THE BRIDGE

tag accounting

Japan’s accounting solution provider A-SaaS raises $8.5 million

SHARE:

This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based Accounting SaaS Japan (A-SaaS for short) announced today that it has fundraised a series B funding worth 1 billion yen (or about $8.46 million) from Fidelity Growth Partners Japan, Arbor Ventures, I Mercury Capital, and Mobile Internet Capital. Mobile Internet Capital participated in the previous round [1]. Coinciding with the funds, Fidelity’s Japan head David Milstein will join the board of A-SaaS. A-SaaS will hire new people to strengthen systems development and sales promotion efforts using the funds. Since its launch back in June of 2009, A-SaaS has offered a cloud-based accounting platform targeting small/medium-sized enterprises. In June of 2013, they partnered with Salesforce.com and fundraised 625 million yen ($6.25 million) from GREE Ventures and Mobile Internet Capital as well as other investors. A-SaaS is a first-of-its-kind which has been followed by other startups like Freee (launched in July of 2012) and Money Forward (January of 2014). The company was founded by Toshinao Morisaki, the former president of Ibex Airlines and the former director of JDL (Japan Digital Laboratory, TSE:6935). He started A-SaaS by raising funds from 800 tax accountants and took almost five years to introduce its first prototype. While there are 35,000 accounting offices of all types in Japan, A-SaaS has acquired about 1,600 accounting offices as users to date. I…

a-saas-featuredimage

This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Accounting SaaS Japan (A-SaaS for short) announced today that it has fundraised a series B funding worth 1 billion yen (or about $8.46 million) from Fidelity Growth Partners JapanArbor Ventures, I Mercury Capital, and Mobile Internet Capital. Mobile Internet Capital participated in the previous round [1].

Coinciding with the funds, Fidelity’s Japan head David Milstein will join the board of A-SaaS. A-SaaS will hire new people to strengthen systems development and sales promotion efforts using the funds.

Since its launch back in June of 2009, A-SaaS has offered a cloud-based accounting platform targeting small/medium-sized enterprises. In June of 2013, they partnered with Salesforce.com and fundraised 625 million yen ($6.25 million) from GREE Ventures and Mobile Internet Capital as well as other investors. A-SaaS is a first-of-its-kind which has been followed by other startups like Freee (launched in July of 2012) and Money Forward (January of 2014).

The company was founded by Toshinao Morisaki, the former president of Ibex Airlines and the former director of JDL (Japan Digital Laboratory, TSE:6935). He started A-SaaS by raising funds from 800 tax accountants and took almost five years to introduce its first prototype. While there are 35,000 accounting offices of all types in Japan, A-SaaS has acquired about 1,600 accounting offices as users to date.


  1. I Mercury Capital is the investment arm of Japan’s internet company Mixi. Mobile Internet Capital is a VC firm launched by ex-Intel Japan Chairman Ikuo Nishioka. ↩

Japanese personal accounting startup Money Forward launches enterprise version

SHARE:

See the original article in Japanese There are more cloud tools than ever available to support small scale or personal businesses. In Japan such services include things like Evernote, Talknote, Github, and Qitta. But for many small businesses, there’s a bottleneck in areas like accounting, and it is inevitable that freelancers and small businesses must handle such work slowly and carefully. But Tokyo-based Money Forward, the startup behind the personal accounting app of the same name, has a solution that might work for them. On January 27th, Money Forward released its official version of “Money Forward Kakutei-shinkoku” (Kakutei-shinkoku is Japanese for “filing the final tax return”) and “Money Forward for Business”. The basic plan for “Money Forward Kakutei-shinkoku” for personal users is free, and with a paid plan at 800 yen ($8) per month for those who want to enter more than 15 items a month. “Money Forward for Business” is available for free for the first 45 days, and users who want to continue the service need to pay 1800 yen ($18) per month. A variety of features, including online communication with tax accountants, will be added later. One of the most remarkable features of the app is that…

キャプチャ_MF.001

See the original article in Japanese

There are more cloud tools than ever available to support small scale or personal businesses. In Japan such services include things like Evernote, Talknote, Github, and Qitta. But for many small businesses, there’s a bottleneck in areas like accounting, and it is inevitable that freelancers and small businesses must handle such work slowly and carefully. But Tokyo-based Money Forward, the startup behind the personal accounting app of the same name, has a solution that might work for them.

