Botkeeper, which automates bookkeeping workflows through artificial intelligence, announced that it has raised $18 million in a Series A round of funding. At the same time, the Boston-based tech company is also working to develop a new partner program with accounting thought leader Jody Padar.
With the new funding, the company has raised a total of $22.5 million. It plans to use the new money for engineering, sales and marketing.
Participants in the round include Greycroft and Gradient Ventures, Google's AI-focused venture fund, as well as existing investors Ignition Partners and Halfcourt Ventures, and a number of other investors.
Founder Enrico Palmerino launched botkeeper after experiencing firsthand the problems accountants and bookkeepers face in terms of staffing and technology. His first startup, which automated the analysis and design of lighting systems, grew quickly, but when he found that it was constrained by its accounting, he next invested in a company that was involved in outsourced accounting.
“First I learned the headaches of business, and then I learned the headaches that accounting firms have — hiring and retaining staff, managing a tech stack. That’s always evolving and changing. You can’t hire enough good bookkeepers out there, and hiring and retention seemed to be everyone’s biggest problem,” he told Accounting Today. “So I wanted to build a solution that would solve that problem. We did it from an accounting firm mindset.”
Hence botkeeper, which is designed to automate the day-to-day tasks of bookkeeping and accounting, such as data entry, reconciliations and classifications.
Accountants shouldn’t think of it as just another app for them to use, however, according to Palmerino. “It’s a full bookkeeper replacement; it’s a robo-bookkeeper,” he explained. “QuickBooks by itself doesn’t do your bookkeeping for you — you need a bookkeeper to sit between those systems to do your bookkeeping — and botkeeper is a replacement for that bookkeeper.”
Partner program in the works
One of botkeeper’s early adopters was Jody Padar, author of “The Radical CPA” and a well-known thought leader on the direction of the modern accounting firm (as well as a regular member of Accounting Today’s Top 100 Most Influential People list).
“Botkeeper is smarter than some of my previous new hires,” she said. “As a small firm, it’s really hard to hire good staff. With botkeeper, you’re hiring a solution that replaces the talent that’s so hard to find.”
“Once you see what the bots actually do, you’ll never go back,” she added. “It just solves the pain of technology.”
So impressed was Padar with the technology that she immediately began working behind the scenes with the company.
“Jody really helped us figuring out what the onboarding should be — she helped us evolve that, and what it would look and feel like to the other partners, and helped lead our partner advisory board,” Palmerino said. “The tech itself works really well, but how do we make the process of onboarding partners easier and more streamlined; how do we provide the necessary handholding?”
That cooperation led to a more formal partnership, in the form of a “Radical Residency” that will combine botkeeper with Padar’s intellectual platform and action plan for the firm of the future.
“It’s the ideas and principles of my books but actually put into a learning program for the accountants,” she said. “There will be an online component and an event, and multiple ways to radicalize the firms, so they can get to implementing, rather than just reading my books and thinking, ‘Great, now what do I do?’”
“It’s one thing to give accounting firms a tool to automate the bookkeeping; before that, you have to work with them to transition their mindset, in terms of what does this tech actually do to my firm, and what does that mean in terms of system change, personnel change, process change, from role change, from client engagement change, etc.,” Palmerino added. “So rather than figure that out after you put the tech in place, you start a process with Jody where she’ll take you through that mindshift and that firm shift.”
The exact details of the program, including the format and length of the workshops and virtual meetings, are still being worked out, but Palmerino and Padar expect it to address the necessary mindshift, process change, culture, and the new levels of service offerings, and will be completed with deployment and implementation of botkeeper, including migration to the cloud if needed.
“When we first started talking, I thought the Radical Residency would take 18 months or more to get the firms to move, but then I realized that when you introduce tech like botkeeper, you can make that happen in three months,” Padar said. “That’s where firms are struggling — they don’t know how to use the new online tools, and botkeeper makes all that just go away.”
Participation in the program, which they expect to finalize over the next several months and roll out after tax season, will not be required for using botkeeper, Palmerino noted. Firms can sign up for botkeeper now and go through the program once it is finalized.
“There will be some firms that just sign up for botkeeper, but I can say that doing the residency will give you a much better result — the rollout will go better and be much smoother,” he added.
Botkeeper currently has almost a thousand direct clients, and over a hundred accounting firm partners — with room for many more. “I imagine bringing on 1,000 accounting firms next year is very doable,” Palmerino said. “We’ll be staffing up people who can white-glove bringing on new partners through this residency program, and Jody will be adding to her team.”
For more information, visit
