Beyond just creating budgets, your accountant can help you with forecasting, analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs), and developing a financing strategy. Your accountant can help look at the “big picture,” examining how all your financials are interrelated and affect your company. And in today’s higher interest rate environment, our finance and accounting teams have been helping clients think about safe ways to get some yield out of their cash positions.
Our articles and guides are based on high quality, fact checked research with our readers best interests at heart, and we seek to apply our vigorous journalistic standards to all of our efforts. This business allows me to channel that enthusiasm into a service that truly makes a difference in people’s lives. Starting Financial Concierge was a natural progression of my passion for simplifying complex business concepts and making them accessible to everyone, regardless of their background or experience. Elevation was joined in the new round by new investors Think Investments and Neeraj Arora, as well as existing investors Saama Capital, Amit Singhal, Sierra Ventures, Twin Ventures, Dragon Capital and Liquid 2 Ventures.
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Bookkeeping fintech Zeni has launched the first AI-powered finance concierge for startups, making its intelligent bookkeeping, accounting, and CFO services available to businesses across the United States. But properly tracking your financial transactions is part of being a business owner, whether you’re a startup or an established business owner. With Zeni, startups get accurate, GAAP-compliant books and access to finance concierge that is 10x faster than other accounting options thanks to Zeni’s AI-powered processes. A solid accounting system managed by experts will make tax return preparation all that much easier and more accurate. If your accounts are not in order, you’ll likely miss out on maximizing this serious tax benefit for startups. Beyond just completing your regular tax returns, you will want to look at available tax credits, like the research & development tax credit.
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For example, its AI might highlight the fact that operating expenses increased month-over-month and salaries and contractor fees were the primary factors affecting the increase. Once the receipt is reconciled, a bot automatically comments on the email, providing a link to the transaction for Zeni’s finance team to review. Launching a startup requires more than just a great idea; it requires careful financial planning and execution. Many new entrepreneurs underestimate the complexities of managing finances for a business, leading to costly mistakes down the road.
Ready to experience bookkeeping and accounting designed specifically for startups?
Our human finance experts are supported by AI to complete ‘busy work’ on their behalf, creating efficiencies at scale. Within every report on the Zeni Dashboard, we provide AI-generated insights highlighting the key contributing factors affecting changes to your monthly finances. Prior to starting Zeni, we spent 5 years building a human assisted AI-powered platform for travel which was acquired by AMEX in 2018, and today serves more than 10 million AMEX card members across the U.S. and U.K.. We understood exactly how a similar platform could be effective in the world of startup bookkeeping and accounting.
- Zeni has experienced rapid growth and adoption since onboarding its first paid customers in January 2020, today managing more than $200 million in funds every month across more than 100 startup customers.
- Reports highlight burn rate, runway and cash zero date; Total cash balance and credit card balance across every account; Operating expenses and top expenses; Revenues, including cost of sales; Cash in and cash out; and more.
- Zeni also says it’s building a transaction auto-categorization engine that’s learning from its human experts as they categorize incoming transactions.
- The more places you find employees, vendors, and clients, the more likely you are to run into disparate state and local tax laws.
- It is important to know and record where the money is coming from, where is it going, how well is the performance, and how will the business perform in the coming months.
From starting the leading Indian music streaming service to creating an AI-powered travel concierge, these two know how to execute. While starting their previous ventures, they were frustrated by the amount of time finance and accounting took away from their core business focus. They decided their next company would solve this problem once and for all for other founders. Their ability to develop innovative products has attracted top talent to join them again for this latest venture.
The application easily integrates with the organization’s policies and provides features to/for smartscan the receipts, automatic reimbursements to employee accounts, duplicate expense detection, and credit card expense imports. I finance concierge for startups hereby consent to the processing of the personal data that I have provided and declare my agreement with the data protection regulations in the privacy policy on the website. Financial Concierge is not just a business; it is a mission to provide accessible, straightforward guidance that helps individuals navigate their business journey with ease and assurance. The company was already “very well capitalized,” with a majority of the previous round still around, Swapnil Shinde said. Ash Lilani, managing partner at Saama Capital, said in an interview that he has been following the Shinde brothers for years, having also invested in Mezi. When they sold the company, it was such a productive relationship that Lilani told them if they decided to start something new, he would back them.
It offers a more accurate view of overall financials, helping stakeholders better understand trends in revenue, profit, and expenses. Unlike equity financing, debt financing does not dilute ownership but requires careful management of cash flow to meet repayment obligations. It is typically used for later-stage businesses seeking capital without giving up ownership. LTV represents the total revenue a company expects to generate from a customer over the entire duration of their relationship with the business.