IMGP0145

On January 27th, Money Forward released its official version of “Money Forward Kakutei-shinkoku” (Kakutei-shinkoku is Japanese for “filing the final tax return”) and “Money Forward for Business”.

The basic plan for “Money Forward Kakutei-shinkoku” for personal users is free, and with a paid plan at 800 yen ($8) per month for those who want to enter more than 15 items a month. “Money Forward for Business” is available for free for the first 45 days, and users who want to continue the service need to pay 1800 yen ($18) per month.

A variety of features, including online communication with tax accountants, will be added later.

One of the most remarkable features of the app is that it can automatically acquire data from a bank account at over 1400 financial institutions. Based on past records, the app helps automatically add tags to entries. The goal is to dramatically improve the process of creating reports, including things like cash flow statements and financial statements.

キャプチャ_MF.002

By automatization data entry and journalizing, the app makes your accounting work much more efficient.

CEO Yosuke Tsuji told us that his company plans to tie up with other services like iPad POS systems, and other departments that deal with employees’ salary and attendance, aiming to reduce manual work.

In Japan, more and more small e-commerce sites are emerging, through e-commerce platforms like Base and Stores.jp. It’s logical to assume that there will be more C2C transactions in the future. It is exciting to picture the whole accounting processes taken care of with cloud accounting apps.

キャプチャ_MF.003

According to Tsuji, a few thousands of people have used the test version of the app. He says that around 12% of Money Forward users say that they would want to use Money Forward for Business too.

When I visited their new office recently, I found that the developer team had expanded to over 20 members. I asked Tsuji about the recruiting process and what kind of qualifications he is looking in new members.

We have six-person recruiting team. For engineers, we are often referred to a new engineer by engineers that we know. Good engineers tend to be connected with each other. We are looking for someone good at teamwork, with the right skills and an interest in our service.

The team has to figure out how to evolve the product based on user feedback. In order to establish its priorities, members need to share the company’s vision and values. Tsuji adds that it is very important to grow a positive culture within the company.

In order to be a sort of infrastructure in the future, Money Forward will be expected not only to provide good products at reasonable prices, but also to make contributions to public good through their service.

IMGP0137

IMGP0138

IMGP0159

キャプチャ_MF.004

キャプチャ_MF.005

キャプチャ_MF.006

キャプチャ_MF.007

キャプチャ_MF.008

Japanese personal accounting startup Money Forward raises $5 million

SHARE:

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Money Forward, the startup behind the personal accounting app of the same name, announced today that it has raised 500 million yen ($5 million) from Japanese investment company Jafco. Money Forward provides online personal accounting for individuals, allowing them to easily manage their daily expenses by integrating with their bank passbooks and credit purchase history with information scraped from their web bank and credit accounts. The service is also available for desktop, as well as iOS and Android platforms. The company also announced that it will launch a cloud-based accounting service for individual and corporate users, and it will also start publishing an online newsletter. The service launched back in December of 2012 in beta, and subsequently launched its official version back in July of 2013. The company’s CEO Yosuke Tsuji told us that their service has acquired over 100 million accounting records from users, up 43% on average in the last several months [1]. He explained: We launched an asset simulation tool called ‘Yoso-Q’ this past July, and it has been getting lots of attention from our users. Its daily active users are much higher than we expected. When we look at…

moneyforward_screenshot

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Money Forward, the startup behind the personal accounting app of the same name, announced today that it has raised 500 million yen ($5 million) from Japanese investment company Jafco.

