accounting

AccountsIQ Raises $65M to Enhance Bookkeeping Tools with Artificial Intelligence

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The economy remains on shaky ground in Europe, but there is some silver lining for enterprise startups: those building tools to help businesses run their finances in more steady and predictable ways are seeing a boost to their business. “We are now poised to take the AccountsIQ product and service to the next level,” said Tony Connolly, founder and CEO of AccountsIQ, in a statement. Thus, the prosaic accounting startup continues to get attention. (AccountsIQ and its primary investor for this round, Axiom Equity, are not disclosing its valuation.) In contrast, Cran says that AccountsIQ positions itself as the platform that businesses will move to as they scale up.

“Fisker Incurs Financial Miscalculations: Customer Payments Go Unaccounted For Over Several Months”

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Fisker temporarily lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments as it scaled up deliveries, leading to an internal audit that started in December and took months to complete, TechCrunch has learned. The EV startup was ultimately able to track down a majority of those payments or request new ones from customers whose payment methods had expired. Red flags raisedFisker has warned investors since last year about problems with its internal accounting practices. Fisker’s poor internal procedures have created problems beyond keeping track of payments. Fisker hired contractors in February to help resolve the title and registration problems, but the backlog was immense, according to the people.

Qonto, the French fintech unicorn, gains ownership of Regate after securing substantial funds.

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And it is using an undisclosed portion of its cash reserve to acquire Regate, an accounting and financial automation platform. Qonto originally started with online business accounts with debit cards specifically tailored for small and medium businesses. After a while, Regate will be integrated in Qonto directly to improve several accounting automation features of Qonto, such as invoicing, accounts payables, accounts receivables, etc. Qonto finds itself in a different position from Payfit, another French unicorn (or former unicorn) that provides a software-as-a-service tool focused on payroll. As many fintech startups are struggling to raise a new funding round, Qonto could become a consolidator in the space.

Spain’s Embat Secures $16M for Rivalry Against Trovata in Real-Time Accounting

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Spain’s Embat, which has raised $16M, plans to compete with Trovata in real-time accountingFor obvious reasons, financial teams can spend a great deal of time on corporate treasury management, accounting and bank reconciliation, so anything that speeds up that process usually garners a lot of interest. Today Embat, a Spanish fintech which does what they call “real-time treasury management”, has closed a financing round of $16 million Series AS led by Creandum. Their solution automates accounting and bank reconciliation, and deals with corporate treasury management, centralising collections, payments, and treasury processes, thus saving time, says the startup. Last year Embat partnered with Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform in an effort to reduce errors for accounting teams. Tomás Gil, co-founder and CTO of Embat, said the company has “significantly improved” its accounting and bank reconciliation module and was now applying AI to its platform.

Cyber Breach: Customer Information Compromised in Phishing Attack Targeting Accounting Partner, Reports Framework

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U.S. repairable laptop maker Framework has confirmed that hackers accessed customer data after successfully phishing an employee at its accounting service provider. In an email sent to affected customers, Framework said that an employee at Keating Consulting, its primary external accounting partner, fell victim to a social engineering attack that allowed malicious hackers to obtain customers’ personal information related to outstanding balances for Framework purchases. Framework told affected customers that hackers could use this stolen information to impersonate Framework to ask for payment information. The Silicon Valley-based accounting company, which primarily provides interim financial leadership and back-office support to startups, has almost 300 clients, according to its website. Framework said that in light of the incident at Keating, the company will require mandatory phishing and social engineering attack training for any of the company’s employees who have access to Framework customers’ information.