.
Payment at the due date or a defined date: “I just pick the date on the calendar tool, and then it’s out of my mind. So I can focus on other things knowing that the payment will be issued on time”.
Capucine Frèrejean’s days are pretty full: managing supplies, kitchens, restaurant rooms and customers. While Libeo cannot cook for her, the platform gives her an almost complete overview of her supplier commitments, so she has total control over her cash flow! Everything she needs to focus on what matters: the business of her two restaurants.
“I appreciate being able to integrate recurring invoices automatically: it means I can forget about these monthly expenses. Libeo just gulps them up directly from the site in question (electricity or phone bills, Amazon, etc.) and then processes them without my having to get involved in any way.”
With Libeo, managing a growing business is very straightforward. For each new restaurant, all one has to do is fill in:
The bank account details,
the VAT number,
and the company registration number.
It allows the new email address to be created instantly. Then, all you have to do is send it to suppliers to send in their invoices.
Libeo was also instrumental when the Cali Sisters opened a second restaurant during the construction phase. The project management was significantly different from when they built their first restaurant. With Libeo, they knew exactly how far the works had got; they could track progress and avoid any double payments.
For Capucine, no doubt that using Libeo throughout the construction had a very clear impact on the whole project:
Better overview of payment tracking.
Better anticipation: service providers could be informed upstream, so the relationship established was based on trust.
Smoother communication.
Construction work doesn’t stop because of outstanding payments or lost invoices.
Keep growing. Capucine and Juliette are now looking at new locations outside of Paris and abroad. Indeed, Libeo will have a crucial role to play in all of that! As long as the volume of invoices justifies it, they will continue to work with this system.
If she had to describe Libeo in a few words, Capucine Frèrejean would say simplification, speed, fluidity, and visibility.
“Suppose I had to talk to my colleagues about Libeo. In that case, there are a few things that come to mind immediately: it takes the administrative burden off my shoulders, it’s quick and straightforward to get it up and running, and it provides me with a complete overview of my business”.
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