How Europe's Largest Events Company Reduced Overdue Balances by 49% with Kolleno

This client is one of the world’s leading live events companies, running everything from music festivals to large-scale cultural experiences across multiple locations in Europe.

That growth outpaced the finance team behind it, which was still chasing payments by hand while other departments needed live visibility into what clients owed.

The finance team was stuck in reactive mode: every overdue invoice meant writing another email by hand and updating a spreadsheet, and the more invoices the company generated, the worse it got. “It always felt like we were one step behind. We struggled to maintain control, especially as the company was growing so quickly,” says the Credit Controller. Crafting reminders one by one left the team with no time for anything else, and it delayed payments enough to create real cash flow problems.

Meanwhile, the events team needed to check payment statuses and client accounts on-site, often at festivals, without carrying a laptop or waiting to get back to a desk. But the existing system had no way to grant that kind of access safely, so real-time information simply wasn’t available to anyone outside finance.

Only Kolleno offered the kind of user access control this business needed, alongside real automation. Reminders and escalations now go out on their own, timed around each client’s behavior instead of a fixed schedule, with the system automatically escalating and adjusting tone if a client doesn’t respond to the first few messages. “Kolleno saves us hours every week. We used to spend so much time managing collections and stressing about it. That’s no longer the case,” says the Credit Controller.

The events team can now check live payment statuses from a phone or tablet at a festival site, with no laptop required, whether that’s confirming a payment or reviewing a client’s history. “The mobile app has been transformative. Our team can now track payments in real time while at events, all without having to carry laptops or dig through spreadsheets,” says the Finance Director.

Accounts are now grouped into portfolios, such as partners, vendors, and sponsors, so managers outside finance can check what a client owes without seeing anything confidential. “Kolleno allows us to manage exactly who sees what and when. It’s given us complete control over our confidential data while enabling secure access for non-finance teams when needed.”

In three months, overdue balances fell 49%, payment cycles sped up 27%, and the team spent 25% less time on manual AR tasks.

The business can now scale its festival portfolio without the finance team drowning in transaction volume, and the brand partnership team can track payments directly instead of waiting on finance for updates.