Roger, the accounting automation tool, raises $7.35M Series A

Roger, an accounting automation tool that runs on top of accounting software to automate various processes, has raised $7.35 million in Series A funding.

Leading the round is QED Investors, with participation from 9Yards, Silicon Valley Bank, Financial Venture Studio, and BootstrapLabs. A number of individual investors, including Dan Wernikoff, the former GM of QuickBooks and TurboTax, have also backed the Series A.

Claiming to cut the time businesses spend on day-to-day financial processes by as much as 80 percent, Roger works on top of existing accounting software to automate financial processes, such as paying bills, approvals, receipt scanning, compliance and bookkeeping. This is achieved via “simple workflows” that the Denmark and U.S.-based company says anyone can set up and manage.

Customers range from small to mid-sized businesses across virtually any industry to bookkeeping and major accounting firms.

“For businesses, we’re cutting down the time you have to spend in your accounting software dramatically, and help you save time and money on your external accountant or allocate resources better in your in-house finance team,” Roger CEO and co-founder Cathrine Andersen tells me. “You’ll be able to scale your accounting department more easily without adding new headcount”.

To achieve this, Roger consists of a simple web and mobile app that scans incoming documents and ensures that they are seen by the correct person within an organisation. That way they can quickly and efficiently get “coded, approved and reconciled”.

“Roger’s workflow builder is almost like a Zapier for accounting, letting business owners and finance departments set up rules to govern all financial flows, so they can lean back and watch their work get done. Accounting without accounting,” says Andersen.

Meanwhile, for the accountants Roger sells into, Andersen says the startup is helping them stay competitive within a new landscape that is seeing automation becoming a major disruptor.

“This does not mean that there will be no accountants left in 5 years, but it means the industry has to change what services and value they bring to clients and that business models will have to change,” she says. “Any bookkeeper or accounting firm that still spends time on manual processes will likely be faced with questions from their clients and soon a rapidly declining customer base. Clients are starting to see that there are tools out there that can do the grunt work, so why would they pay an hourly fee to do the same thing over and over again every month?”.

To that end, Roger generates revenue in a number of ways. Businesses pay the company a flat monthly subscription fee based on how many documents they process. Accountants are charged a base fee per client, and a price per document.

“Over time, monetizing our large transaction volume of payments will be a key driver of revenue along with other business models that double as cool features to help our network of Roger customers and vendors to run healthier businesses,” adds the Roger CEO.

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