How Aukera Energy centralised treasury to support rapid European growth

When Petre Osiceanu arrived at Aukera Energy as finance transformation manager at the end of 2023, he joined an energy infrastructure business that was growing rapidly across the five European markets in which it operated.

The company specialises in renewable energy projects and operates a portfolio that comprises solar, wind, and battery energy storage systems (BESS) in Belgium, Romania, Italy, Germany and the UK.

Aukera’s business model relies on either acquiring existing energy infrastructure projects or companies, or purchasing greenfield land on which to develop, finance, construct and operate its own renewable energy infrastructure.

The pace of Aukera’s growth and its acquisition strategy didn’t come without challenges: When Petre arrived, the company was already working with multiple banks across several countries. As the company onboarded new entities and the roster of banks with which it worked began to grow, Petre and his team struggled to gain a clear overview of the company’s finances, and the need for a centralised treasury system soon became both obvious and urgent.

Meanwhile, the business was making payments manually, with Petre having to run a script in NetSuite, create a payment file and then manually upload it to a different system – a process that was time-consuming, prone to human error, and vulnerable to security breaches.

In 2025, Petre began looking into a centralised treasury system provider and was recommended Cobase by a colleague, who had used it before in a previous role. Petre was also aware that Cobase had a good track record of integration with NetSuite, which the business was already using.

Following a prospecting phase, in which Petre considered all the options available to the business and weighed the pros and cons of each one, Cobase was eventually selected and Aukera has not looked back.

Today, Aukera has a closed-loop payment process with a complete end-to-end audit trail. Once invoices have been approved and a payment run is initiated in NetSuite, the resulting payment instructions flow directly into Cobase, automatically triggering the payment process without the need for manual intervention. Through its NetSuite SuiteApp, Cobase also provides pre-configured templates for the required payment types and formats directly within NetSuite, helping ensure payments are generated correctly for the respective banks. This seamless integration has enabled Aukera to create a safer, faster and more efficient end-to-end payment process.

The benefits of partnering with Cobase do not end there for Aukera, which has also seen a marked improvement in time spent on reconciliations – another area of the business that had not been entirely automated.

Prior to working with Cobase, more than half of Aukera’s bank accounts did not have an ERP bank statement feed. This would require members of the Finance team to download or print PDFs, and then match the transactions showing in NetSuite’s ‘Match Bank Data’ section with those in the company’s dual account line by line.

Cobase resolved this challenge through its ability to connect to banks across a wide range of connectivity channels, including SWIFT, host-to-host (SFTP), EBICS and premium APIs. Regardless of how individual banks deliver their statements – whether in MT940, BAI2, CAMT/XML or other bank-specific formats – Cobase receives, processes and standardises the data into a consistent CAMT.053 format. Through the dedicated Cobase Oracle NetSuite SuiteApp, these standardised statements, including balances and transactions, are delivered directly into NetSuite’s native Bank Data Matching and Reconciliation functionality, enabling automated transaction matching across Aukera’s entire banking landscape.

Given the complexity and diversity of Aukera’s banking landscape, the implementation demonstrated the importance of having a flexible approach to bank connectivity. While many banks embraced the treasury project and were connected within a matter of weeks, others required additional coordination or different connectivity approaches to accommodate their specific capabilities and requirements.

In some rarer cases, having a dedicated BIC and direct access to the SWIFT network can be the only viable option. For Aukera, Cobase enabled this through SWIFT Alliance Cloud as a SWIFT Business Connect partner, providing Aukera with its own dedicated BIC while taking away the operational and technical complexities associated with owning, operating and maintaining dedicated SWIFT connectivity and infrastructure. This provided Aukera with an additional connectivity route for banks where other channels were not available or suitable.

Now, when Aukera informs Cobase of a new bank they are working with, they are assigned an implementation manager who has knowledge of how the bank operates. Aukera currently works with seven banks across five countries, all connected to Cobase.

Petre recognises the value of having a partner that can navigate challenges together with the client. “I really want to thank the Cobase team for the flexibility they showed throughout the project,” he says. “We faced a few challenges with a specific bank along the way, but the Cobase team was always patient, understanding and willing to find a way forward. Their support really helped us get everything successfully deployed.”

By partnering with Cobase, Aukera now has a fully-functioning centralised treasury management system that has streamlined its payment and reconciliation processes. As the business expands further, Cobase’s scalable solution will be able to grow with it.