Choco
Helping Choco Invoice Global Businesses 90% Faster with Stripe
Overview
Stripe
SubSync by Finlert
Stripe Apps
Stripe Integration API
Choco is an AI-native platform modernising the global food supply chain, connecting food and beverage distributors and wholesalers on one system for ecommerce, sales, and customer management. Founded in Berlin in 2018, Choco's ordering side is genuinely cutting-edge — tools like OrderAgent use AI to pull orders in from email, WhatsApp, SMS, and voicemail straight into a distributor's ERP. But behind that slick front end, Choco's finances were held together with rope and good intentions. Because margins in food distribution are thin, Choco offers flexible, tailored payment terms rather than one-size-fits-all pricing — which meant billing was handled manually, by different accountants, using different tools, in every region they operated in. Every month, it took four people on Choco's finance team as long as six business days just to work out what to bill each business, before invoices could even go out. Reconciling incoming payments was just as manual, and payment timelines varied wildly by region, since Choco was juggling several different local payment providers. It worked when Choco was small. It was never going to hold as they scaled internationally.
The Challenge
Choco
needed to:
Replace fragmented, region-by-region billing — run manually across different tools and accountants — with one global system built to support flexible, tailored payment terms.
Eliminate the manual invoicing bottleneck. Every month, four people were spending as much as six business days determining and generating invoices before a single one went out.
Get real-time, trustworthy financial data flowing into Xero (used across Choco's US, UK, and UAE entities) so the accounting team could see the business clearly, not weeks after the fact.
Why
Choco
Chose AhoyAhoy
Choco chose Stripe as the foundation of its new financial infrastructure in March 2025, drawn to its global reach and the flexibility to integrate and customise the tools themselves. Choco brought on AhoyAhoy as their Stripe implementation partner specifically for subscription configuration and Xero integration — the two pieces that needed to connect Stripe's billing engine to how Choco's accounting team actually worked day to day. Choco's own finance team drove the implementation, wanting hands-on understanding of exactly how the changes would ripple out to customer communications and customer success. That meant AhoyAhoy needed to work as a genuine crew member alongside Choco's engineers — not hand over a black box, but wire up a system Choco's team could operate, trust, and extend themselves.
Our Approach
We worked side-by-side with the client across every stage of the product journey:
Stripe
SubSync by Finlert
Stripe Apps
Stripe Integration API
Charting the Course
AhoyAhoy came aboard to handle two critical pieces of Choco's Stripe implementation: configuring subscription billing to match Choco's flexible, region-specific payment terms, and building the bridge from Stripe into Xero. With Choco's own engineer driving the broader Stripe rollout, our role was to make sure the financial data landed somewhere the accounting team could actually use it.
Wiring Subscriptions to Reality
Choco needed billing that could flex — usage-based plans alongside fixed subscriptions, tailored terms per distributor and wholesaler. We configured Stripe Billing to reflect how Choco's commercial team actually sold, not a simplified version of it, so pricing changes could be made through the API and self-serve tools as the business evolved.
Bridging Stripe and Xero
We connected Stripe to Xero using Finlert's SubSync app, automatically replicating Stripe invoices into Xero as they were generated. For a finance team spread across the US, UK, and UAE, this meant accurate, real-time invoice data landing in the system they already trusted — no more manual copy-paste between platforms.
Steady Hands Post-Launch
With Stripe and Xero now talking to each other automatically, Choco's finance team gained a consolidated, real-time view of financial data — including much clearer visibility into which distributors and wholesalers were paying on time, and which weren't. AhoyAhoy stayed on as a Stripe implementation partner as Choco's needs continued to evolve.
Our Impact
The best integrations are the ones nobody has to think about. We handled the subscription configuration and the Xero bridge so Choco's accounting team could trust their numbers without lifting a finger — freeing up a finance team of four to focus on strategy instead of chasing invoices.
The Results
Choco
achieved:
Implemented in 4 weeks, not 3 months
Choco's team had budgeted three months for the rollout. With Stripe's self-serve tools and AhoyAhoy's support on subscriptions and Xero, one engineer completed implementation across every region in four weeks.
90% less time spent on invoicing
Choco eliminated more than 150 hours of manual billing and invoicing work a month. What used to take four people over a week now takes one person one to two days.
34% reduction in days sales outstanding
Automated accounts receivable and dedicated virtual bank account numbers for each distributor and wholesaler sped up collections significantly, strengthening Choco's cash flow and working capital position.
"As we scaled, it was obvious we needed a global solution for billing, invoicing, and payments. We needed the infrastructure and visibility that could support our international growth."
Tobias Pfleger, Director of Strategic Finance
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