Money Forward provides online personal accounting for individuals, allowing them to easily manage their daily expenses by integrating with their bank passbooks and credit purchase history with information scraped from their web bank and credit accounts. The service is also available for desktop, as well as iOS and Android platforms. The company also announced that it will launch a cloud-based accounting service for individual and corporate users, and it will also start publishing an online newsletter.

The service launched back in December of 2012 in beta, and subsequently launched its official version back in July of 2013. The company’s CEO Yosuke Tsuji told us that their service has acquired over 100 million accounting records from users, up 43% on average in the last several months [1]. He explained:

We launched an asset simulation tool called ‘Yoso-Q’ this past July, and it has been getting lots of attention from our users. Its daily active users are much higher than we expected. When we look at visiting frequency, almost 30% of our users who have registered their bank accounts on our service are using the simulation tool once every two days.

Their personalized credit card recommendation engine is especially popular among users. It proposes cards based on how much you pay on a monthly basis, or what kind of rewards you want to get. Their 60% of users are male, and 40% are female.

moneyforward_dataaccumulation
CHART: The growth of expense data collected from Money Forward users

Simplifying income tax reporting

Cloud-based accounting is a fierce space here in Japan, where Tokyo-based startup Freee is doing well in its user acquisition. According to Tsuji, Money Forward will be also getting into this space, launching a tax reporting tool later next month. It will simplifies your tax reporting tasks by scraping expenses from your bank accounts and sorting out automatically.

So what is his overall goal for Money Forward? He explains:

Along with the account aggregation technology, we’ll be providing various services for users including asset management and simulation for individuals, and cloud-based accounting for SMEs. When you have money management troubles, you find the answer at Money Forward. That’s what we’re aiming to be.

With the funds raised this time around, the company plans to hire more engineers in an effort to be a leading one-stop solution provider.

The startup was spun-off from Tokyo online stock brokerage Monex in 2012. It raised 100 million yen (over $1 million) back in March from several angel investors and WIT Corporation, a technology licensing organization under Waseda University.


  1. Not to be confused with user growth, of course.

Japanese accounting startup Freee raises $2.7 million from Infinity Venture Partners and DCM

SHARE:

Tokyo-based cloud startup Freee announced today that it has raised 270 million yen (approximately $2.7 million) in a series A funding from Infinity Venture Partners and DCM. This follows the previous seed round where the company secured seed funding of 50 million yen (about $523,000) from DCM back in December. Coinciding with this new funding, the startup rebranded its company name to Freee from CFO K.K., coinciding with the name of its accounting service. At the time of its launch back in March, CEO Daisuke Sasaki stated his goal of acquiring at least 10,000 users in its first year. Surprisingly it is way ahead of that pace, acquiring 6,500 users in the last four and half months, 1.7 times faster than expected. The startup originally planned series A funding for the end of this year but moved up its timeline to accelerate service expansion and user growth. With these new funds, the startup is expecting to hire additional staff and intensify its system development. According to Mr. Sasaki, their users have given them a lot of feedback, and they have been adding features and refining user interface based on those responses. He believes these efforts have helped them acquire many…

freee_new_logo-c3970ad3866dd25fda6b1c27779b6173Tokyo-based cloud startup Freee announced today that it has raised 270 million yen (approximately $2.7 million) in a series A funding from Infinity Venture Partners and DCM. This follows the previous seed round where the company secured seed funding of 50 million yen (about $523,000) from DCM back in December. Coinciding with this new funding, the startup rebranded its company name to Freee from CFO K.K., coinciding with the name of its accounting service.

At the time of its launch back in March, CEO Daisuke Sasaki stated his goal of acquiring at least 10,000 users in its first year. Surprisingly it is way ahead of that pace, acquiring 6,500 users in the last four and half months, 1.7 times faster than expected. The startup originally planned series A funding for the end of this year but moved up its timeline to accelerate service expansion and user growth.

