Ledgy simplifies VSOP management and improves data reliability for Taxfix

About Taxfix

Founded in 2016, Taxfix is on a mission to make tax filing easy, allowing people to take their finances into their own hands. Starting in Germany and since expanding into Italy and Spain, Taxfix has returned more than €2 billion in tax refunds to customers since launching. In 2022, Taxfix reached unicorn status with its $220 million Series D round led by Teachers’ Venture Growth. 

About Sebastian 

Sebastian Schilling is the VP of finance and internal operations at Taxfix. Having joined in 2019, he oversees all general administration topics including people operations, internal IT, office management, and finance. This also means that everything related to equity – the cap table, VSOP program, investor relations and fundraising – is his responsibility. 

Building up management debt  

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From the very start, Taxfix introduced a broad based VSOP program to allow the whole team to benefit from the company’s equity. Having made grants to several hundred participants since its inception, managing the employee VSOP program became a challenge at Taxfix. Changing strike prices, different vesting types and offboarding as well as document creation, signatures and storage added to the complexity of their equity management. 

Sebastian says, “We were falling behind on keeping track of what had vested or not. Every quarter, for every board meeting, someone had to sit down and recalculate everything. It was messy, inaccurate, and it was apparent that we were building up management debt so we had to find a way to mitigate this more proactively.” 

In addition, “With valuations visibly increasing, it became even more important to inform employees about what that meant for them and their equity. We were getting more and more questions, but to communicate about this via spreadsheets was definitely not ideal.” Sebastian says. “We struggled, like every business probably struggles, with making the value of VSOP transparent to employees, while striking the balance between exciting people about it, without overpromising.” he continued.

Finding a best-in-class tool

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In an effort to more proactively take control of their VSOP management, Sebastian and his team started searching for a platform to cater to the different people and teams that would end up using it. “We ran quite a comprehensive selection process. We looked at five different tools and identified stories for each type of user including the talent acquisition manager, job candidate, people operations, legal and finance teams. It became apparent quite quickly that for each of these cases, Ledgy was the clear cut frontrunner.”

After deciding to sign with Ledgy, Sebastian’s confidence grew. “Ledgy promised us a HiBob integration three weeks after we signed the contract, and they actually delivered it quicker than intended. It’s the first and only time I’ve seen a software vendor following up on a promise and even outperforming it,” Sebastian says. 

“System integrations are really exciting for me. I think it’s important to get the best-in-class tools for each use case, and integrate them with other best-in-class tools to be able to make sense of the data. Ledgy’s HiBob integration makes sure we have all the people we need on the platform, and that we aren’t missing anyone. It’s very helpful,” he adds. 

No pain, lots of gains

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“We’ve saved time and gained so much in accuracy since we started to use Ledgy,” says Sebastian as he describes Taxfix’s equity management now. He particularly enjoys Ledgy’s reporting features, and uses them regularly to build the custom reports he needs. “Before, I would spend more time trying to produce reports that were impossible to get to the same standards as the ones I do now, because I wouldn’t have had an accurate data source to begin with. With Ledgy, I can now produce exactly the reports I need in a timely manner, and I know it’s coming from accurate data,” Sebastian says. 

Ledgy has also helped Taxfix employees gain a better understanding of their equity, while saving Sebastian’s team’s time and effort by avoiding many questions. “Whenever someone gets offboarded, there are no arguments about how much is vested, it’s very clear. People no longer ask questions about how much their VSOP is worth because they can log in and check that themselves,” says Sebastian. 

The team at Taxfix are enjoying smoother equity management. “We’ve had no complaints from our employees or from the team on the admin side of the platform, which is always a good sign! There is no pain coming from equity management at the moment.” says Sebastian.

Set up for the future

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Ledgy has helped Taxifx build solid equity foundations as the company continues to scale, so Sebastian and his team can be confident moving forward. “Ledgy has enabled me to work from data that I can rely on. We’ve been able to set up processes to ensure everything is being kept track of correctly. ” says Sebastian. 

As they’ve grown, Taxfix has already been able to show their employees the benefits of equity. “During our voluntary buyback process, we were able to pay out €3.5 million to our employees, which was great,” says Sebastian. In the future, he expects Taxfix to continue their growth and internationalisation.

Read more stories about Ledgy’s customers here.

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