Finance
Picture Muster GmbH, a 30-person German SME where the founder signs every payment and one part-time bookkeeper keeps the receivables list in a spreadsheet. Business-Gym gives that pair a clean picture of who owes what, a drafted reminder for each overdue customer, and a real margin number — it does not give them a payment button, and it never will.
Two things are worth knowing before you read further, because finance readers look for both. Business-Gym cannot move money, at any autonomy level — that is the hard floor, not a default. And DATEV is not connected, so nothing here reaches your bookkeeping ledger.
What does a finance week look like at Muster GmbH?
Section titled “What does a finance week look like at Muster GmbH?”The rhythm is short reads and a few decisions, because that is honestly all the finance attention a 30-person company has. Everything below is either a read of your own data or a draft that stops at a gate.
| When | What happens | Who acts |
|---|---|---|
| Weekday 08:00 (Europe/Berlin) | The dunning workflow — once installed and turned on — pulls overdue invoices and drafts a reminder per customer | Nobody yet — it stops at a gate |
| Any morning | You open Revenue → Invoices and read AR aging by bucket | You, reading |
| When an invoice is ready | Issuing it stages an approval instead of sending anything | You, at the gate |
| Monthly | You read Measure → Commercial for recognised revenue, gross margin and AR outstanding | You, reading |
| When cash arrives | You record the payment by hand from the bank statement | You, typing |
| Continuously | A key result re-reads collection rate, gross margin or DSO from your own invoices | Nobody — a daily read |
Two rows depend on setup rather than being on by default: the dunning workflow has to be created from a template and pointed at a data source, and the goal metrics only move once you bind them.
Where do the money numbers live in the app?
Section titled “Where do the money numbers live in the app?”They sit on three different screens, and each answers a different question about the same invoices. Knowing which screen to open is most of the value on this surface.
Revenue in the sidebar is the working view. It has three tabs — Orders, Invoices and Revenue — and the Invoices tab carries AR aging in buckets: Current, 1–30 days, 31–60, 61–90 and 90+. The count badge on the Revenue nav item is your overdue invoices. Reading is open to the workspace; creating and editing orders and invoices is owner or admin only.
Measure → Commercial is the scorecard. It shows a KPI row — Recognised revenue, Gross margin, Pipeline, AR outstanding, Order book, Win rate — a quote-to-cash funnel, a Margin per offering table with revenue, cost, margin and margin %, your top customers by revenue, and the AR aging split again. It is read-only for any member of the workspace.
Overview → Cash & runway is the one that is not real yet. There is no finance balance source wired behind it, so it shows a “Connect a finance source” prompt instead of a number. That is deliberate — a fabricated cash figure would be worse than an empty tile. See the overview cockpit for how the rest of that page behaves.
What actually happens when you issue an invoice?
Section titled “What actually happens when you issue an invoice?”Issuing stages an approval — it does not send anything to anyone. The invoice moves from Draft to
the status shown as Awaiting approval, and an approval item of kind invoice.issue appears for a
person to decide in the approval queue. Only a draft with a positive
total can be issued, and the staged item carries the invoice number, the customer and the amount.
Approving it moves the invoice to Sent, stamps a stub external reference and writes an audit
record — but the Stripe and Datev connectors behind it run dark. No charge is created, and nothing is
posted to your accounting ledger. Until live credentials and a separate go-live decision land, send and
collect outside Business-Gym and use the invoice record to track state.
Recording a payment is manual data entry, by design. You tell the system what cash actually arrived;
it increments the paid amount and flips the invoice to Paid once the total is covered. It never pulls
funds and never reconciles a bank feed on your behalf. The mechanics are covered in full under
revenue and invoices.
Is DATEV connected?
Section titled “Is DATEV connected?”DATEV is not connected, and nothing Business-Gym does reaches it today — no booking, no document upload, no payment status, no export handed over. It is the most-requested connector and finance readers expect to find it, so this page states it plainly rather than letting a screen imply otherwise.
On your Integrations screen DATEV appears under Finance and operations with a grey “Coming soon” pill and disabled actions. Six operations are built behind it — read open items, read the cash and bank position, upload a document, set payment status, attach a bank position, create a booking — and every one of them is dark. Ask for any of them and the step returns a plain “not connected” result and queues.
The Datev effector behind an invoice issue is the same dark seam, which is why approving an issue does not book anything. For what is prepared, what a registered desktop operator can read, and what to do in the meantime, read DATEV.
Can it chase overdue invoices for me?
Section titled “Can it chase overdue invoices for me?”It can draft the chase for every overdue customer, but you are the one who sends it. Business-Gym ships a Dunning / overdue receivables workflow template on the New workflow screen, under the Accounting head, and it is built draft-first from the ground up.
The shape is a weekday 08:00 Europe/Berlin schedule that pulls the overdue-items aging report, buckets each customer by how late they are — a friendly reminder from 7 days, a formal Mahnung from 30 — drafts a stage-appropriate message per customer, stops at a human approval gate, and only then sends and audits the result. The send step has exactly one way in, and that way is the gate. The drafting step is instructed to use only the real figures it was given and never to invent, round or estimate an amount or a date.
Two setup facts decide whether this ever runs for you. Creating from the template lands a draft workflow in the editor rather than a live automation, and the data step’s URL is blank until you point it at your overdue-invoice source. Nothing happens until both are done.
Two neighbouring templates sit under the same head and follow the same rule: USt-Voranmeldung prep assembles a ready-to-file VAT pack for your Steuerberater and never submits to the tax authority, and Bank reconciliation flags variances as advice with no posting step at all.
Which finance numbers can a goal actually read?
Section titled “Which finance numbers can a goal actually read?”A key result can read more finance metrics than most people expect, and every one of them is read-only. On the Goals page each key result has a Bind live source control, and the finance-relevant sources split into two groups.
From your own Business-Gym data, with no external credential needed: gross margin % — overall, or product-only, or service-only — collection rate, and days sales outstanding. From Stripe, through a restricted read-only key: monthly and annual recurring revenue, active subscriptions, trialing subscriptions, 30-day churn rate, and new customers in the last 30 days.
Bound sources are re-read once a day at 04:13 UTC, and an owner or admin can press Refresh now. Every read is read-only — refreshing a metric never writes back to Stripe or anywhere else.
The honesty property is the part worth trusting: a rate with no basis reads as unknown, not zero. Collection rate returns no data until something is actually invoiced, and gross margin needs both a list price and a cost basis on an offering — one without cost data is excluded rather than guessed at. See goals and OKRs for how an unmeasured key result is displayed.
What will a person always have to do here?
Section titled “What will a person always have to do here?”A person handles everything that touches money, permanently and by construction. Business-Gym forces a human decision on three categories of action — money, external sends and legal — and no per-company setting can lower that floor for any of them.
In practice that means you pay the supplier, you collect from the customer, you file the return, you approve every reminder before it leaves, and you type in the payment that arrived. The Finance head that Business-Gym ships is explicitly advisory: its charter says it advises on allocation and never moves money or commits spend. The separate Accounting head prepares and flags, and never pays or files without approval — the two are different heads with different jobs, and you can run either or both.
Today the whole platform is propose-only in practice: it drafts, stages and records, and a person decides. Nothing here auto-executes. If that is the shape you want elsewhere in the business, the same pattern applies to sales, and working with a head explains how to set one up.
Where should I go next?
Section titled “Where should I go next?”Finance is rarely the only area you want covered, and the setup below is shared with every other head, so it is worth reading in order.
- Getting started — connect a knowledge source and a mailbox before any of this runs.