There are probably few things that small businesses hate more than accounting. It’s tedious, time consuming and totally vital to ensure that businesses can remain in business and don’t run afoul of authorities.
Well, to make the process of bookkeeping a little bit less painful, a number of investors have joined together to finance botkeeper, which pitches itself as the chatbot for your bookkeeping needs.
It’s a long, long list of investors backing the company including Ignition Partners; former Microsoft chief financial officer John Connors; 500 Startups partner Matthew Johnson, Trevor Kienzle of Correlation Ventures; and finally, Talla founder Rob May.
While a lot of startups run their business off of Quickbooks, botkeeper is a chatbot tool that performs some of the same functions. The tool can also replace a lot of the oversight required by accountants by automating the process using machine learning and human assistance, the company said.
After signing up for botkeeper, customers receive a dedicated virtual bookkeeper that provides accounting services. Integrating financial information like credit cards, bank accounts and accounting software, companies can make entries, track and schedule revenue and deferred expenses, account for payroll, reconcile bank accounts and send invoices, the company claims.
“Using AI and ML, botkeeper can eliminate the inefficiencies, complexities, and prohibitive costs inherent in traditional accounting processes and tasks. botkeeper leverages these advanced computer science techniques to analyze diverse company-wide data sets, categorize expenses, and execute timely accounting actions automatically – all with 99.97% accuracy,” said Enrico Palmerino, chief executive at botkeeper in a statement. “We knew we were on to something when an early demonstration showed that botkeeper could clean up three years of a client’s bookkeeping in just two weeks.”
The key, according to the company, is the combination of automated bookkeeping with real accountants who can provide the expertise to handle the questions that can’t be automated.
“Any urgent, custom, or complex client accounting tasks are addressed immediately,” said Palmerino in a statement.