By March 2021, it managed more than $200 million in funds every month across more than 100 startup customers. Zeni manages more than $200 million in funds every month across more than 100 startup customers. Using a blend of artificial intelligence and team of certified finance experts, Zeni’s full-service finance concierge performs daily bookkeeping and manages all other financial needs of its customers. Zeni leverages a seamless blend of artificial intelligence and human finance experts to perform daily bookkeeping and manage every financial need of a startup. Instead, Zeni’s finance concierge performs daily bookkeeping and manages all other financial needs of startups for a flat monthly fee, as low as $299 per month.
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It is on track to process a total of $1 billion in transactions in the next 12 months, Shinde said. The new funding will be used to hire across the company, including product and technology development as well as its finance team that crunches all of the numbers for the more than 100 startups currently using the platform. Zeni co-founders and twin brothers Swapnil Shinde and Snehal Shinde started the company in 2019 after selling their last company, a travel concierge named Mezi, to American Express in 2018. Over the last 12 years of building companies, CEO Swapnil Shinde said they witnessed the financial problems startups were having first-hand.
This allows Zeni to offer exceptional service at an affordable price point, based on a company’s total monthly expenses. The cash flow metric calculates the net cash and cash equivalent inflows and outflows from your startup. If your startup has a positive cash flow, it means your company is building up its liquid assets, which would help settle debts, invest, pay dividends to shareholders and create a buffer that shields it from future financial hurdles. Monitoring cash flow ensures your startup maintains adequate liquidity to meet its obligations. Tracking revenue growth informs you about how well your product or service is being received in the market.
As part of our consulting services for startup success, we help you leverage the latest technologies to optimize your financial management processes. By embracing technology, you can gain real-time insights into your finances, automate repetitive tasks, and reduce the risk of human error. CPAs are legally allowed to provide tax services above and beyond what other accounting professionals can do. Startup accounting services, or outsourced bookkeeping services provide a full accounting department experience, while freeing up time to focus on your startup’s core competencies. As your startup grows and makes more revenue, your recordkeeping system will become more complex and crucial to maintain. This is why starting with a well-organized system as you run your business is essential.
At CMP, we love working with startup companies to help them succeed, including doing accounting to help maximize profits and minimize tax payments. Zeni, a Palo Alto fintech company providing real-time financial services data to venture-backed startups, raised $34 million in Series B funding led by Elevation Capital. Zeni’s full-service finance team consists of bookkeepers, accountants, CPAs, tax advisors, FP&A experts and CFOs with 100+ years of collective experience. We’ve led seed-stage startups, growth stage companies, and public companies through every financial scenario imaginable.
- When they sold the company, it was such a productive relationship that Lilani told them if they decided to start something new, he would back them.
- They evaluate operational costs, negotiate contracts, and find ways to improve efficiency without sacrificing quality.
- Randy Johnston and Brian Tankersley, CPA, discuss strategies needed to efficiently run a family tax and accounting practice.
Startup founders then have real-time access to key financial insights via the Zeni Dashboard, including burn rate, operating expenses, cash/card balance and revenue by product. Zeni is the first AI-powered finance concierge for startups powering high velocity decision making. Zeni was founded in 2019 by twin brothers and serial entrepreneurs, Swapnil Shinde and Snehal Shinde, who most recently founded Mezi, the AI-powered travel assistant acquired by American Express in 2018. For a flat monthly fee, Zeni gives businesses access to real-time financial data, along with the support of a team of certified accountants.
As artificial intelligence plays a growing role in automating manual processes, Zeni is well-positioned to transform the way startups manage their finances. Startups can’t succeed if they are weighed down by legacy software and error-prone data entry. Zeni’s mission is to relieve these burdens by providing startups with an artificially intelligent full-service finance team.
Zeni launches AI-powered finance concierge for startups
It’s one thing to know your operating expenses have increased, and an entirely different thing to understand why. “Bookkeeping is often not worked on until month’s end, but it is very manual and slow, and as founders you don’t have real-time insights, which becomes a problem quickly,” he added. Let’s explore the essential financial ratios that every startup founder should monitor to ensure sustainable growth. Randy Johnston and Brian Tankersley, CPA, discuss strategies needed to efficiently run a family tax and accounting practice. Our philosophy is to research, curate, and provide the best startup feeds and resources to help you succeed in your venture. We are currently ranked as the 13th best startup website in the world and are paving our way to the top.