Accounting Seed: An Accounting Solution That Adapts To Your Business

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Tony Zorc, Founder and CEO Quite often, a gaping hole remains invisible until it appears in one’s line of vision.

Take the case of accounting software, for instance.

For years, there was a common perception that accounting functions of most organizations—regardless of their stature, expenses, or financial returns—were fairly similar. Although CRM systems evolved constantly, adding marketing, sales, and service apps to assist enterprises in their day-to-day business management, the aspect of accounting was inexplicably ignored.

Soon enough, the accounting software on the market— most of which were built in the 1980s—proved inadequate. The tools were developed with the “this is the only way to do accounting” mindset, propelling businesses to submit to predefined rules pertaining to their accounting practices.

As a result, businesses, especially SMBs, resorted to patched solutions. Rather than leveraging one powerful tool that met all their accounting needs, they stitched together a customized solution comprised of spreadsheets, timesheets, and expense report apps. Since the different systems failed to communicate with each other, SMBs were often unable to integrate their business workflows, processes, and proprietary data with their accounting solution.

A Paradigm Shift in Accounting Software

All that changed in 2008 with the arrival of Accounting Seed—an all-encompassing accounting solution that enables businesses to run their entire back office in one environment by harnessing the power of the Salesforce Platform. “We are different from any accounting technology ever conceived. Built on a new paradigm, and with a fresh mindset, Accounting Seed provides a toolset that lets businesses do their accounting exactly how they see fit,” says Tony Zorc, founder and CEO of Accounting Seed.

Over the last dozen years, Accounting Seed has emerged as the go-to option for small-to-midsize companies that typically outgrow their existing solutions and seek future-ready accounting software built to scale and meet their evolving needs.

Just ask NVIS, inc., a manufacturer of VR headsets, and Axis Water Technologies, a company that provides water treatment services to residential, commercial, and industrial markets. Both firms outgrew their existing accounting solutions and needed a true CRM that included access to an advanced financial application catered to their exact requirements.

As revealed by Adam Joslin, the CEO of Axis, the clean water specialists considered five major players in the CRM landscape before selecting Salesforce. “No other application had access to a true accounting application with the tools we needed to really run the business. When we decided to move from QuickBooks, Salesforce recommended Accounting Seed, and we are very happy to move forward. I love the technology,” he says.

The combination of Salesforce and Accounting Seed has given Axis the complete business solution it was looking for. Today, Axis eliminates multiple tedious steps associated with cash receipts and billing records by using Blackthorn.io, a Salesforce-native mobile payments app, in tandem with Accounting Seed.

Meanwhile, NVIS has also witnessed a sea change in its accounting processes since embracing Accounting Seed. Previously, it used separate apps for coding, manufacturing, purchasing, and accounting—and the systems were neither in sync nor meeting the back office requirements. Also, since its proprietary data (of manufacturing processes) was stored in separate systems, NVIS could not integrate the same with its workflows and accounting/billing. Since switching to Salesforce, NVIS has discovered the unlimited benefits of Accounting Seed. The two use cases are a representation of over 1,000 businesses that are actively leveraging Accounting Seed.

When we decided to move from QuickBooks, Salesforce recommended Accounting Seed, and we are very happy to move forward. I love the technology

“All their proprietary data and processes can now be tracked and accessed across systems; alerts are triggered and sent to various departments. For example, if a product under warranty needs to be replaced, the system will automate the entire process,” explains Zorc.

While many organizations harness Accounting Seed as a part of the Salesforce CRM, the accounting tool is also offered as a standalone product.

In a Nutshell: Accounting Seed Explained

Accounting Seed is comprised of three major features, including core accounting, order management, and project accounting. Its revenue management capability allows clients to simplify the process of creating and managing recurring billing contracts, sales orders, deferred revenue, and invoices. The core accounting feature tracks financial data throughout the business lifecycle— from marketing, project implementation, product sales, and back-office accounting, through to the generation of financial statements. Leveraging Accounting Seed’s financial reporting feature, clients can create and gather accounting reports easily. These reports help enhance business to drive key business decisions that will have greater return-on-investment. Add to that, Accounting Seed efficiently handles the complete project lifecycle spanning cash flow, time tracking, profitability, and reporting for individual business initiatives.

