Translucent, the accounting platform solving the financial management problems of multi-entity and multi-national businesses, has raised a £5M seed round co-led by Chalfen Ventures and LocalGlobe. This follows a £2.7M pre-seed round less than six months ago, bringing its total investment to £7.7M. 

This accelerated fundraising reflects the significant demand Translucent is experiencing for its multi-entity accounting and financial management platform. 

Translucent was founded in London by CEO Michael Wood, who co-founded Dext (formerly Receipt Bank), which was acquired by leading software investor Hg in 2021 for several hundred million GBP, one of the UK’s largest SaaS exits. Dext is used by over 10,000 accounting firms worldwide, with over 1 million users.

Translucent is backed by prominent angel investors, including Co-founder and former CTO of Xero Craig Walker, and Co-founder and former Managing Director of Xero UK, Gary Turner, as well as founders from fintech and accounting-tech leaders, such as GoCardless, Jeeves, Karbon, Libeo, ComplyAdvantage, Ignition, Hubdoc and KashFlow. 

The Translucent platform allows multi-entity businesses to unify their financial data and workflows for the first time, by providing a suite of apps on top of existing accounting software such as Xero, QuickBooks and Sage. The first app, 'Search', is available today, the second app 'Group Reporting' is now in Beta, and the third app 'Live Sheets' will soon be available to testers. The funding will be used to develop further apps including 'Intercompany Transactions', 'BI & Analytics' and 'Financial Close'.

Truly Multi-Entity Accounting in a ‘Default Global’ World

The impact of globalisation and COVID-19 has dramatically accelerated the trend of companies becoming multinational or multi-entity earlier than ever before, as outlined by Andreessen Horowitz’s ‘Default Global’ thesis. However, SMB accounting systems are designed to hold the data of a single company in a single location, so this trend has forced finance teams to stitch together a patchwork of SMB accounting software which creates numerous problems including fragmented, siloed, and messy data.

Translucent enables businesses to continue to use the SMB solutions they currently use but unifies their financial data into a single location where it can be seen, used and edited. Translucent is being used by businesses around the world, from software companies to restaurant groups to property developers. 

A Single Financial System of Record

Translucent integrates with existing accounting solutions, stores all the data in a single location and harmonises the data to provide clients with a single financial system of record. It then provides a suite of apps to make use of the data; Apps include Group Reporting, Intercompany Transactions and Financial Close. Translucent will use the additional funding to build out its platform and suite of apps. 

Michael Wood, Founder and CEO of Translucent, comments: “Since announcing Translucent in March we have been delighted by the volume of interest we have received. This fundraising allows us to further build out our platform and solve the accounting and finance problems faced by multi-entity businesses.”   

Mike Chalfen at Chalfen Ventures comments: “Translucent’s insight is that unified accounting data can be the basis of financial and operational insight for every multi-entity business. Michael is the best entrepreneur in the world to build a business based on this insight. And the opportunity to create a compound startup that drives insight for multi-entity businesses is huge; so joining the Translucent family fits perfectly into my mission of backing software startups whose technology will fundamentally alter the way companies operate.”

Remus Brett at LocalGlobe VC comments: “The demand from multinationals for Translucent is as significant as it is unsurprising. Michael and his team have built a platform that is solving a very real problem for an ever-growing number of businesses around the world, and we’re delighted to be backing him again.”