With these new funds, the startup is expecting to hire additional staff and intensify its system development. According to Mr. Sasaki, their users have given them a lot of feedback, and they have been adding features and refining user interface based on those responses. He believes these efforts have helped them acquire many new users, and now his first priority is to form a responsive team.

daisuke_sasaki
Freee CEO Daisuke Sasaki

The company has three key topics that it will focus on moving forward: opening up to third-party services, easing collaborative work, and providing a better user experience. They plan to introduce an API that encourages third-party developers to connect with its platform, which should help the platform in terms of its collaborative capabilities. To improve user experience, they are expecting to introduce a native app for tablet devices to allow users to record and sort out their revenue and expenses regardless of where they are.

Some of our readers may recall that the company previously won the top prize at the Infinity Ventures Summit back in May, a conference hosted by Japan’s Infinity Ventures Partners. We’ve seen more than a few outstanding financial apps in the Japanese startup scene, and Freee can be considered to be among the best of them.

Japanese accounting solution provider, A-SaaS, raises $6.6 million

SHARE:

Accounting SaaS Japan, or A-SaaS for short, is a Tokyo-based startup providing solutions to Japanese accounting firms. The startup announced that today it has raised 625 million yen (approximately $6.6 million) from SalesForce.com, GREE Ventures, and Mobile Internet Capital [1]. Computer systems used at Japanese accounting firms have been mostly dominated by a few vendors for a long time [2]. In partnership with SalesForce.com, the startup plans to optimize their solutions so they can be operated on SaaS environment Force.com, with plans to jointly intensify sales and marketing efforts with the SaaS company. There are about 32,500 accounting firms in Japan, and almost 80% of their systems are dominated by Japan’s top 3 accounting system providers. The startup expects to replace 5,000 of them with their SaaS solutions by the end of 2017, which accounts for 15.4% of all accounting firms in the country. A-Saas was launched back in 2009 by Toshinao Morisaki. He previously worked with accounting solution vendor JDL, and served as the president of its subsidiary Ibex Airlines. Gree Ventures is, of course, the investment arm of Japan’s social gaming giant Gree. Mobile Internet Capital is a VC firm launched by ex-Intel Japan Chairman Ikuo Nishioka. ↩ Japan’s three leading vendors…

a-saas_salesforce_greeventures_mic

Accounting SaaS Japan, or A-SaaS for short, is a Tokyo-based startup providing solutions to Japanese accounting firms. The startup announced that today it has raised 625 million yen (approximately $6.6 million) from SalesForce.com, GREE Ventures, and Mobile Internet Capital [1].

Computer systems used at Japanese accounting firms have been mostly dominated by a few vendors for a long time [2]. In partnership with SalesForce.com, the startup plans to optimize their solutions so they can be operated on SaaS environment Force.com, with plans to jointly intensify sales and marketing efforts with the SaaS company.

There are about 32,500 accounting firms in Japan, and almost 80% of their systems are dominated by Japan’s top 3 accounting system providers. The startup expects to replace 5,000 of them with their SaaS solutions by the end of 2017, which accounts for 15.4% of all accounting firms in the country.

A-Saas was launched back in 2009 by Toshinao Morisaki. He previously worked with accounting solution vendor JDL, and served as the president of its subsidiary Ibex Airlines.


  1. Gree Ventures is, of course, the investment arm of Japan’s social gaming giant Gree. Mobile Internet Capital is a VC firm launched by ex-Intel Japan Chairman Ikuo Nishioka. ↩
  2. Japan’s three leading vendors for accounting firm solutions are TKC, JDL, and MJS. ↩

14 standout financial solution startups from Japan

SHARE:

