Aiming to make complicated accounts payable processes fully streamlined and automated, Berlin-based startup Candis has just raised €15.9 million. The fintech innovators are also launching company credit cards to give SMEs more financial control.
For companies of all sizes and industries, financial processes can get notoriously complex and convoluted. Jumping between teams and between software tools, and financial matters often suffer miscommunication and a lack of centralized collaboration. The result and mean payments are missed, time-consuming problems arise and mistrust festers.
Candis is aiming to tackle this. The startup has developed an intelligent software solution and has now raised a further €15.9 million.
Funding details
Today, Candis has announced a raise of over €15.9 million. This latest funding round, led by Viola FinTech, brings Candis’ funding total to over €29.9 million and follows strong growth over the past two years, which saw processed invoice volume grow 9-fold.
Returning investors Lightspeed and Viola Ventures also participated in the round. The Berlin-based fintech disruptors are now focused on extending their product offering as well as launching company credit cards.
Streamlined and automated processes
Founded in 2015, Candis’ AI-driven platform empowers SMEs to automate financial processes such as invoice receipt, data entry, invoice approval, and data export.
Businesses across industries currently come up against a number of challenges dealing with financial matters – namely, the so-called ‘triangle of disaster’ – a messy combo of excel, email and signature folders. Candis’ solution essentially replaces these entities with an automated tool.
Christian Ritosek, CEO of Candis: “Finance departments are critical for businesses, especially SMEs and startups, yet the technology at their disposal hasn’t kept up with other departments, forcing them to deal with time-consuming manual processes.”
The platform ensures that missed discounts, missed payments, or late fees are no longer costly and time-consuming issues, organically learning to build intelligent approval workflows. The automation of financial processes such as invoice receipt, data entry, invoice approval and data export is fuelled by proprietary AI tech and a cloud-based combined-element solution, ensuring access from anywhere with no onboarding necessary.
Closing the gap between finance and other departments is important in enabling finance to carry out their jobs more successfully. With Candis, companies can enjoy enhanced communication and collaboration between finance and other departments by providing all decision-makers with access to relevant information. Sharing information automatically in one document eliminates the need for endless, slow back-and-forth email chains.
Smart integrations with DATEV, Sage, Wolters Kluwer, and more further enhance the user experience enabling seamless exportation of invoice data into the preferred accounting platforms. Further, a critical byproduct of account platform integration is an audit-ready invoice archive that simplifies compliance.
Tomer Michaeli, General Partner of Viola Fintech: “SMEs are critical to innovation and growth, yet its outdated manual processes are often the culprits for the issues they face. Candis is one of the best solutions we’ve seen across any department when it comes to upgrading and automating this process to level the playing field and boost SMBs. With a great team, a solid track record of growth, and an impressive number of customers that love their product, we’re excited to be partnering with Candis in unlocking their full potential.”
Since its founding, Candis has worked with over 4000 customers and 200+ partners. Now, with this new investment, the team is expanding its product offering with payments, building further integrations, doubling down on core invoice management functionality, and expanding the team.
That is in addition to launching company credit cards which will provide a central overview of all company expenses in real-time, eliminating the need to wait weeks for a monthly statement. With each employee having their own card, there will be no need to pass around management’s card (while ensuring they still have the control, security and transparency necessary), saving time and hassle.
The CEO added: “This latest funding round is a critical step forward to help solve a fundamental issue and a recognition that our solution, both due to our technology and triple-digit growth over the past two years, is on the forefront. We look forward to continuing to build upon that growth, improve our product, expand our team, and most importantly, make the lives of finance departments far easier.”
