Take a moment to think about your accounting related pain points. If you’re like thousands of other business owners, redundant data entry and mismatched accounts probably came to mind immediately. What about hunting down staff or clients to get clarity on uncategorized expenses? Or better yet, how many hours a week do you spend on mundane repetitive tasks you are confident a robot could do for you? 

As accountants and business owners ourselves, we understand your pain. We’ve been there. With decades of experience in accounting, technology, and professional services, we’ve learned where the pitfalls are and how to avoid them. We’ve also listened to the challenges of industry peers and learned that these pain points are felt far and wide. 

We knew there had to be a better way, and we were right … and soon AccountedCloud was born. AccountedCloud is a collaborative effort bringing together modern solutions to age-old problems. It’s essentially the marriage of accounting and technology/automation. But what really sets it apart is that it was developed not by an IT person who doesn’t understand accounting needs or challenges, but instead by an accountant who knows exactly what they are and how to solve them.

The Early Stages

The first question we ask ourselves when attempting to solve a problem with technology is, “Do we build, or do we buy?” In conducting our early-stage research, we quickly realized that most of the available applications today are either too outdated, too expensive, or too generalized for SMB accountants and bookkeepers. 

Generalized automation software is great for basic transactional records, such as invoices and sales receipts, but does not account for the complete end-to-end accounting functions of a business. We wanted a way to compile all the relevant data to simplify accounting processes and increase efficiencies. For example, to record payments in QBO, we needed an invoice first. With most generalized automation systems, we would have to create multiple automation workflows to handle this, whereas we wanted the same result with one single workflow, thus reducing our automation expense. We also thought additional cost savings should be realized by consolidating the data from Point-of-Sale (PoS), eCommerce, and other sources of truth, giving QuickBooks Online only a consolidated batch of essential financial information it requires. But how?

With all this in mind, we started a design thinking workshop to reimagine what these tools could look like for the modern small business. Our goal was to simplify the entire accounting process from the ground level up. 

There’s no doubt about it – current accounting functions take a lot of manual work. And in addition to automating most of that manual work, we wanted to give ourselves the tools to easily visualize data from sales through accounting, as well as to track KPIs across all of our companies and our client companies. But we didn’t want to stop there, we also wanted to provide these tools to the businesses of the world.

To make a long story short, in the end, the initial designs for AccountedCloud were drafted.

The first of many.

After several iterations (and many more iterations to go), we concluded on the following initial suite of applications we now affectionately call “AccountedCloud power tools.” 

…

Workflow

In the Workflow, we can easily integrate, connect, and configure blocks, or third-party services, as well as native services such as email, SMS, and others.

…

Charted

Charted is a power tool that creates a unified chart of accounts. With the ultimate goal of having your chart of accounts be consistent across all customers, and utilizing these accounting categories in a simplified fashion, Charted helps save hours for accountants and business owners. 

For example, say you own two companies. One focuses on web development and the other focuses on printed marketing. With Charted, we have the ability to look at your combined chart of accounts for all your companies. It can interlock all the data in a unified form to simplify your overall accounting processes. 

Although AccountedCloud has just one subscription plan, there is no one-size-fits-all package. Our goal is to grow with your business and provide additional premium modules based on your needs. We want you to be able to choose the modules that work best for you and your own unique needs. Having these power tools ready under one plan will allow you to use whatever you need, whenever you need it.

More to come…

We’ve designed AccountedCloud with the small- to mid-sized business owner in mind, and we’ll continue to advance it in the same way.

For example, integration on prepayments for high-end products or drop shipping are already in the pipeline. If a company needs a product made, the product is typically made outside of the United States, and a prepayment needs to be rendered before the order process can begin. AccountedCloud “PrePayments” (coming soon) will simplify accounting services, such as determining which prepayments have been received, from whom, and how much money is still owed. Being able to clearly see your “true cost” on products will help you evaluate your expenses and overall budget. 

We have also begun the process of development for power tools that incorporate modern technologies such Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Intelligent Automation, and more. Our goal is to make these technologies available to small business owners and accountants at a cost-effective monthly rate that won’t break the bank. 

But what’s most important to us is hearing from you. We believe in collaboration and in helping you solve your most pressing accounting problems. Contact us and tell us what challenges you are facing. Where do you need to save time? Let us know, and we’ll help find a solution that works for you and your business.