Pennylane raises $18.4 million for its accounting service – TechCrunch

French startup Pennylane has raised $18.4 million (€15 million) for its accounting service that combines automated processes with human accountants. Existing investors Global Founders Capital and Partech are investing once again.

Pennylane is both a software-as-a-service company that helps you deal with your financial data and an accounting firm. By working with accountants directly, it means that you can talk with your accountant through the company’s platform. It becomes a single source of information for financial data.

The startup wants to improve the experience for both its clients and its accountants. Usually, accounting firms receive data every month or every quarter. They waste a ton of time opening files and entering information in accounting software.

Similarly, accounting reports are a black box for CEOs and CFOs. They can’t leverage that data for financial projections and visibility. Pennylane wants to change that so you don’t have to use Excel to predict your company’s P&L.

When you first start working with Pennylane, you connect your account with third-party services that already hold valuable information, such as Stripe, Payfit, Qonto, Zoho, Sellsy, etc. This way, information is always up to date, and not just when you manually export data from all your services.

A year after launch, Pennylane has generated €2 million in revenue ($2.5 million) and attracted 550 customers. There are now 30 accountants working for the company.

Up next, the startup wants to attract more companies, and especially companies that have an in-house accounting team or work with an accounting firm already. You’ll be able to use Pennylane’s software-as-a-service with your own accountant.

Pennylane had previously raised a $4.3 million (€4 million) seed round with Global Founders Capital, Partech and Kima Ventures.