Why BESTSECRET is now even better prepared for detailed questions

15 May 2025

Reconciling and posting cashless payments with transaction accuracy is clearly an advantage when it comes to detailed questions, e.g. in the context of audits. Learn how the exclusive shopping community BESTSECRET has now optimised the reconciliation of cashless payments with transaction accuracy!

Content of the article

The customer

BESTSECRET is the leading European online platform for premium and luxury brands in the off-price segment. To protect the brand value of the exclusive fashion brands at BESTSECRET, access to this online shop is intentionally restricted to members only. Every new member has to be invited by an existing member to gain access to premium and luxury brands at exclusive prices.

BESTSECRET has grown over the years into an internationally sought-after brand: the company employs around 2,300 people and is active in the e-commerce sector in 28 countries around the world. In addition to the exclusive online shop, BESTSECRET also runs retail shops in Munich, Aschheim and Vienna/Vösendorf.

The challenge

The accounting team at BESTSECRET process an enormous volume of payments every year with numerous international transactions. The multitude of different acquirers and payment service providers (with corresponding fee and billing models) and a large number of currencies also complicate things for the accounting team.

Until 2024 payments were reconciled and posted manually because of the existing ERP systems. Under these conditions, manual transaction-accurate posting was certainly extremely time-consuming.

«As soon as detailed questions arise during audits, however, transaction-accurate payment reconciliation is important so that precise answers can be provided quickly», says Martin Breddemann, Accounting Manager at BESTSECRET, getting to the heart of the challenge.

And by the way: we’ve compared the different accounting approaches for payment reconciliation in a separate article.

«Once we’d decided to implement a new ERP system with SAP, we also wanted a new solution for payment reconciliation as part of this process: accordingly, we researched software with automation that would help us reconcile and post the large volume of payments with transaction accuracy – and thus significantly improve transparency in our accounting.»

Another requirement for the new software solution was seamless integration with the new SAP system.

The solution

After thoroughly comparing options from a variety of providers, Gunther Anders, Head of Financial Systems at BESTSECRET, and his team chose Matchbox from treibauf. The software imports all sales data from the web shop and from the payment service providers, automatically reconciles it, then creates the right posting entries and exports these to the BESTSECRET ERP.

Integration of Matchbox began in spring 2024 as part of the changeover to SAP. The treibauf team not only ensured that all settlement files flowed correctly into the new ERP.

Step by step, they also made sure that the software reliably copes with all the particular use cases of the international e-commerce company: handling different foreign currencies and country-specific peculiarities were taken into account, as well as the possibilities of refunds, partial refunds, chargebacks and reverse chargebacks.

At the same time, all international payment providers from Adyen, American Express and Klarna to PayPal and Riverty were integrated into Matchbox, so each individual transaction can now be reconciled with transaction accuracy between the web shop and the acquirer data.

The result

Now that all acquirers have been integrated and all use cases have successfully been considered, Matchbox currently achieves a matching rate of 99.98%! This means that 99.98% of payments are reconciled and posted fully automatically and with transaction accuracy. The accounting team under Martin Breddemann now only has to take a closer look at “special cases”. And the software even assists with this by making intelligent suggestions for potential matches.

«Since we’ve been using Matchbox, we’ve achieved a new level of precision in accounting. Our ERP system is now a reliable single source of truth. Matchbox also creates additional transparency for detailed questions relating to transactions thanks to the transaction-accurate payment reconciliation.»

Would you also like to reduce your costs for payment reconciliation and create more transparency around your electronic payments?

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«Since we’ve been using Matchbox, we’ve achieved a new level of precision in accounting and can reliably draw on our ERP system as a single source of truth. Matchbox also creates additional transparency for detailed questions relating to transactions thanks to the transaction-accurate payment reconciliation.»

Martin Breddemann
Accounting Manager Accounts Receivable, BESTSECRET

Why treibauf?

Besides the functionality and performance of the software, it was the competence and openness of the treibauf team that particularly convinced Gunther Anders, Head of Financial Systems at BESTSECRET, during the sales pitch.

«Our treibauf project manager truly had an insightful response to every single one of our questions. Ultimately, the performance of treibauf simply convinced me», states Gunther Anders, remembering the reasons for his decision.

Martin Breddemann, who supervised the implementation from the accounting side, adds: «This assessment was then quickly and permanently confirmed as the project progressed: the project manager and his team were able to clarify most things directly with our IT team. A quick and straightforward solution was found for our accounting use cases. Simply a good collaboration!»

«BESTSECRET»
BESTSECRET is the leading European online platform for premium and luxury brands in the off-price segment. The group offers its members in 28 European countries a high-end range of exclusive fashion brands. At the same time, BESTSECRET enables its brand partners to reduce excess stock on a large scale – with minimal visibility and maximum brand value protection. The unique business model is based on a closed approach with an exclusive membership by invitation.

Nicolas Schwotzer

Nicolas is the Chief Product Owner, a member of the treibauf Executive Board and founded our company more than 25 years ago. Thanks to this wealth of experience, he is one of the most important experts in reconciliation software and POS integration.

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