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Deep dive: Prime Care Clinics’ journey to financial clarity with Finstack

About Prime Care Clinics

Since 2005, Prime Care Clinics (PCC), with its current brands SOAP Treatment Store, Doctors at Soap, Fairday Clinics, and Zipper Clinics, has been making waves in the beauty industry. Known for their exceptional facials, manicures, injectables, and skin therapy, these brands are more than chains of boutique beauty clinics—they are quickly becoming renowned brands in self-care. 

But, behind the polished exterior of PCC’s rapid expansion, lies a complex financial operation. Starting in 2023, the company partnered with private equity firm Vendis Capital to fuel its bold buy-and-build strategy, their latest acquisition being Zipper Clinics in September 2024. When Vendis Capital partnered with PCC, they did so because of the excellent execution of their marketing operations and state-of-the-art customer experience. However, their financial administration and IT systems were more than ready for an upgrade, and that’s where Reinier Luitingh, current CFO of PCC comes in.

Reinier, as PCC’s new CFO, took on the challenge of bringing clarity and control to its financial operations. With a fragmented financial structure spanning 12 separate administrations and a complex legal structure, he needed a way to transform PCC’s back-end processes into a smooth and efficient operation. Before he even took office, he already had his eye on the answer to this challenge: Finstack.

The challenge: turning complexity into clarity with 12 separate administrations

When Reinier stepped into his role as CFO, he quickly realized the scale of the financial challenges ahead. PCC’s rapid growth and acquisition strategy left them with 12 separate Exact Online administrations, each operating independently. 

“In Excel, you might manage to consolidate just two administrations, but 12? It’s a nightmare,” Reinier said. “The manual work, the risk of errors—it’s just not feasible at this scale. That’s why before I even started as PCC’s CFO, I was already in talks with Karel, founder and CEO of Finstack, to provide the solution for my problem.”

Key issues:

• Fragmented data and quality of administration: PCC’s financial data was scattered over 12 administrations, and the state of these were not exactly stellar. Think classic SME level: limited use of cost centers, a tangled web of GL accounts, revenue being booked via a manual journal entry, no interim corporate tax bookings, and so on.
  
  
• Limited visibility: Without a centralized system in place, it was nearly impossible to get an accurate, real-time overview of essential financial metrics like working capital, cash flow, and the P&L on both the per-entity and consolidated levels.
  
  
• Meeting investor expectations: From day one, Vendis Capital required clear, consolidated reporting to track PCC’s performance and support its strategic goals. With PCC’s existing setup, its 12 separate financial administrations, and no financial management tool in place, these demands couldn’t be met efficiently.

Reinier knew that to succeed in his role as CFO and to support PCC’s ambitious growth plans, he needed a robust solution that could provide clarity at both the consolidated and more detailed levels. That’s when he turned to Finstack.

The solution: Finstack as a lifeline

For Reinier, Finstack is more than just a reporting tool. Since he began working with Finstack, it has become the cornerstone of PCC’s financial operations. He calls it his “lifeline” for a reason.

Now, we’ll go over the ways Finstack has helped Reinier solve the key issues he faced, and how he uses Finstack on a day-to-day basis to streamline PCC’s financial operations.

‍Consolidating all 12 administrations into one clear overview

Before Finstack, managing PCC’s 12 legal entities meant manually consolidating financials across multiple Excel spreadsheets. Now, Finstack unifies all 12 administrations into a single platform, providing Reinier with a clear overview of PCC’s finances at the consolidated, per-entity, and per-cost center levels. Finstack extracts the financial data from all 12 administrations in real-time, giving Reinier real-time insights into what’s happening within PCC.

However, the quality of these 12 administrations was not exactly stellar when Reinier came on board as CFO. “To start fixing the problems within all 12 administrations, I wanted a clear overview first. That has given me powerful insights into what needed to be fixed within which administration. While others might wait to integrate their administrations in a reporting and consolidation tool, the method of consolidating first has proven to be extremely effective for me.” 

Here’s how Reinier created a clear overview of PCC’s finances:

• Connecting data sources: Reinier connected PCC’s 12 administrations in just one click, integrating Finstack with Exact Online to automatically pull real-time data.

