Björn – COO @ fino
GetMyInvoices not only has an increasingly larger feature set and more and more users, but the story is also highly interesting. There is no one who could give better insights than our Product Owner Björn Kahle. After all, he has been with us from the very beginning, can explain even complex issues in an understandable way, and invented the invoice management solution. As COO of fino, Björn has a lot to do. Nevertheless, he immediately made time for an interview when we asked him about it – and also gave an outlook on future developments.
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GetMyInvoices not only has an increasingly larger feature set and more and more users, but the story is also highly interesting. There is no one who could give better insights than our Product Owner Björn Kahle. After all, he has been with us from the very beginning, can explain even complex issues in an understandable way, and invented the invoice management solution. As COO of fino, Björn has a lot to do. Nevertheless, he immediately made time for an interview when we asked him about it – and also gave an outlook on future developments.
Björn, how did you originally come up with the idea for GetMyInvoices? I’ve been programming and then developing software for businesses since I was ten years old. In 2013, I had so many external services in use that it was tedious to download all the invoices for them. So I sat down and did some programming. Through my conversations about the topic, there were then quickly other interested parties.
What did the first version of the software look like and was the solution already called GetMyInvoices back then?Yes, it has always been called GetMyInvoices. The first version was quite different from today. It was a desktop version that ran locally on Mac and Windows computers. It downloaded invoices to the PC. The cloud version came later as user expectations evolved to not have to install anything.
Since then GetMyInvoices has grown bit by bit. How many users are currently using the invoice management solution and how many people are working on the software?We have about 10,000 customers and 25,000 users. Our team consists of 50 employees.
That’s tremendously strong growth. How does it feel to be successful in helping so many people with time-consuming and nerve-wracking tasks with your idea? Of course I’m proud that what sprang from my head works. But success also encourages me to continue – as do the comments from critics. You could say: success doesn’t make you full, it makes you hungry.
Has the development of GetMyInvoices changed you? If yes, in what way? I had to, or was allowed to, learn many new things, such as working with a large team. Solutions are different than when working alone. Decisions that were previously made casually have become considerations such as: Who needs to know what and when? It is also a balancing act to be innovative as well as fast and still have a good, working product. It’s like climbing new steps all the time.
Is this already what you were hoping for or where do you want the journey to go? I am grateful for what is there, but the road goes on. Right now we are developing many new features that will make GetMyInvoices interesting for more user groups.
GetMyInvoices has already grown enormously in recent years. How many functions can still be integrated and how many other solutions can be connected? Has the end been reached at some point or can GetMyInvoices continue to grow indefinitely?On portals from which GetMyInvoices downloads invoices, whatever is needed can be integrated. As far as functions are concerned, we are actually “completed” soon. We would have liked to integrate even more, but it is already difficult to convey everything GetMyInvoices can do. Therefore, we are moving towards developing fully integrated products, for example, travel expense reporting.
Without wanting to elicit too many secrets from you: Can you already give a foretaste of the new possibilities? Yes, there will be a banking function, among other things. Users can connect their bank account and, for example, automatically assign receipts to transactions. A new product is our “receipt messenger.” If users connect their bank account, perform a reconciliation between the bookings and the receipts, and a receipt for a transaction is missing, it can be requested via “Receipt messenger”. The solution will then ensure that the document is imported into GetMyInvoices without any effort on the part of the user. We are also working on an expansion of Fintract. Roughly speaking, this involves automatically reading out information, transforming it and transferring it to other applications – a way of expanding the use cases we cover with GetMyInvoices.
