Now artificial intelligence (AI) will take over the manual and repetitive processes in the field of accounting too. London-based startup, Briefcase has managed to raise €2.8 million in seed funds to develop the first ever AI-powered accounting automation platform.
The platform will use the funds to automate manual accounting processes such as bookkeeping and month-end closing, which were conventionally done manually. It will employ multimodal artificial intelligence (AI), agentic workflows, as well as advanced embedding technologies. Briefcase is looking to integrate directly with popular ledger platforms such as Xero and QuickBooks.
Briefcase will be able to address the large amount of repetitive tasks characteristic of the accounting field. It is not easy to hire and retain junior employees who can take care of this monotonous work. As a result many companies end up outsourcing these jobs, where quality and accuracy cannot be guaranteed without the required supervision.
With Briefcase’s AI, these time-consuming tasks will be taken care of leaving accounts personnel time to focus on more important work, advise clients and add value to the services they offer.
A beta programme is already being tested with users giving regular feedback to help improve the product. These early adopters will receive further support from the team of engineers and product specialists that Briefcase will put together. The funds will be used to expand this team, and scale operations to offer better services to the early adopters.
Reuben Steenkamp, CEO, Briefcase, used to work for Starling Bank’s CFO office, while Jan Stehlik, co-founder, Briefcase, had helped develop AI systems at Nous, a fintech startup.
The seed funding round was led by Earlybird, with participation from Entrepreneur First, Tiny, founders of Pennylane and executives from Pleo, Deel, 11X and other companies.