French startup Pennylane has raised a new $18.3 million funding round (€15 million). Interestingly, this is Sequoia Capital’s first investment in France after they announced ambitious expansion plans in Europe.
If you’re not familiar with Pennylane, the startup has been developing an accounting platform that improves accounting for both clients and their accountants. Focused on small and medium companies, the company has already attracted hundreds of clients as it says 1,000 executives are currently using Pennylane.
If you’re running a small company, chances are you’re using Microsoft Excel or another financial tool for your financial projections. You’re also sending all your invoices, payroll info and more to your accountant. Essentially, you’re doing the same thing twice.
Pennylane lets you connect your account with third-party services that already hold valuable information, such as Stripe, Payfit, Qonto, Zoho, Sellsy, etc. Data is then synchronized regularly so that you can check outstanding invoices, pay your suppliers and see where you’re standing when it comes to inbound and outbound payments.
On the other side of the equation, Pennylane works with 100 accounting firms that could handle accounting tasks for you. You can ask Pennylane to connect you with an accountant and they’ll leverage your Pennylane data to complete their work.
If you already have an accountant or you have your own in-house accounting team, you can also tell them to create an account on Pennylane and retrieve accounting data from the platform. Pennylane acts as the central repository where your financial data is always up to date.
“Pennylane is becoming the key financial management platform for SME’s in Europe,” Sequoia partner Luciana Lixandru said in a statement. “We are thrilled to partner with their exceptional team to ensure businesses of any size can have a single, up-to-date source for their financial data and improve how they collaborate with their accountants.”
Up next, the startup wants to build a ‘financial operating system’ for European small and medium enterprises. You can imagine a marketplace of services that clients can choose to use in addition to Pennylane’s core product.
Pennylane has been on a roll as the company raised an $18.4 million Series A round just a few months ago. Global Founders Capital and Partech led the Series A back in January.