San Antonio—Active Capital is leading a $1.8 million seed funding round for West Palm Beach, FL-based automated bookkeeping software maker Back Office. 500 FinTech, PlugNPlay Ventures, and angel investors also participated, according to Active.
Back Office says it uses artificial intelligence-driven software to automate revenue and expense reporting (among other accounting measures) for businesses. It has a team of in-house bookkeepers who help on-board customers’ data into the software, which can track transactions, bank statements, and develop financial reports. The service also provides customers with visual reports, financial documents like balance sheets and income statements, and tax information, according to Back Office’s website. The company says its software can process more than 4 million transactions per day.
Back Office is a recent graduate of the 500 Startups seed program in San Francisco, which invests $150,000 for a 6 percent equity stake. The company’s founders, Felix Rodriguez, Glennys Rodriguez, and Edwin Mejia, relocated to San Francisco for five months for the program, the 24th “batch” of 500 Startups’s seed accelerator, according to a news release. During that time, the business reached $600,000 in annual recurring revenue, the release says. 500 Statrups launched its 500 FinTech fund, which targets financial services startups, in 2016.
Targeting business owners who use services like Quickbooks and Xero, Back Office aims to help those who don’t have time or like doing their books, Felix Rodriguez says in an e-mail. While other services like Austin-based ScaleFactor also offer automated bookkeeping, Rodriguez says that he believes Back Office is cheaper (it starts at $89 per month) and is more automated than the Austin competitor. Each of Back Office’s bookkeepers can manage more than 250 customers, he says. Its AI automates the more tedious and time-consuming tasks of accounting, such as document retrieval and expense classification, he says.
“Back Office helps business owners get their books straight and puts them on auto pilot, giving business owners time back and peace of mind going forward,” Pat Matthews, founder of San Antonio-based Active Capital, says in the news release. Active announced in January it raised $21.5 million for its first investment fund.