These days in Japan, there are a bunch of startups providing accounting or financial solutions, both for personal and business use. Let’s take a quick rundown of some of the more popular ones. BizNote by CrowdCast ¶ BizNote is a cloud-based accounting app that helps SME owners and startup managers handle their cash flows using their PC or smartphone. The app aims to simplify accounting, thus letting business spend their time on more important tasks. BizNote won the top award at the Yayoi App Contest, an Android app competition run by Japan’s largest accounting software company. It recently added key features like receipt scanning as well as data integration with major accounting software packages. It’s available in English and Japanese, and for free for the first 30-days. Apps are available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Google Chrome. The app was developed by CrowdCast, a company founded in 2011 by Takashi Hoshikawa. He previously worked with Microsoft Japan and DEC Japan. Coiney ¶ Coiney is Japan’s first-ever smartphone-based credit card processing service. It’s similar to services like Square, Paypal Here, and Swiff. The company was founded by ex-Paypal Japan employee Naoko Samata and won the top prize at Rising Expo…

bookkeeping

These days in Japan, there are a bunch of startups providing accounting or financial solutions, both for personal and business use. Let’s take a quick rundown of some of the more popular ones.


BizNote by CrowdCast

BizNote is a cloud-based accounting app that helps SME owners and startup managers handle their cash flows using their PC or smartphone. The app aims to simplify accounting, thus letting business spend their time on more important tasks.

biznote_logoBizNote won the top award at the Yayoi App Contest, an Android app competition run by Japan’s largest accounting software company. It recently added key features like receipt scanning as well as data integration with major accounting software packages. It’s available in English and Japanese, and for free for the first 30-days. Apps are available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Google Chrome.

The app was developed by CrowdCast, a company founded in 2011 by Takashi Hoshikawa. He previously worked with Microsoft Japan and DEC Japan.

Coiney

coiney_logoCoiney is Japan’s first-ever smartphone-based credit card processing service. It’s similar to services like Square, Paypal Here, and Swiff. The company was founded by ex-Paypal Japan employee Naoko Samata and won the top prize at Rising Expo 2012, a startup showcase competition event held by CyberAgent Ventures.

The startup announced in February that it had fundraised 100 million yen (over $1 million) from four investors including East Ventures, CyberAgent Ventures, and Shinji Kimura (the founder of ad platform developer AtLantis). It has partnered with Sumitomo Mitsui Card, the largest issuer/acquirer of Visa-affiliated credit cards in Japan, and is working together with them to accelerate merchant acquisition.

I previously spoke with the team when the service was launched last October, so check that out for more details.

Freee by CFO K.K.

freee_new_logo-c3970ad3866dd25fda6b1c27779b6173The recently launched Freee is a cloud-based accounting solution that aims to set SME owners free of tedious accounting tasks. By synchronizing your account to this cloud system (which is integrated with web services provided by banks and credit companies) your payments will be logged in the system using web-scraping technology. They are sorted into the appropriate categories corresponding to the items you’ve purchased.

It was developed by CFO K.K., a company founded in July of 2012 by ex-Googler Daisuke Sasaki and ex-Sony engineer Ryu Yokoji. They’ve been developing the service as a stealth project at their home, and fundraised 50 million yen (about $523,000) from notable US-based VC firm DCM in December.

Hottoscope

hottoscope_logoHottoscope is a data-mining company that provides market analysis and prediction based on the aggregated information from social media. It provides analysis to Bloomberg Terminal, one of the most famous information resources for stock traders.

The company was launched about 12 years ago as a kind of a hobby/study group at the University of Tokyo. Since then it has been providing various tools for analyzing social updates to prevent companies from being financially damaged by harmful rumors and misinformation.

Kanmu’s Card Link

kanmuclo_logoBy associating coupons with your credit card, Kanmu allows you to get discounts from participating merchants when paying with a credit card. For merchants, you’ll be charged on a performance basis, and can reduce transfer fees while easily targeting a specific segment of customers. For the consumers, you even don’t need to print coupons beforehand or present virtual coupons with your smartphone at storefronts.

The startup was founded by Wataru Yamaki who previously worked with several web startups as an intern. He also has developed Marketgeek.