To summarize, built-in integration, customization, and automation are the key tenets of Accounting Seed, a tool that provides clients with a 360-degree view of their financial data. The platform reduces data redundancy, ineffective reporting, and business inefficiencies resulting from the use of siloed systems deployed across various departments. As Zorc proudly notes, Accounting Seed’s fully-customizable “toolset” drives a seismic shift in a company’s mindset toward accounting.

The Convergence of Similar Philosophies

Interestingly, this shift in mindset fits hand-and-glove with the philosophy of the Lightning Platform, which initially arrived on the market as a groundbreaking CRM solution. While acknowledging that every organization’s sales processes are unique, Salesforce, like Accounting Seed, challenged prevailing norms and encouraged businesses to push the envelope rather than “fit into a box” and compromise their innovations and workflows. “We jumped at the opportunity to be a part of the Salesforce Platform. Back in 2008, the entire tech stack offered by Salesforce was new and exciting, and it was a natural fit for us,” recounts Zorc.

By building their solution on Salesforce, Accounting Seed also benefited tremendously with regard to the speed at which it could introduce new features and functionalities. While it took anywhere between 20 and 30 years for its competitors to build their accounting platforms, Accounting Seed has taken just 10 years to develop a fully-functional system. Accounting Seed is not obligated to rewrite a foundational set of code, as opposed to its cloud-based competitors who have had to write their own security model, governor limit, rules, and multi-tenancies within the cloud. Zorc says that Accounting Seed users get all these features “right out of the gate” and do not have to endure a number of painstaking processes.

There is another advantage to building the tool natively on the Lightning Platform and serving as Salesforce’s most popular accounting solution. As highlighted in the Axis use case, Accounting Seed integrates with various Salesforce partner apps, over 14,000 banks, credit card companies, and payment processors. It is also connected with payment processor, Stripe, enabling clients to manage collections swiftly and efficiently.

Through these integrations, organizations can automatically insert their transactions and detailed banking-related information into a single system. Matter of fact, Accounting Seed users can access any app owned by Salesforce, not to mention over 2,000 partner apps that are integrated within Salesforce. Simply put, Accounting Seed users are immediately privy to an entire ecosystem of apps without moving a muscle!

"Built on a new paradigm, and with a fresh mindset, Accounting Seed provides a toolset that lets businesses to do their accounting exactly how they see fit"

No Code Needed: Just Point, Click and Customize

Besides simplifying back-office workflows and allowing clients to automatically connect with various app partners through the cloud, Accounting Seed offers unprecedented customization options that, as Zorc highlights, are unheard of in the realm of accounting technology.

Users can easily automate workflows and ensure all of the sales and contract data is seamlessly managed with inventory, labor, expenses, and customer billing. With simple drag-and-drop functionality, clients can create their own custom tables, data fields, workflow rules, approvals, and UI according to their evolving business requirements. “You don’t need any code to develop data tables, new fields, change the layout of a page, design unique views for different users, add or remove buttons, or grant security permissions to certain members of the organization. In fact, we also offer an automation engine that allows businesses to automate workflows through a simple point-and-click functionality,” elaborates Zorc. Furthermore, Accounting Seed offers an unprecedented number of robust APIs that can be easily called upon.

Although the software can be customized seamlessly, Accounting Seed’s support team—comprising highly-qualified professionals—is available to resolve any client issue or help users tackle unique needs such as billing, custom revenue generation, or the addition of new data objects. Zorc notes that the calls are “consultative in nature and not sales pitches” and intend to help customers overcome hurdles and explore the features of Accounting Seed.

Mitigating the Technology Alignment Problem

Speaking of hurdles, a prominent pain point that Accounting Seed will continue to help modern enterprises overcome is the all-too-common “technology alignment problem.” Since most market-grade accounting tools force businesses to adapt to their accounting processes, organizations have to do a ton of reverse engineering. Through Accounting Seed, clients can avoid these time-consuming processes and avail the full benefits of the platform instantly!

The future is bright for Accounting Seed, which has sustained double-digit growth over the last few years. Having recently reached the milestone of 1,000 customers, the Maryland-based company plans to ramp up its efforts to enter new markets. Just last year, Accounting Seed opened a new office in London as a part of its ongoing territorial expansion plan that includes penetration of EMEA market within the next 12 months.

