Receipt Bank raises $50 million to help bookkeepers automate data extraction from invoices

Receipt Bank, a fintech startup that helps companies automate elements of their bookkeeping, has raised $50 million in a series B round of funding from Insight Venture Partners.

Founded out of London in 2010, Receipt Bank targets accountants, bookkeepers, and small businesses with an online platform that allows them to submit their invoices, receipts, and bills simply by snapping a photo and uploading it through the mobile app (Android, iOS), the desktop app, or an email submission. Receipt Bank’s system then automatically extracts relevant data, sorts and categorizes it, and publish everything to the customer’s cloud accounting software of choice, be that FreshBooks, QuickBooks, or Xero.

The company said that it works with more than 5,000 accounting and bookkeeping firms globally, representing over 100,000 clients across North America, EMEA, and Australia. It also told VentureBeat that last year it passed $10 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), a revenue measure often used by subscription-based businesses. Indeed, Receipt Bank charges clients between $25 and $225 per month, depending on the number of items processed.

Receipt Bank had raised around $15 million in equity financing up until now, and with its latest cash injection the company said it plans to accelerate growth and further develop its products.

While Receipt Bank solves one problem, insofar as it helps companies digitize paper documents, the overarching issue it’s looking to fix is the long and laborious hours it takes a human to manually sift through numbers and text printed on pages. Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly infiltrating just about every facet of industry, and accountancy and bookkeeping is no different.

“Bookkeeping is at a pivotal point as automation technologies and artificial intelligence are bringing it out of the back office,” noted Receipt Bank CEO Alexis Prenn. “With Receipt Bank, bookkeeping moves from a cost to a source of income — becoming the enabler of effective reporting, payments, lending, and other value-adding services. This investment will enable us to further develop our proprietary technologies and bring these services to even more leading accounting and bookkeeping firms and their small business clients.”

Nabbing Insight Venture Partners — a prominent venture capital (VC) firm with more than two decades experience — as its sole series B investor is a major coup for Receipt Bank. Indeed, the New York-based VC firm has a slew of big-name companies in its portfolio, including Alibaba, Twitter, Tumblr, Hootsuite, and Zenefits. Specific to AI and automation, the firm recently plowed $165 million into automated software testing company Tricentis, and it also participated in the $75 million funding round for AI cybersecurity startup Darktrace.

Put simply, Receipt Bank is in good company.

“Artificial intelligence has become a clear disruptor in several industries, including financial services,” added Brad Twohig, managing director at Insight Venture Partners. “Receipt Bank is an industry leader in using emerging technology to drive core functions forward.”