Energetyczny projekt

Energetyczny Projekt

Energetyczny Projekt automated its invoice collections with Sunbay - turning a 5,000 - 10,000 zł/month cost into a process that now earns a few thousand złoty a month, freeing up frozen cash and removing collections from the team's plate entirely.

Location Poland

Industry Home energy modernization & construction (B2C)

TL;DR — Energetyczny Projekt modernizes and builds homes for individual customers, many of them older and in smaller towns where paying on time is the exception, not the rule. Its manual collections process worked, but it was slow, inconsistent and expensive - 5,000 - 10,000 zł a month in staff time, lawyers and registry fees, on top of a large amount of cash sitting frozen. After switching to Sunbay, collections were automated in days. Automated interest notes flipped the whole process cash-positive, time-to-pay dropped, and the team stopped chasing invoices for good.

The challenge: customers who pay eventually

Energetyczny Projekt serves B2C customers: homeowners modernizing or building houses, largely across smaller, regional towns. These customers tend to own property, so they almost always pay in the end and bad debt write-offs are rare. The problem is when they pay.

Many customers are older and not digital-first; some have to be reached by phone before anything happens. Payment behavior is also tied to grant and subsidy programs (especially in thermal-modernization), which can push timelines out badly. The result was a payment culture where paying on time was, in Krzysiek's words, dramatically poor.

The old process existed and ran — but heavily and by hand:

• One person spending part of their week manually checking outstanding balances, calling, texting and nudging account managers to chase customers.
• Escalation to a law firm once internal reminders failed.
• Registration in credit registries (KRD/BIG).
• Court as the last resort.

It mostly worked — customers usually paid once they saw a law firm involved or a case heading to court — but it was stretched out, costly, and fragile. The whole thing ran "in fits and starts": when someone was sick or on leave, it lost its rhythm. All in, it cost 5,000–10,000 zł a month in staff time, lawyers and registry subscriptions — before even counting the cash frozen in overdue invoices.

"Chasing money is work most people simply aren't built for — psychologically. You're calling people who react badly and you have to stay assertive. And before, the whole thing depended on whether the team had time. Someone's sick, someone's on leave, and the process loses its rhythm." — Krzysiek Romaniak, co-founder of Energetyczny Projekt

Why Energetyczny Projekt chose Sunbay

Krzysiek expected a heavy IT project. For comparison, adding a collections module to the company's Enova ERP would have cost around 25,000 zł plus a multi-month rollout.

Sunbay was the opposite. It ran from decision to live in about a month, with the actual setup taking only a few days — most of that spent designing the right document templates and flows. There was no large upfront fee: pricing is per invoice / per case handled, with implementation effectively free plus a few consulting hours to tailor it. The more invoices Sunbay handles, the more the company saves.

"I assumed this would be expensive, long and painful — a three-month project. We had it live in about a month, and the setup was a few days. That was the biggest shock - how fast it went." — Krzysiek Romaniak

The solution: from manual chasing to a process that runs itself

Sunbay replaced the manual workflow with an automated, escalating, regular process:

• Automated reminders — professional reminders go out before and after the due date, the moment an invoice is issued. No manual checking, no scrambling.
• Escalations — overdue invoices automatically move up the chain, so nothing falls through the cracks.
• Automated interest notes — late invoices trigger interest notes automatically. Customers pay them — which is what turned the whole process cash-positive.
• Integrated and hands-off — connected directly to the company's invoicing (Fakturownia), the whole thing runs in the background as an automation. No spreadsheets, no dedicated headcount, no one manually combing through balances.

Because reminders start early and repeat, customers can no longer claim they didn't know payment was due - and the process carries the message, not a person, which takes the emotion and the relationship risk out of collections.

The results

• Collections flipped from a 5,000–10,000 zł/month cost into a process that now earns a few thousand złoty a month, thanks to automated interest notes.
• Frozen cash freed up and time-to-pay dropped measurably - visible directly in their data
• No more dependence on staffing - the process no longer stalls when someone is sick, on leave, or simply too busy to chase.
• A draining, manual, emotionally loaded task is gone, and the team is freed up for higher-value work.
• Healthier, more predictable monthly cash flow - and the peace of mind that collections are simply running, every day, without anyone having to drive them.

"Collections used to cost us 5,000-10,000 zł a month and staff, lawyers, registry tools. Now, because we send interest notes automatically and customers actually pay them, the process makes us a few thousand a month instead. Structuring it turned out to be so quick that not doing it is the real mistake." - Krzysiek Romaniak

See what Sunbay can do for your finance team

If your team is spending hours chasing invoices - or watching receivables freeze up because nobody has time to follow up - Sunbay can automate the entire collections workflow in under a week.

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