Makeleaps

makeleaps_logoMakeleaps is a web-based invoicing solution that targets startups and SME owners. It was founded in 2010 by Tokyo-based (Australian) entrepreneur Jason Winder who’s also known for organizing Hacker News Tokyo. They launched the service in Japan because people here aggressively pursue product quality, which is why he believes his business can work globally once it succeeds here. In addition to invoice delivery via snail mail and fax, the startup provides an optional dunning service too.

Misoca by Stand Firm

misoca_logoMisoca is an online invoice-issuing solution for startups and SMEs, a service provided by Nagoya-based company Stand Firm. The app is totally cloud-based and has features to send invoices to your clients via snail mail or fax.

Money Forward

moneyforward_logoMoney Forward provides online personal accounting for individuals, allowing them to easily manage their daily expenses by integrating with their bank passbooks and credit purchase history with information scraped from their web account. The startup was spun-off from Tokyo’s famous online stock brokerage Monex in 2012.  It recently raised 100 million yen (over $1 million) from several angel investors and WIT Corporation, a TLO (technology licensing organization) under Waseda University.

Mycredit.jp

mycredit.jp_logoMycredit.jp provides a credibility report of your finances, a sort of Japanese version of Experian or Equifax. By authenticating your identity over the phone, you will be able to get the report in just about 10 minutes after placing the order. This is intended as a service to check your credibility prior to applying for a house mortgage. Subsequently you can find a way to improve your standing for future borrowing from financial institutions.

The startup was founded by serial entrepreneur Russell Cummer who’s also running Acqush, a Tokyo-based social lending startup, backed by Dave McClure’s 500 Startups.

Paygate by Royal Gate

paygate_logoPaygate is a credit card processor that works as an attachment to tablets and smartphones. Using it together with a small printer, merchants can issue receipts to customers at purchase. The product is intended for people like motorcycle messengers, or insurance canvassers.

The service was developed by a 5-year-old IT company, and fundraised a total of 100 million yen (over $1 million) from NTT Investment Partners and Mizuho Capital in its final seed round in 2011.

ReceReco by Brain Pad

recereco_logoTokyo-based data mining company Brain Pad launched an iOS app called ReceReco (receipt recording) last month. By scanning receipts with your iPhone camera, the personal accounting app can recognize what you’ve paid for, visualize it in diagrams, and even lets you to share to Evernote or Facebook.

Brain Pad was founded in 2004 and was ranked 23rd place on Deloitte’s Fast50 Japan, a ranking of 50 Japanese tech companies based on revenue growth in Japan.

Totte Okuru

totte-okuru_logoTotte Okuru is an iPhone app developed by Tokyo-based startup Pirika Works. The app allows users to easily record expenses by scanning your receipts. Unlike similar services, scanned images will be transferred to keypunchers and entered to the system manually, which enables reading of not only machine-printed receipts but also hand-written ones.

The service uses people living in the Tohoku region for keypunching, which goes a little ways towards helping some people affected by the 2011 East Japan Earthquake.

Ubiregi

ubiregi_logoUbiregi is a cloud-based POS (point of sales) system that uses an iPad at the storefront. Compared to conventional systems, it can be reasonably deployed and easily maintained, especially for individual merchants like small restaurants, standing bars, and accessory shops.

The startup was launched by Keita Kido in August of 2010, and raised around 20 million yen (over $200,000) from Voyage Ventures and Kronos Fund. It also has a capital tie-up with SalesForce.com.

Zaim

zaim_logoZaim is a smartphone app that allows you to input your expenses into an assortment of categories, thus gaining some insight into your spending habits thanks to its graphic analysis. The startup has partnered with OCN Kakeibo, a cloud-based household accounting solution run by NTT Communications, and allows users to shorten the time requirements of their bookkeeping tasks.

It was launched in 2011 by Japan’s notable geek girl Takako Kansai. Zaim was incorporated last September, and raised 42 million yen (about $450,000) from Japan’s top recipe sharing site Cookpad. My colleague Rick spoke with her a little more about the service in this Tech in Asia article.