How Terra standardized finance processes across 14 legal entities
“14 entities, one process – a new company is ready to go in minutes.”
Markus Bretschneider
Chief of Staff / Business Operations
Terra Group
Company profile
The Terra Group develops sustainable residential projects in the Berlin-Brandenburg metropolitan region – from land acquisition and building rights through to turnkey handover. As is common in property development, almost every project runs in its own special purpose vehicle (SPV). Today the group comprises one holding company and 13 project entities – and every new project adds one more.
14
entities, one finance process — a holding company and 13 project entities (SPVs)
50–75%
time saved in day-to-day bookkeeping
Minutes
until a new entity runs on the standard process
1
shared data basis for management, bookkeeping and the tax firm
Starting point
Every new project entity brought the same tasks all over again: new bank accounts, new invoices, new payment approvals, new receipts, a new handover to the tax firm. The previous system offered no group-wide standard – processes differed from entity to entity, many steps stayed manual, and receipts ended up in the proverbial “digital shoebox”. With Lydia Johannes, Terra brought an experienced external accounting expert on board and used the moment to rethink its finance organization from the ground up.
Pain points
No group-wide standard – every entity ran its own version of the same finance process.
Manual effort in posting, document search and payment runs, multiplied across 14 entities.
Receipts scattered across systems, with no single place to find them.
Limited transparency on cash flow and liquidity at group level.
Frequent queries and booking notes from the tax firm.
Goals
One standardized finance process across every entity in the group.
Largely automated bookkeeping that keeps reducing manual effort.
Real-time transparency on cash flow and liquidity, without waiting for monthly closings.
A seamless handover to the existing tax firm, without changing its systems.
New project entities integrated quickly – growth should no longer mean more administration.
A blueprint for multi-entity groups
Most finance solutions are built for single companies. Terra confronted Frienton with a different task: 14 legally independent entities, managed centrally – including roles, payment approvals and standardized workflows. Multi-entity capability at this depth had previously been a scenario for tax firms managing multiple clients.
The use case reaches far beyond real estate. Whether holding company, family office, venture builder or investment group – as soon as several entities are managed, the same challenges appear.
The biggest advantage is the standardized process. We don’t just save time – we have far fewer headaches. New entities are set up following the same process, and the additional effort is minimal.
Lydia Johannes
External accounting expert, Terra Group (Hands-on Beratung)
Results
Together with Frienton, Terra developed a standardized finance process for the entire group. The platform served as the technological foundation for unifying recurring workflows and making them sustainably scalable.
All 14 entities run in one system, on one standardized finance process.
New project entities are set up in minutes and follow the standard from day one.
50–75 % time saved in day-to-day bookkeeping – as estimated by the external accounting expert, depending on entity and degree of automation.
Automated posting that learns, with increasingly precise booking and cost-center suggestions.
Digital payment approvals across all entities.
Booking notes from the tax firm reduced to a minimum – documents are handed over complete and structured.
Fast, personal support, named by Terra as a decisive factor.
Our goal was a standardized, largely automated finance process that scales with every new entity. Frienton is now a key building block for exactly that: we automate as far as technically and sensibly possible – and our team gains time for actual value creation.
Markus Bretschneider
Chief of Staff / Business Operations · Terra Group
