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Tag: accounting

  • Pandemic Reinvention Is Real For SMBs, Says Bill.com CEO

    Pandemic Reinvention Is Real For SMBs, Says Bill.com CEO

    “I believe SMBs deserve innovation,” says Bill.com CEO and founder Rene Lacarte. “That innovation that we focus on is around the digital processes that are lacking in the back office of SMBs. We’ve seen it in part with the pandemic showing that there’s a need for being digital and to be able to run your business from anywhere. It’s a requirement now. The pandemic reinvention is real and something that we think is going to stick around.”

    Rene Lacarte, CEO of Bill.com, says that the pandemic reinvention is real for small and medium-sized businesses and that they need to innovate and digitize the back office:

    SMBs Deserve Innovation

    At the core of why I started the company is that I believe SMBs deserve innovation. That innovation that we focus on that I really believe is missing out there is around the digital processes that are lacking. We digitize the back office. Then we connect that back office to the banking system so money can move, to the accounting system so records can be reported, and to the accounting firms that they’re involved with.

    All of that connection creates a connective tissue that operates and automates the financial operations. Because of that it’s driving demand, it’s driving opportunity, and it’s driving growth across our existing customers as well as the new customers coming in. That’s how we do it. That’s how we bring the back office into the back pocket.

    Pandemic Reinvention Is Real For SMBs

    Nobody gets into business to actually do the back office. I grew up in small businesses. My parents had small businesses. My grandparents had small businesses. A lot of our friends had small businesses. This was always the bane of existence. This is what people had to do on Friday night. Who wants to do this on a Friday night? That’s what people are doing when they’re trying to run their business from their back pocket when they don’t have the tools. They have to do it at night at home.

    We take care of that. We automate the processes. That’s what’s driving the demand, it’s the opportunity. We’ve seen it in part with the pandemic showing that there’s a need for being digital. This opportunity to be able to run your business from anywhere is a requirement now. The pandemic reinvention is real and something that we think is going to stick around.

    Pandemic Reinvention Is Real For SMBs, Says Bill.com CEO Rene Lacarte

  • Reuters: Pentagon Bookkeepers Wasted $8.5 Trillion

    Earlier this summer, Reuters authors Scot J. Paltrow and Kelly Carr conducted an investigation into the Pentagon’s payroll practices; in their report, the authors alleged that an unbelievable level of dysfunction is causing financial hardships for soldiers. Today, the news does not get any better as Reuters published a second expose, this one even meatier than the first.

    The second part of the Reuters investigation, written by Scot J. Paltrow, claims that every month, soldiers working for the Defense Finance Accounting Service insert bogus payment numbers into their bookkeeping — in an effort to match the military’s books with the Treasury’s.

    The practice is referred to as “plugging,” and one naval officer, Linda Woodford, told Reuters that she spent the last 15 years of her career inserting those fake numbers into the books. “[A] lot of times there were issues of numbers being inaccurate… We didn’t have the detail … for a lot of it,” she said.

    The supervisors of the DFAS, far from disapproving, were actually expected to approve each plug, sometimes thousands of them in a single month. The Treasury would send the books back if the numbers didn’t match.

    Reuters discovered that the practice of plugging is actually standard operating procedure, and that DFAS is hardly the only military accounting firm to be responsible; apparently, Pentagon record keeping is so terrible, that making stuff up to fill in the blanks is just another day at the office.

    The Defense Department’s 2012 budget was $565.8 billion (larger than the next 10 largest military spenders combined). As to whether that money actually reached its intended destination, we will never know.

    “Reuters has found that the Pentagon is largely incapable of keeping track of its vast stores of weapons, ammunition and other supplies; thus it continues to spend money on new supplies it doesn’t need and on storing others long out of date,” Paltrow writes.

    One example of poor supply practices: between 2003 and 2011, the U.S. Army lost $5.8 billion in supplies as it moved equipment between regular units and reserve units.

    Because of the Pentagon’s sheer ineptitude, it is the only government agency that refuses to comply with the law requiring an annual financial audit of every government organization. A sum of money greater than China’s economic output from yesteryear, $8.5 trillion, has been given to the Pentagon since 1996. That amounts to over $25,000 per living person in the United States.

    The story is far from a cheerful anecdote, but if you’re still interested, check out the full report here.

    [Image via YouTube]

  • GoDaddy Announces That It Acquired Ronin Back In April

    Domains giant GoDaddy announced on Wednesday that it has acquired Ronin, an online bookkeeping company.

    Interestingly, the acquisition was made all the way back in April, and the company has since fully integrated Ronin into GoDaddy Online Bookkeeping. The product combines Ronin with the company’s previous acquisition of Outright.com.

    “One of our primary goals is to make the ‘business of business’ easy, and GoDaddy Online Bookkeeping does that by taking the headache out of knowing their numbers,” said GoDaddy Senior Vice President, Business Applications Steven Aldrich. “Our customers love our product – but they wanted us to provide invoicing capabilities. We knew Ronin provided an unparalleled experience, so we started discussions. It soon became clear – we needed the team at Ronin to be on our team and we needed to seamlessly integrate invoicing into our product. The end result is GoDaddy Online Bookkeeping.”

    “GoDaddy and Ronin share a vision of giving small businesses the best tools to succeed online,” said Ronin Founder Lu Wang. “The ease and speed of integrating with GoDaddy’s culture and technology, combined with the ability to reach 12 million customers, is a tremendous opportunity. Joining the GoDaddy team has given us the access to the resources and smart people who we’ve wanted.”

    The acquisition of Ronin marks five for GoDaddy in fifteen months. Others, in addition to Outright, include M.dot, Locu and Afternic. GoDaddy says each one was tapped because of their small business elements, which is line with GoDaddy’s newly revamped strategy targeting small businesses.

    Terms of the Ronin deal were not disclosed.

    Image: GoDaddy

  • Business Management On the Go With New App

    Online sellers are constantly making decisions away from their computers – whether deciding to purchase inventory at an auction or choosing their shipping options at USPS. Now, sellers can be better informed when making those decisions. Outright, an online accounting solution, today announced that it has released a mobile application that online sellers can use on their mobile devices to keep track of sales and expense data while on the go.

    “It is critical for our online sellers to be able to manage their businesses from wherever they are, and the Outright Mobile app lets them do just that,” said Steven Aldrich, CEO of Outright. “Now, they can make decisions about buying inventory while they are actually in the store, and, in the next version of our app, they will be able to record cash transactions immediately on their mobile device.”

    According to a recent AT&T survey, 85% of small businesses reported using a smartphone for their business operations. This is more than double the usage five years ago (42%). For those that use mobile apps (30%), the main reasons they cited were to save time, increase productivity and reduce costs. The new Outright app will help them to do all three and will drive an increased usage of mobile apps in small businesses across the nation. The app will allow the business owner to see a complete view of their money available and current balances in bank and credit card accounts so that they can make the best decision on how much to buy and from which account.

    The Outright Mobile app is available in the iTunes App Store or at offers.outright.com/mobile. The solution features a business overview/snapshot, account lists and balances, income transactions and details, “In The Know” alerts, and expense transactions and details. “Add / edit” features to allow the input of cash-based transactions will also be launched shortly.