Customer story — New Flag
How New Flag reduced admin and gained full visibility across its international finance operations
The challenge
New Flag is one of Europe's top beauty brand builders, bringing hair care, perfumes, and newer lines to retailers and salons across the continent. With hundreds of employees, multiple legal entities, and a travelling field sales team, expense management used to be entirely manual, chaotic, and fragmented.
Receipts were collected and processed by hand, with finance constantly chasing missing information and working without real-time visibility into spend.
As the business scaled across Europe, this outdated process started to crumble under its own weight.
A full-time role dedicated to chasing receipts
Managing expenses manually required almost an entire full-time employee, with finance spending countless hours collecting receipts and resolving missing documentation.
No overview, no transparency
Expense data lived in paper files rather than one central platform, making it difficult to understand spending patterns or spot recurring costs across the business.
Sales teams spent time on admin instead of customers
With more than 50 field sales employees travelling regularly, collecting and submitting receipts became another administrative task that took time away from selling.
Growth added complexity
As New Flag expanded into multiple countries, finance needed one consistent process across Germany, the Netherlands, France and beyond, rather than separate systems for every entity.
The solution
New Flag wanted a platform that was simple to roll out, easy for employees to use, and flexible enough to support a growing international business.
Pleo delivered exactly that.
"With Pleo, we can manage all business spend with at least a 50 to 60% time reduction — and that's while adding more entities and more work. So the actual savings are even higher." — Patrick Hofer, CFO
The results
Pleo didn't just replace a manual process. It gave the finance team of a growing, multi-entity organisation the capacity to move from admin to strategy.
Less time spent managing expenses
Finance now manages expense processes across multiple entities while reducing admin by ≈60%, even as the business has continued to grow.
≈4x growth in spend through Pleo
Spend running through Pleo has grown from roughly €500,000 in the first year to more than €2 million today.
Fraud risk down, limits under control
Dedicated vendor cards and flexible spending limits have significantly reduced fraud risk by ensuring employees only have access to the funds they actually need.
Reimbursements without the chase
Missing documentation no longer delays entire reimbursements. Finance can process valid expenses immediately while outstanding receipts are handled separately, creating a smoother experience for everyone.
More time for work that moves the business forward
Instead of cleaning up credit card statements and tracking down paperwork, the finance team now spends more time developing new skills, improving internal processes, and adopting new AI-powered workflows.
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