From a platform enhancement standpoint, Accounting Seed will add new features to the stack, in an attempt to handle complex business processes with legal entities and base currencies of different countries. The idea is to be able to report on a client’s local statutory needs. Zorc reveals, “We have rewritten a part of our app over the last five years since technology is always moving at breakneck speed. We will continue to evolve and add features.”

In conclusion, Accounting Seed takes pride in its capability to architect solutions across the spectrum of businesses, ranging from a company with less than 200 financial transactions per day to a Fortune 1000 firm that sees anywhere between 500 and 1000 transactions daily. “We have figured out a way to tailor solutions for organizations of all sizes and transaction volumes. As we move toward the future, this capability has us very excited,” concludes Zorc.

- Sarah Dawson
March 18, 2020

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Accounting Seed

Company
Accounting Seed

Management
Tony Zorc, Founder and CEO

Description
Offers an innovative accounting solution that lets businesses run their entire back office in one environment by tapping into the power of the Salesforce Platform. One of the Top Accounting Solution Providers, Accounting Seed's platform provides clients with a 360-degree view of their financial data. The platform reduces data redundancy, ineffective reporting, and business inefficiencies resulting from the use of siloed systems deployed across various departments. Besides simplifying back-office workflows and allowing clients to automatically connect with various app partners through the cloud, Accounting Seed is renowned for providing an unprecedented number of customization options.

Accounting Seed News

Accounting Seed Makes the Inc. 5000 List for Fourth Consecutive Year

COLUMBIA, Md., -- Accounting Seed made the Inc. 5000 list for the fourth year in a row as one of the fastest-growing private companies in America—ranking 106 in the state of Maryland and 549 in the software industry. The prestigious ranking provides a data-driven look at the most successful companies within the economy's most dynamic segment—its independent, entrepreneurial businesses. Facebook, Chobani, Under Armour, Microsoft, Patagonia, and many other household name brands gained their first national exposure as honorees on the Inc. 5000.

Accounting Seed: the #1 Accounting Platform on Salesforce

Founded in 2008, Accounting Seed is the leading cloud-based accounting solution built natively on Salesforce®. With over 50,000 users in the small and midsize market, Accounting Seed has realized over 25% annual growth consistently for the past 10 years.

"We are truly honored to have made the Inc. 5000 list for four consecutive years, which serves as a testament to the dedication, innovation, and relentless commitment of Accounting Seed staff and partners," said Steve Lorenc, CEO at Accounting Seed. "This recognition acknowledges our past achievements and fuels our determination to continue bringing the best in accounting technology to the market. Looking toward the future, we remain steadfast in our mission to listen, adapt, and innovate in ways that enrich the businesses of our customers."

This news comes shortly after Accounting Seed unveiled its new AR Automation solution. The first in a series of new payments solutions, AR Automation makes credit card processing more efficient by decreasing the time spent on monthly reconciliations from hours to minutes. Accounting Seed continues to expand the company's product development efforts to support greater automation and enable a single source of financial truth for small to mid-market businesses—allowing them to realize continued growth and success.

The Prestige Behind Inc. 5000

The Inc. 5000 class of 2023 represents companies that have driven rapid revenue growth while navigating inflationary pressure, the rising costs of capital, and seemingly intractable hiring challenges. Among this year's top 500 companies, the average median three-year revenue growth rate ticked up to an astonishing 2,238 percent. In all, this year's Inc. 5000 companies have added 1,187,266 jobs to the economy over the past three years.

For complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, location, and other criteria, go to www.inc.com/inc5000. The top 500 companies are featured in the September issue of Inc. magazine, available on newsstands beginning Tuesday, August 23.

"Running a business has only gotten harder since the end of the pandemic," says Inc. editor-in-chief Scott Omelianuk. "To make the Inc. 5000—with the fast growth that requires—is truly an accomplishment. Inc. is thrilled to honor the companies that are building our future."

Accounting Seed launches AP automation feature

Following the launch of AR automation in 2023, Accounting Seed has announced AP (Accounts Payable) automation as the first product release of 2024. For many finance teams, the accounts payable function can be time-consuming and repetitive. It is one of the areas that is ripe for automation, and Accounting Seed aims to help SMEs by introducing efficiency to their AP processes.

Ryan Sieve, chief technology officer at Accounting Seed, commented, “AP Automation is the answer to the market’s desire for truly embedded finance. We know the entire AP process is cumbersome, but with AP Automation, we are enabling our customers to save time and streamline all the activities that touch the AP process.

