Bookkeep, the smarter accounting automation platform, announced a $6.6 million seed+ round of funding led by Fin Capital, with participation from existing investors TTV Capital, Argonautic Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, Haymaker Ventures, and others. This round brings Bookkeep’s total funding to $10 million, following a $3.3 million seed round in 2021 led by Lerer Hippeau.

The new financing will support product innovation to help accountants and enterprises of all sizes scale their operations through automation. The capital will also help Bookkeep maximize the impact of its new AI technology that processes sales reports from any legacy data format like PDF, CSV, or Excel. Accountants, still today, download these reports and manually enter the data from smaller e-commerce platforms, vertically specialized point of sale (POS), and other payment and sales systems.

Bookkeep is the preferred accounting automation platform for more than 850 small and mid-market brands totalling billions in annualized revenue. Its technology enables professional accountants and bookkeepers to generate accrual-based sales accounting entries and reconcile payment deposits automatically. The platform integrates with more than 30 sales, e-commerce, and payment channels such as PayPal, Shopify, and Amazon Seller, posting daily financials from these channels into accounting systems like QuickBooks and Xero. Professionals who use the Bookkeep platform save 20 hours per month, per client, and have seen a 20% improvement in the quality of data being captured.

Companies spend a significant amount of money— $53 billion annually— on outsourced manual accounting, based on market research by Paradoxes Inc. A majority of finance and accounting professionals are using a cloud-based or hybrid accounting process, but this hasn’t always solved the problem. An alarming 93% of accountants say they are still under pressure to close the books faster, according to Sage.

The challenges accountants face today include high transaction volumes, multiple e-commerce and sales platforms, and inconsistent financial data standards for reporting. Plus, the strained labour market has made it increasingly difficult to find talent willing to do the manual work required. The number of people sitting the CPA exam has dropped by approximately 30%, a decade low that some regulators on the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board have called a “crisis.”

Bookkeep’s automation platform aims to solve both sides of this marketplace problem by providing accountants with a simple process to easily access and post data from siloed sales platforms into their accounting systems, while in the long term helping app developers understand how to build new platforms that deliver financial information in the right format that accountants need.

While some software companies offer API access, many don’t have the infrastructure or deny access including some of the most popular platforms like UberEats. As a result, accountants are stuck manually downloading reports, running pivot tables in spreadsheets and manually creating proper accounting entries in their systems. Bookkeep’s AI platform removes this manual data entry and enables accountants to easily turn payment details reports from older POS and smaller e-commerce systems into daily accounting entries into their accounting platforms that match payment deposits automatically.

Jason Richelson, CEO & Co-Founder, Bookkeep:

“This additional capital underscores the difficult problems that still need to be solved in the underserved accounting industry. We’re at a massive inflection point where it is increasingly challenging to find accountants who are willing to do the manual work and those who are remaining in the profession are becoming burned out by the tedious, time-consuming tasks. These problems we face are entirely solvable through automation and we remain focused on creating technology and new ways of working that eliminate manual data entry for every bookkeeper.”

Peter Ackerson, General Partner, Fin Capital:

“As a former CFO, I know first-hand the problems Bookkeep is solving. Meeting with Jason and the team brought back nightmares of dealing with manual data entry and fixing the errors it often causes. Bookkeep is solving an underappreciated problem in the accounting and CFO sector, and we believe the team is well-positioned for long-term growth as the leader in accounting automation as more businesses and accounting firms grapple with the demands and challenges of e-commerce.”

Gardiner Garrard, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, TTV Capital:

“This is our second time investing in Jason. We first backed him over a decade ago, when he founded Shopkeep to solve the point-of-sale problems that he was facing as a small business owner. What we saw back then still holds true today: Jason and his team are building a much-needed solution for people who process and analyze transactions on a daily basis. We’re proud to be supporting him again as he brings Bookkeep to accountants everywhere.”

Viken Douzdjian, Managing Partner, Argonautic Ventures:
“As brands connect with and sell to customers via new channels, accounting requirements become far more complex. Accounting teams bear the brunt of this complexity. Bookkeep uniquely understands this issue as a team of CPAs and accounting engineers and built a platform that leverages automation to make accountants more efficient. As commerce continues to move omnichannel, we believe Bookkeep is the secret weapon that enables accountants to stay on top of an exponentially increasing workload.”