How Bundesliga club Hertha BSC relies on Agicap for cash flow coordination

Sven Gebhardt is a native Berliner and a football fan, and he has many years of experience as a management consultant. His projects have included working with small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as start-ups, where he helped with financial planning. In 2016, he finally found his dream job, where he could combine his passion for numbers and business with his love of football at the longstanding Berlin club, Hertha BSC, when he became the club's senior controller.

However, he soon realised that Hertha is much more than just a football club in financial terms: it is a company with numerous and diverse payment flows.

The cash flow case of Hertha BSC: not just a football club

When Sven talks about his job as Senior Controller at Hertha BSC, he has a persistan smile on his face. He is "super happy" with his "very emotional job" and enjoys it "very much". Yet the experienced finance manager does great things every day with limited resources and, since recently, with the cash flow management software Agicap. After all, he has to keep track of a multitude of business areas of the association and their individual cash flow management requirements.

According to Sven, Hertha BSC is primarily known as a club that focuses on professional football. However, the organisation also has other sports areas, such as bowling, table tennis, boxing, and football for the blind. Moreover, the team is very modern, with an e-commerce branch and running ticket sales. Not to mention, there are demands that arise from members, player transfers, event organisation, and match days, among other things. The multitude of parallel actions leads to complexity in managing the club’s cash situation, which can only be brought under control through digitalisation and real-time data. In this regard, Agicap proved to be a tailor-made solution.

Before the Agicap experience: A regular in the accounting department

The coordination of payment flows is one of the challenges at Hertha BSC. Like other football clubs, this task requires close management to ensure there is always cash available to make upcoming payments. This used to require close communication with the accounting department for Sven Gebhardt. He was then forced to repeatedly ask the accounting department for the bank data so that he could manually update and check his Excel spreadsheet. If a bank balance did not match, Gebhardt and his colleagues from the accounting department spent a lot of time trying to find the error. In the end, Gebhardt often sat in front of three or four very long Excel lists and compared figures.

It was time to challenge this process. Agicap proved to be the perfect solution to the problem. Through the direct connection to the banks, the cash flow tool provides the controller with the desired data immediately and without detours via the accounting department.

After the introduction of Agicap: More independence, more time

"I not only have access to the bank balances every day, but I can also see every transaction and allocate it myself," says Sven Gebhardt, pleased with the ability to streamline his work with Agicap. He now has completely new possibilities: simple booking and allocation rules through Agicap's categorisation function for recurring bookings, a look into the past, the future and the current situation for a better overview. And what's more:

The Hertha BSC controller is relieved that he now has all the company's financial information at his fingertips through Agicap. This means he no longer has to rely on his colleagues for data, and can make decisions more quickly and reliably. Reporting to his superiors is also easier, as he can provide real-time and projected data directly in the custom dashboards of the Agicap mobile app. This is much easier than using an Excel spreadsheet, which often requires a lot of explanation.

Sven Gebhardt describes his experience with Agicap as cash flow management software in a modern football club as "digital, flexible, and intuitive."