“The Accounting Seed team is thrilled to bring this functionality to market and further our mission to help companies make faster and more accurate business decisions.”

AP Automation

While there are several add-on AP automation suites available, the advantage that Accounting Seed has is that its AP Automation capabilities are fully part of its finance solution no integration required. It means that AP clerks will immediately see a benefit from using the system without having to switch to alternate pieces of software.

The new features automate the process of ingesting bills onto the solution through invoice matching, all the way to payment to reconciliation. With this process improvement, organisations also gain better visibility of the cash flow process, reduce errors and lower the fraud risk.

AP Automation is available now, and costs are available on request. The initial launch is limited to clients operating a US-dollar entity only. What isn’t clear is when it will be available for international customers. Customers who are interested in activating can contact licensing@accountingseed.com. Accounting Seed confirmed that there is a cost associated with the new AP automation feature.

The solution comprises three key components, each of which automates key elements of the Accounts Payable process.

Email to payables

This component takes emails received from suppliers and automatically creates the payable invoices directly on the Accounting Seed platform. Users first need to create an email account and inform suppliers to send their invoices to that account.

Once created, for any email sent to that address, Accounting Seed automatically creates an invoice with the supplier details based on the email domain of the sender that was previously set up on the contact record. The user is then able to view the invoice on the screen and enter the details contained on the AP invoice.

The invoice is displayed on a split screen with the entry form about the invoice image. The solution does not, however, contain any OCR capability that automatically captures the information contained on the invoice.

Enterprise Times asked Mary Balmer, Director of Product at Accounting Seed, about this and the file formats the email import feature supports.

Balmer replied, “Our Email to Payable feature does not include OCR to capture invoice details. We plan to leverage recent advancements in technology to convert images to text in an upcoming release. To answer the second part of your question, we support pdf, doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, png, jpg, jpeg, bmp, gif, tif, tiff.”

Payment Proposals

The Payment Proposals feature assists finance teams in determining which payments they should make. Users are able to search and filter based on multiple criteria. They can then select invoices they believe are optimal to pay. Balmer confirmed that AccountingSeed has not leveraged Salesforce AI to automate this process. It will be interesting to see whether Accounting Seed develop this functionality.

Users first set up a payment run with a specific future date, bank account and whether or not they wish to aggregate payee invoices. They are then able to use a search function or advanced search function to filter the different conditions they wish to consider. These could include the due date, account, and early pay date. Once filtered, the user can see invoices and credit notes that can apply against those invoices.

Advanced search offers even more

The advanced search enabled the user to filter by additional fields, including custom fields that the organisation might have set up, perhaps relating to a specific contract. The advanced search also enables the application of boolean operators, such as equals, not equal, and contains. The user can add logic statements such as AND and OR and also filter results based on a Salesforce report. This allows users to create complex reusable features, further reducing the work required for each payment run.

Users can add a single invoice or all the filtered invoices to the payment run with a single click. Once the list of proposed payments is selected, the user can pass the list through an approvals process if set up. They can also change the status to approved, where they have the authority. The appropriate cash distributions are then created. However, it is the automated payment distribution feature that will assist users with one of the most painful elements of AP.

Enterprise Times also asked Balmer, what reporting is available to highlight anomalies? What authorisation process is there? How does it support separation of duties?

“The status of payment distribution is available on each payment record, along with error messages that may have been returned. These fields can be easily viewed in a list view or on a report. To strengthen internal controls over spending, an approval workflow can be configured on the Payment Proposal record to ensure the proposed payments are approved by the appropriate individuals before they are sent out to vendors.”

Automated Payment Distribution

Accounting Seed has partnered with Edenred Payment Solutions to deliver this third component of AP automation. For Automated Payment Distribution to work, both customers and their payees must be onboarded with the Edenred platform. Suppliers can select their preferred payment option from Virtual Card, ACH or Check payment.

It means that the payment is automated through a secure and regulated third-party platform. If the supplier selects a check payment, the details are sent to a third-party check printing service. That company then prints and mails the checks.

The process is initiated when a permissioned user clicks on the pay button for an approved set of payments. Or, when a scheduled job runs, that automatically pays any pre-approved payments on a specific date.

