How Lokki uses Hyperline to scale billing for thousands of customers

A conversation with Raphaël Masbou, CEO @ Lokki

About Lokki

Managing rental activities effectively is a major challenge for industry specialists. Lokki reinvents the rental profession by offering a simple and flexible tool.

As a mission-driven company, Lokki aims to democratize renting. This SaaS B2B solution supports professionals in starting or accelerating their rental businesses, providing them with a productivity tool that meets their needs. Additionally, the marketplace tool enables the booking of equipment through B2B partner networks.

Lokki currently has 1,500+ rental clients using the solution. Notable clients include independent rental companies as well as large chains like Sport2000 and Leclerc.

Building a dual offer for sports rental shops and outdoor enthusiasts

Lokki’s ambition is twofold: to help outdoor enthusiasts easily access sports equipment rentals and to offer the best SaaS solution for rental shops in the leisure industry (outdoor, events, DIY) to facilitate this responsible consumption mode.

For the second target group, a subscription model was implemented from day one. The subscription - monthly or yearly - is based on the number of available rental items. Typically, a setup fee is added to ensure a smooth collaboration start.

Raphaël, co-founder and CEO of Lokki, shares that they regularly adjusted their pricing to align with product evolution and customer needs: “One of our early investors advised us to challenge our pricing model regularly, every 6 months or at least once a year. We’ve kept this habit and are currently testing usage-based pricing!”

A messy and fragmented billing process

To implement recurring billing for its 1,500+ clients across France, Switzerland, Belgium, and Portugal, Lokki quickly adopted GoCardless as their payment provider. “We didn’t think much about it. I had entrepreneur friends using GoCardless, and we saw it had a ‘subscriptions’ module.”

While initially appearing to simplify the process, it eventually proved unsuitable for their needs. Custom pricing at scale, numerous payment errors, difficulties tracking unpaid invoices, and reporting errors led Lokki to implement additional tools like Octobat and Henrri to fill the gaps left by GoCardless.

“The company was still young, and I was already creating a billing monster… We were leaving money on the table each month, and it couldn’t continue”, adds Raphaël.

Simplifying and scaling the finance stack

Faced with this situation, Raphaël undertook significant internal process improvements, particularly between the Sales and Finance teams regarding billing - “Today, we aim to be a product-driven company rather than sales-driven”.

To achieve this, Raphaël sought advice from other startup founders who had gone through similar process simplification and scaling phases. He decided to bring in a part-time CFO for guidance and to find a new billing solution to centralize processes and become the single source of truth.

Meeting Hyperline

While searching for billing solutions, Lokki's founding team discovered Hyperline. The solution seemed to meet all their needs:

• A tool that allowed them to easily iterate on their pricing model
• An intuitive platform that provided the best experience for their Sales, Customer Success, and Finance teams
• Key billing features that filled the gaps of their existing solutions, such as flexibility on price overrides at scale for negotiated deals.

"We chose Hyperline for the power of the tool and the time it saved our teams, but also for the support and human touch from the Hyperline team: they quickly understood our pain points and needs—it was very reassuring."

At the end of 2023, Lokki decided to migrate their 1,500+ clients to Hyperline. The migration was smoothly managed with close collaboration from the Hyperline team, ensuring a seamless transition. This process also included onboarding sessions for the Sales and Customer Success teams, as future daily users of the platform. "These sessions were very important for us. They helped embed this process change, empower the teams, and reassure them about Hyperline's responsiveness."

More than 6 months into using Hyperline, Raphaël and the Lokki teams have successfully achieved their goals. Hyperline has proven to be the only solution on the market that perfectly fits their use case, allowing for a quick and painless tool transition. Effective adoption and support were readily available to address any questions from the teams. Three words to describe Hyperline, according to Raphaël? Simplicity, adaptability, and responsiveness.

"With Hyperline, we found a tool that centralizes our entire process, supports our company’s growth, and, most importantly, is loved by our teams for daily use", concludes Raphaël.

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