How We Helped a Service Business Build a Financial Operating System That Scales

Client Overview

Our client is a Swedish digital services company that works with clients across Europe and North America. They had revenues coming in from both project-based and recurring contracts. They were scaling, but with so many different currencies, their team was struggling to keep their financial operations under control. 

Their income was from multiple channels like Stripe, Wise, and bank transfers, and every transaction was in 3 different currencies: CHF, USD, and EUR. Since their financial tracking was done through spreadsheets, it became harder for their financial team to track team costs and forecast cashflow. 

While their financial management wasn’t broken, they were outgrowing their current tools. They wanted more structure, clarity, and visibility into how their finances were managed. They reached out to us for a better, transparent financial system where everything was tracked in one place.

Challenges

Managing Across Multiple Currencies

Income and expenses were logged in CHF, USD, and EUR. The team used a mix of spreadsheets and reports to track exchange rates and normalize data—but this became harder to maintain as transaction volume grew.

They had contract values, team rates, and expense logs, but no way to see how profitable a service or project was. This made planning and pricing less data-driven than they preferred.

Limited Margin Visibility

Growing Financial Complexity

Recurring projects, client invoicing, credit card charges, and pipeline forecasting were being handled in different places. Without a connected view, it took time to gather insights and prepare reporting.

Need for Forecasting

They wanted a system that could help them project cashflow, team costs, and upcoming revenue from active and pipeline projects.

“We weren’t flying blind. But we were spending time stitching together the same reports every month, and still felt like we were missing a full picture.”

Here’s How We Helped

We designed and implemented a custom Financial Operating System in Airtable, tailored to the way their business runs.

Centralized System for Income, Expenses & Invoices

We brought together income (Stripe, Wise, bank), expenses (credit card + SaaS), and invoice tracking into one structured system. All values are normalized to CHF, with exchange rate fields included per transaction.

Project-Based Cost Tracking

Each project and service type now connects to:

  • Team members and hourly cost
  • Estimated hours per task
  • Contract value
  • Automatically calculated COGS and margin 

This made it easy to spot which services were driving profitability—and which ones weren’t.

Cashflow Forecasting Dashboards

We built:

  • A 3-month and 6-month outlook
  • Incoming revenue based on confirmed + projected deals
  • Monthly cost forecasts by expense category
  • Tool subscription tracking
  • Team cost breakdowns per head

Credit Card Expense Table

We added a custom tracker for card transactions, with vendor, date, category, currency, and exchange rate—creating a clean link between charges and cost centers.

Future-Proof Structuring

We scoped the system to allow later integrations with:

  • Stripe API
  • Wise export sync
  • Bank feed parsing without needing to rebuild the foundation.

Portfolio

Results

  • Real-time visibility into service profitability and project margins
  • Multi-currency income and expenses normalized with conversion logic
  • Reduced reporting time by centralizing all financial data
  • Forecasting dashboards created for future planning
  • Clean handoff process for finance reviews, collections, and reporting
  • Internal team aligned on one system, with zero disruption to operations

Gain Real-Time Visibility Into Margins and Cut Reporting Time in Half

Financial operations get complex fast when income, expenses, and currencies live in different places. A connected system gives you clarity today and forecasts you can trust for tomorrow.

Book a call today. Let’s build your financial operating system.