When pay is clicked, cash disbursements are created and automatically applied to payables transactions. The user can then post the cash disbursements to be automatically distributed against the invoices.

Accounting Seed creates the appropriate audit trail, and users are able to identify when and how each invoice was paid. In future updates, Accounting Seed is also looking to aggregate cash disbursements into bank disbursements. It will reduce the number of transactions in the bank.

More to come

As Balmer indicated, there is more to come around AP Automation. Edenred is a European-based fintech company. It means that support for European and other currencies is likely to be supported soon. Edenred connects 60 million users and 2 million partner merchants in 45 countries via close to 1 million corporate clients.

Steve Lorenc, chief executive officer at Accounting Seed, commented, “AP Automation is designed to empower users with unparalleled efficiency and elevate their Accounting Seed experience. By streamlining both the AR and AP processes through enhanced functionality, Accounting Seed is enabling customers to achieve more with greater ease on a single platform, fostering a new era of productivity and growth.”

Accounting Seed is hosting a webinar on February 28th at 1 pm EST, Automate your Accounts Payable (Registration required)

Enterprise Times: What does this mean

This is a welcome update from Accounting Seed. The Automated Payment Distribution feature is a significant step forward. It removes much of the payment burden from those companies that regularly deal with the same suppliers.

The Payment Proposals feature is highly flexible. However, Accounting Seed seems to have missed a trick by not embedding some algorithms that recommend payments to customers. Similarly, the email to payables falls short of a fully automated solution. One takes advantage of OCR technology, something that Xero, Sage and QuickBooks already offer.

Key to this is the price that Accounting Seed is putting on this new product. Automated Payment Distribution certainly warrants an increase in price. However, the other components could be seen as merely iterative improvements on the platform that don’t warrant an increased fee.

Accounting Seed Unveils AP Automation: Optimizing Payments within a Single Platform

COLUMBIA, Md.,-- Accounting Seed, the accounting solution built on the Salesforce Platform, unveiled its first product offering of the new year, AP (Accounts Payable) Automation. The launch of the new product highlights Accounting Seed's commitment to helping small-to-mid sized companies drive efficiency and maximize growth by running their accounting and payable processes within a single platform.

With AP Automation, customers can stop manually sorting through bills and using multiple systems to track and pay them, and instead take advantage of a fully automated process from receipt of invoice to payment to reconciliation--saving time, lowering processing costs, and strengthening internal controls. Accounting Seed users will also benefit by optimizing their cash flow process through better spend management and reducing fraud risk, while eliminating discrepancies caused by using multiple systems and manual entry.

"AP Automation is the answer to the market's desire for truly embedded finance," said Ryan Sieve, chief technology officer at Accounting Seed. "We know the entire AP process is cumbersome, but with AP Automation, we are enabling our customers to save time and streamline all the activities that touch the AP process. The Accounting Seed team is thrilled to bring this functionality to market and further our mission to help companies make faster and more accurate business decisions."

AP Automation brings three key features to market:

1. Email to payable: Automatically match invoices to vendor accounts and create payables directly from email. 2. Payment proposals: Optimize spending and stay within budget with the ability to quickly search, group, and seek approval for your recommended payments--while easily applying any credit memos on hand and taking advantage of early pay discounts. 3. Automated Payment Distribution: Set it and forget it! Automatically pay approved payments from your bank by your vendor's preferred payment method--whether it be card, ACH, or check--securely utilizing our top-rated invoice-to-pay partner, Edenred Pay. Payments are then automatically matched and cleared on the bank reconciliation.

As a global leader in invoice-to-pay automation, Accounting Seed selected Edenred Pay as their payment distribution partner based on expertise, history of client success, and comprehensive AP offerings. Edenred Pay plays an integral part in bringing Accounting Seed's AP Automation to market.

The launch of AP Automation comes shortly after Accounting Seed unveiled AR (Accounts Receivable) Automation. The first in a series of expanding automation capabilities, the combination of these advancements allows businesses to run their entire payment management process within their accounting system, built on their Salesforce CRM.

"AP Automation is designed to empower users with unparalleled efficiency and elevate their Accounting Seed experience," said Steve Lorenc, chief executive officer at Accounting Seed. "By streamlining both the AR and AP processes through enhanced functionality, Accounting Seed is enabling customers to achieve more with greater ease on a single platform, fostering a new era of productivity and growth."

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