Bati-Termites reduces DSO by 15 days in just 3 months

Bati-Termites is a construction company specialising in wood treatment, termites and fungi. Its Managing Director, Varma Beedassee, uses LeanPay daily to manage payment reminders and reduce late payments. Here is his full feedback.

Before LeanPay

Manual customer reminders

No DSO calculation

A complex Excel file to maintain

100 000 € to recover

With LeanPay

Automated payment reminders

Real-time DSO calculation

A simple and intuitive solution

15 000 € additional cash flow per month

100 000 € in overdue unpaid invoices

As part of its operations, Bati-Termites works extensively with property management companies. The business offers two types of services:

• Recurring services: annual contracts billed monthly, with a 30-day end-of-month payment term. This represents around twenty invoices per month.
• One-off services: such as wood or fungal treatment. In this case, a quote is issued. Once accepted, work begins after payment of a deposit invoice of around 55%, payable upon receipt. After the intervention, a final invoice is issued, payable within 30 days end of month.

Varma Beedassee explains how they operate with subcontractors: “For large one-off projects, we work with subcontractors. Once the deposit is paid, we schedule the intervention and give the go-ahead. We then issue the final invoice while the subcontractor invoices us at the same time. Our agreement is simple: once the property manager pays us, we pay our partner. This way, we always maintain positive cash flow throughout the project.”

When launching the business just over a year ago, they quickly faced issues with invoices not being paid on time.

When following up on overdue invoices, several reasons were given:

• change of property manager
• invoice sent to the wrong address
• incorrect contact person

“At one point, we had nearly 100 000 € outstanding on a turnover of 500 000 €. Work deserves to be paid. Improving cash flow became essential.”

Another challenge in the property management sector is the number of stakeholders involved: property managers, assistants, accountants, etc.

Before LeanPay, Bati-Termites managed invoice tracking in Excel, with multiple data points to update:

• invoice number
• invoice date
• customer name
• internal reference
• amount
• type of case (recurring or one-off)
• person in charge
• next reminder date
• comments

“At the beginning, the file was huge, with countless rows. It was our first tracking tool,” explains Varma Beedassee. At the same time, they relied on a management assistant to handle phone and email reminders. “It helped reduce the number of outstanding lines, but it doesn’t happen overnight. Each month, new invoices kept coming in. We were stuck in a cycle: it would go down slightly, then rise again.”

“My goal was clear: reduce our DSO and reverse that curve. Especially since in construction, the average DSO is around 72 days in France.”

Not satisfied with this situation, Varma Beedassee wanted a proper solution: “I needed to know exactly who we had chased, when, how and why. I wanted something reliable and easy to use, because cash flow is the lifeblood of a business.”

15 000 € additional cash flow per month

Varma Beedassee started researching solutions online. He spoke with a competitor but never received a proposal. At the same time, he discovered LeanPay: “I got in touch with Socrate Tellier and had a great first impression. He was very responsive.”

Bati-Termites uses the softwatre MEG to issue invoices. To integrate with LeanPay, they chose automatic PDF invoice reading combined with bank synchronisation.

All invoices are sent to LeanPay via a dedicated email address.

“Socrate told me: export all your unpaid invoices and send them to this email address. You’ll see, everything will load automatically. And it did. The ease of integration was a key factor for me. It doesn’t rely on Excel files and is very practical.”

“I tried it, loved it, adopted it, and I haven’t stopped using it since.”

Every day, Varma Beedassee logs into LeanPay to review the day’s overview and actions. “I created different reminder workflows for recurring contracts, deposit requests and final invoices. We contact customers to confirm receipt of invoices and remind them before the due date. With LeanPay, we can act proactively.”

The feature he uses the most is automated reminders, significantly reducing manual follow-ups compared to Excel. LeanPay has also saved time on tracking late payments and analysing financial performance. Another key benefit: cash collection forecasts.

The results were immediate:

“Before LeanPay, I wasn’t calculating DSO. I only saw overdue invoices flagged after 30 or 60 days. LeanPay calculated my DSO at around 42 days. Three months later, it dropped to 27 days.”

Cash flow also improved significantly: “We now have a positive cash flow trend of 12 000 € to 15 000 € per month.”