• Real-time insights: After a few additional steps Finstack’s Reporting View provided a consolidated and entity-level breakdown of PCC’s finances with drill-down options for even deeper insights.
  

• Aside from the Reporting View, Reinier names Finstack’s Working Capital view as one of his most-used features. With a single click, he gets a real-time overview of PCC’s cash position, combined with both receivables and payables—both in total and per customer or supplier. This allows him to monitor PCC’s cash position without having to manually consolidate all bank accounts.

Drilling down to specific transactions in seconds

One of Reinier’s favorite features is Finstack’s drill-down functionality, making it effortless to trace financial movements:

“If I’m looking for something in any administration, I can simply click straight through to the individual journal entry in Finstack. And, if something needs fixing, I can use the journal entry number to find the entry in Exact Online within seconds, to fix the issue at the source.”

How it works:

• For example, clicking the Balance Sheet tab in the Reporting section leads him directly to the related entity’s balance sheet. He can select the entities and cost centers he wants to include in the overview. 

• Another click zooms into the journal entry-level, showing individual transactions and the option to download invoices.

• The final drill-down reveals individual transaction details, including dates, descriptions, and amounts.

• If something looks off, he can simply copy the journal entry number, switch to Exact Online, and make corrections instantly.

"This saves me hours compared to the old way of searching through multiple ledgers,” Reinier explains.

Customizable reporting

Reinier states that one of the big pluses of Finstack is how user-friendly it is, even more so when it comes to creating reports.

“When we integrated our financial administrations with Finstack, our first task was to make a mapping for all GL accounts across the 12 administrations. This was super user-friendly and done within no-time.
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Now, whenever a GL account is created in any of the 12 administrations, I get a pop-up in Finstack to add the new account to the mapping, and we are good to go. I can’t imagine doing this in Excel and looking for any missed accounts anymore...
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As of now, I also made a custom mapping according to the standards of Vendis Capital, and whenever they ask for a report, I select their mapping and can make the requested report with a single click.” 

Here’s how he did it:

• Set up a custom structure: Reinier tailored PCC’s financial statement layout, customizing it to match the reporting standards required by PE firm Vendis Capital. He also has a financial statement layout that is tailored to his own needs, and he’s able to switch between layouts at a whim.
  

• GL mapping: Next, he selected the relevant accounts (on the left-hand side) and assigned them to the appropriate elements in the newly created structure (on the right-hand side) using the multi-select drag-and-drop method. Once mapped, these accounts automatically stay linked to their designated class.

• One-click investor-ready reports: Once the mapping was finalized, Reinier generated detailed, consolidated reports for Vendis Capital with a single click.

• Automatic prompts for new accounts: Plus, Finstack flags any newly created GL accounts with a pop-up reminder.

“This ensures I never miss a new account in my reports,”  Reinier says.

Seamlessly integrating new acquisitions

When Prime Care Clinics acquired Zipper Clinics, Reinier needed to quickly integrate its financials into the existing structure. Using Finstack, he completed the integration in just one evening by following these three simple steps:

1. He connected Zipper Clinics’ bookkeeping system, just like the existing entities.
2. Assigned Zipper’s ledger accounts to the custom GL account mapping using the ‘multi-select drag-and-drop’ feature.
3. Went to Reporting to instantly see consolidated insights, now including Zipper Clinics’ financials.

“This allowed us to immediately do historical comparisons between the new acquisition and existing entities within Prime Care Clinics, making it easy for us to see where our business strategy could make a difference. Our investor couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw the speed at which the integration of Zipper’s numbers was done.”

Ensuring correct data with automatic intercompany elimination

Yet another challenge Reinier faced while joining Prime Care Clinics, was managing the frequent intercompany transactions between entities. To create an overview of PCC’s performance on the group level, he needed to consolidate all administrations within Finstack. Leveraging Finstack's Intercompany Elimination tool he simplified this process and automated the reconciliation process by:

• Automatically detecting intercompany transactions across all 12 entities. To set this up, Reinier simply selected the accounts being used for IC transactions.

