Botkeeper, a startup developing automated data entry, classification, and reporting solutions for accounting, today announced it has raised $ 25 million. CEO and cofounder Enrico Palmerino said the funding will allow Botkeeper to “double down” on engineering and product development for its enterprise customers.
Studies show the vast majority of day-to-day accounting tasks can be automated with software. That’s perhaps why in a survey conducted by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, over 50% of respondents said they anticipate the development of automated and intelligent systems will have a significant impact on accounting businesses over the next 30 years.
Botkeeper aims to hasten the shift with a platform that integrates with banks, credit cards, payroll providers, and more than 1,200 clients and partners to access and extract data from financial and non-financial sources. Human teams working in the U.S., Canada, Africa, and the Philippines train the company’s algorithm-driven software to perform tasks like categorizing expenses, paying bills, invoicing, reconciling, entering data into accounting spreadsheets, and more before they’re approved, verified, and submitted to a general ledger.
BotKeeper’s ScanBot feature supports the scanning and uploading of receipts, invoices, expenses, sales, and contracts, with receipt syncing for uploading to the general ledger and matching with transactions in accounting software. Beyond receipts, Botkeeper automatically categorizes transactions based on historical data, picking up on patterns to make educated guesses.
Botkeeper says the AI, machine learning, and robotic process automation technologies underpinning its platform have been exposed to millions of financial transactions and evaluate hundreds of variables, enabling them to tackle bookkeeping workloads with precision. They continuously improve over time, and they provide feedback about atypical transaction activities and exceptions to authorized managers and executives.
For tasks that can’t be automated away, like tax filing and wealth management, Botkeeper connects clients with accounting firms and recruits its in-house team of CPAs and accountants to revamp books and bring them up to date. In all cases, Boteeper delivers reporting tools that spotlight things like financial and non-financial trends and adherence to (or violations of) KPIs.
Botkeeper claims that its clients reduce bookkeeping costs by 45% and scale up by 10 times, on average.
The series B round — which was led by oint72 Ventures, with participation from High Alpha Capital, Republic Labs, Oakridge, Peak State, Ignition Partners, Greycroft Partners, Gradient Ventures, and Sorenson Capital — brings Boston-based Botkeeper’s total raised to $ 47.5 million. Despite pandemic-related headwinds and competition from the likes of Receipt Bank, among others, the company says it expects a 3 times year-over-year run rate in 2020 and plans to add dozens of employees to its workforce of over 100.