Automating Payments for 300 Suppliers, Managing 30 Entities, and Tracking €15M in Debt

Girasole Energies is an independent French producer of photovoltaic electricity.

The foundations of Girasole Energies were laid in 2013 with the creation of Enerlis, which at the time was the first service company in energy efficiency and environmental management, dedicated to reducing the carbon footprint of its clients. Girasole Energies was originally a division of the group founded in 2019, exclusively dedicated to the production of photovoltaic electricity. After 3 years of growth, Enerlis spun off this division to facilitate its financing.

Focusing on the installation of photovoltaic plants on buildings rather than on land, Girasole Energies has been able to take advantage of available space and optimise resource use. This approach has also allowed Girasole Energies to contribute to environmental preservation by avoiding the use of agricultural land and promoting the harmonious integration of solar installations in urban and rural landscapes.

The entry of Mirova, a Natixis Investment Managers fund dedicated exclusively to sustainable development, into the capital in 2023 supported and accelerated their growth with a raise of nearly €100M. Together, Girasole Energies and Mirova aim to exceed 500 MWc of installed capacity by 2028.

The first solution provided by Agicap to meet the needs of Girasole Energies was the automatic bank consolidation by aggregating transactions and balances from all the group's bank accounts. Then, Girasole Energies imported the repayment schedules of its bank debts to manage their repayment in a dedicated module.

Thanks to these tools, Girasole Energies now benefits from real-time visibility of its financial flows and commitments, both at the holding level and the SPVs, streamlining the management and control of debt repayments.

The automatic bank consolidation also helps reduce errors and optimise cash flow decisions by providing precise and up-to-date information on all the group's and its SPVs' bank accounts.

Girasole Energies' executives also connect to Agicap to monitor the cash positions of the group's 30 entities in real-time.

Then, Girasole Energies decided to use Agicap to help invest their excess cash in the short term.

The finance department already had this project before the implementation of Agicap. The deployment of the tool and the advice from customer service allowed them to take action and conclude an agreement with their banking partners to invest all their available cash each evening, thereby increasing their financial returns.

Finally, Girasole Energies deployed Agicap's supplier invoice payment solution. The group previously used another software for this task, but it was considered less intuitive and user-friendly than Agicap, which is why Girasole Energies preferred to use Agicap.

"By switching to Agicap," explains Delphine Kopacki, "we observed two benefits. The first is that the dual validation part was quite easy to configure and allows us autonomous management of the validators. The second is the payment categorisation part, which greatly facilitates finding an expense, printing a payment advice, and tracking our expenses by nature."