Pierres Investissement is a real estate company managing a portfolio of assets throughout France. It currently oversees around 200 commercial tenants in various sectors such as catering, fashion retail and warehousing, with a team of 20 employees.
In recent years, the company has undergone a major internal restructuring following an acquisition.
Its invoicing process is quite specific: rent invoices are issued quarterly, and unlike traditional billing cycles, rent is payable immediately upon issuance.
The organisation is now structured around three key teams:
At the centre is Nicolas Martel, Business Analyst and project coordinator for operational initiatives.
We spoke with him about how LeanPay was implemented at Pierres Investissement, how it is used day-to-day and its concrete impact on collections efficiency.
Before LeanPay
Manual follow-up handled separately
Some invoices not followed up at all
No structured collections strategy
High unpaid rate
With LeanPay
Centralised reminder tracking in one interface
100 % of invoices followed up
Structured collections strategy
Unpaid rate cut by half
When new management arrived in 2022, one issue became immediately clear: the volume of unpaid rents was far too high. Many invoices were slipping through the cracks, putting heavy pressure on cash flow.
There were two main reasons:
“Follow-ups took an enormous amount of time. Each property manager tracked them manually in their own files,” recalls Nicolas Martel.
Collections were therefore completely unstructured, making it a priority issue in the company’s turnaround plan.
The first step in this process was to rebuild everything from the ground up.
“When the interim manager saw how disorganised things were, she set up a ‘Collections Task Force’,” Nicolas Martel explains. “We asked the property managers for the list of unpaid rents and distributed them across twenty people from accounting and legal to start calling tenants.”
This emergency measure revealed the scale of the problem:
“It was chaos. No one knew the cases they were handling. Collections were completely unmanaged.”
To restore order, management put Nicolas Martel in charge of structuring the process. After a brief market review, he discovered LeanPay, our accounts receivable software.
After a demo with Socrate Tellier, CEO and co-founder of LeanPay, Nicolas Martel and the management team at Pierres Investissement were able to make their decision: “We chose LeanPay because it best matched our needs.”
At Pierres Investissement, rent invoices and accounting ledgers are managed in two separate systems. An external provider handles invoice generation, while accounting is managed in Cegid by the finance team.
The first integration method used was manual uploads of ledgers and PDF invoices into LeanPay. This simple setup quickly made the tool operational and consistent with accounting data. Later, under Nicolas Martel’s guidance and with support from LeanPay’s technical team, the process was fully automated using SFTP for ledgers, ensuring real-time synchronisation.
Then, the configuration of the tool was carried out entirely by Nicolas Martel:“I configured the dunning plans with email templates, follow-ups at day 7, 14 and 21, customer profiles and banking details for online payments.”
Ease of use played a big part in the project’s success. Six people now use LeanPay daily: three property managers in charge of reminders, one asset manager, Nicolas himself and the property director.
Nicolas Martel also notes a clear difference between LeanPay's intuitive interface and what other solutions typically offer.
“We can really shape LeanPay to fit our needs. I didn’t even need to give in-depth training; the managers picked it up easily.”
The responsiveness of the customer support team is another strong point for Nicolas Martel, who appreciates being able to speak with our team easily whenever needed, without going through a complex or impersonal process.
The specific nature of the real estate sector requires carefully structured reminders. Since no payment terms are contractually granted, the team must decide when to start chasing tenants.
“We usually consider 7 to 10 days a reasonable delay. You can’t send a formal notice on the second of the month,” explains Nicolas Martel.
Before LeanPay, reminders were spread over several days without a clear strategy. Follow-ups were neither systematic nor multi-channel. LeanPay changed that completely.
Nicolas Martel notes a clear improvement in the processing time for follow-ups:
“The processing time for reminders has gone from 10 days to just 2. The time spent has been divided by 5.”
In terms of unpaid rent, which is common in rental management, Pierres Investissement has managed to reduce its unpaid rent rate by half.
“In 2024, our unpaid rate dropped to just 2.7 %, which is half of what it used to be.”
Operationally, all dunning plans now follow the same three-step structure, with the final stage being a formal notice letter sent at day 21. Most tenants are included in a single plan named “All customers”. A separate plan has also been created for high-risk tenants, which includes an additional pre-due reminder at day -5.
With LeanPay, every overdue tenant is now systematically reminded. No invoice is left aside. This consistency in sending reminders has had a direct impact on customer payment behaviour, observes Nicolas Martel: “Tenants have understood that there’s now a set process every quarter, and that they can’t slip through anymore.”
The entire Pierres Investissement team is highly satisfied with LeanPay, and the company is currently deploying the solution across three additional entities.
LeanPay provides finance teams with an accounts receivable software to eliminate late payments and collect 100% of their revenue.
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