Accounting Platform Dougs Raises $27 Million After Self-Funding for 8 Years

After eight years of self-funding, French accounting startup Dougs has  raised its first outside financing.

The company took in $27 million in its first funding round, TechCrunch reported Wednesday (July 5), and plans to use the capital to double the size of its team by 2025 and expand to countries like the U.K. and Germany.

Founded in 2015, Dougs is a chartered online accountant for small and midsized businesses (SMBs). It handles financial statements and tax filings, works with other accountants, HR professionals and legal experts.

It also, per the TechCrunch report, lets clients connect its platform with their bank accounts to give them better insights into expenses and revenues.

The funding is happening at a moment when SMBs are turning to digital tools like the ones Dougs provide as they struggle to meet more obligations with less working capital.

“Small to midsize businesses are caught between a rock and a hard place, with average hourly wages rising as small businesses attempt to avoid raising prices on goods and services,” PYMNTS wrote in May. “With many companies slowing or freezing hiring, pressure is mounting to find alternative areas to cut expenditures.”

Many of these firms are run by people who are consumers themselves, dealing with a level of complexity that goes beyond handling their household budgets.

These owners don’t have “complete control over their finances and expenses,” Paymentus’ head of product Chris Trainor told PYMNTS, “which leads to negative situations related to cash flow and profitability.”

He added that SMB owners often don’t have accounting, bookkeeping and software backgrounds, and therefore might not use their digital tools to their fullest extent. And many still use analog tools, and make/receive payments with paper checks.

Automation can also help SMBs that can’t find accountants at all, as the industry suffers a labor shortage, as PYMNTS wrote last year.

“There’s not a lot of people moving into the profession, and there are many people who are retiring from that profession,” OpenEnvoy CEO Matt Tillman told PYMNTS in an interview.

Digitization and automated accounting solutions for accounts payable/receivable probably won’t close the employment gap.

But these tools they do offer an attractive solution for reducing repetitive pain points, like “crossing T’s and dotting I’s for every invoice, while also offering the opportunity to free up time for accounting professionals to focus on what they find most interesting about their business’s financial operations,” PYMNTS wrote.