• Now, he can easily reconcile and verify any IC transaction via the Intercompany Reconciliation tab, ensuring no discrepancies.
  

The results: more clarity, increased efficiency, and actionable insights

• Investor-grade reports in hours, not days: Before Finstack, preparing reports for both PCC itself and its investor consumed half a week of manual consolidation. With Finstack’s help, Reinier delivers investor-ready reports in hours. “As of now, I’m saving multiple days per month-end close when it comes to consolidation and reporting. The investor was genuinely impressed by how quickly I can deliver accurate, detailed insights,” he said.
  
  
• Benchmarks that drive action: Finstack gave Reinier the tools to easily analyze and compare gross margins and contribution margins per clinic, empowering him to benchmark performance and initiate data-driven discussions with clinic managers. “This has truly overhauled the way in which we have conversations with the business,” Reinier explained. “I can now confidently compare clinics and work with them to improve results.”
  
  
• Seamless integration of acquisitions: The integration of Zipper Clinics into PCC’s financial structure is a testament to Finstack’s efficiency. “In one evening, I added Zipper’s financial data into Finstack and had the consolidated numbers ready. The investor was truly blown away by the speed and accuracy with which I could deliver a consolidated balance sheet and P/L, both with and without the integration of Zipper Clinics,” Reinier said.
  
  
• Simplified consolidation: “With Finstack, I can instantly identify and resolve intercompany discrepancies across administrations. Also, if a new GL account is added, Finstack flags it right away and gives me a pop-up, allowing me to immediately add it to the mapping. That way I don’t miss anything in my reports. It’s so efficient compared to manually managing everything in Excel,” Reinier shared.
  
  
• Enhanced oversight and reporting: Finstack’s flexibility enabled Reinier to generate detailed P&L and balance sheets by cost center, providing clarity that wasn’t possible before. “The ability to drill down and even export to Excel when needed—it’s incredibly helpful,” he added.

Why Finstack?

For PCC, Finstack provided the perfect combination of ease-of-use, scalability, and speed:

• Built for growth: Finstack adapts seamlessly to PCC’s rapidly growing operations. The successful, overnight integration of Zipper Clinic’s financial administration in Finstack is just one example of the power of Finstack’s platform.
  
  
• User-friendly: From setting up custom financial statement structures to mapping accounts and generating investor-ready reports, Finstack’s intuitive interface allowed Reinier to get the hang of working with Finstack in mere days, allowing him to focus on insights, not processes.
  
  “Making custom account mappings, the ease with which I do IC eliminations now, how I can integrate and adapt my per-entity and consolidated budget in Finstack–it all just works so well. I’m very happy with how Finstack has made my life as a CFO a whole lot easier,” he said.
  
  
• Support that delivers: “The onboarding process is fantastic. Finstack’s team was with us every step of the way during the implementation of their tool. If you'd like to collaborate with Finstack and experience their hands-on support, now’s the time! Their commitment to delivering tailored guidance ensures a smooth start to your financial transformation journey,” Reinier said. 

Looking ahead: A future powered by Finstack

With the help of Finstack, Prime Care Clinics has laid the foundation for a strong financial future. As they continue to expand, Finstack provides the insights and control needed to navigate acquisitions, improve financial processes, and meet the demands of a fast-growing business.

“Finstack is the first tool I turn to every day,” Reinier said. “It’s not just a reporting tool anymore—it’s the foundation of how we operate financially.”

From complexity to clarity 

Finstack has helped Reinier transform Prime Care Clinics’ financial complexity into clarity. By enabling rapid consolidation, shaving days off their reporting cycle, and delivering actionable insights, Finstack empowers Prime Care Clinics to scale confidently and meet its investor’s expectations. Whether it’s benchmarking clinic performance to have fruitful discussions with the business, or integrating new acquisitions with ease, Finstack is an important piece of the puzzle in supercharging Prime Care Clinics’s buy-and-build strategy and staying ahead of the curve.

Think Finstack can support your goals, too?

Are you ready to transform your financial operations, just like Prime Care Clinics? Book a demo and let us show you how Finstack could work for you, or start your free 30-day trial by clicking here. Be the forward-thinking financial leader any organization needs.