The Accountancy Cloud

The Accountancy Cloud is a challenger accountancy service offering cloud-based software to automate bookkeeping.

About £7.5 billion is spent on bookkeeping and accounting in the UK alone, it’s a fragmented industry of local players where quality is often lacking, and customer satisfaction is on par with a trip to the dentist. That’s why the Accountancy Cloud is doubling down on bringing accountancy into the 21st century.

Accountancy Cloud is a challenger accountancy service offering cloud-based software to automate bookkeeping. To begin, Accountancy Cloud isn’t trying to force companies to completely rip out their bookkeeping software and start from scratch, but instead, collect the electronic information they already have.

By integrating with bank accounts, credit cards, expenses and accounting software such as Xero and Sage, the platform offers small businesses a smarter solution for their back-office, alleviating the burden of time consuming manual tasks.

As the central platform, it also offers interactive financial reports, proactive alerts and more, acting as a hub for accounting operations.

Wesley Rashid - CEO
Asima Hafesji - Co-founder and Head of Growth

Q and A with Wesley Rashid, Co-founder and CEO, The Accountancy Cloud

What inspired you to go away and solve the problem you are addressing?

Before Accountancy Cloud, I ran a consulting business just after the economic crash, and I spent too much time on manual tasks like bookkeeping, when Excel and beans were used to count numbers and paperwork was used to record financial transactions. (It hasn’t changed all that much today!). I could never get the financial clarity I needed.

This was a real pain point. When I sold that business, I discovered that the back office misery I experienced existed in the life of all startup and SME owners across the planet, and so my obsession grew from there. But, let’s just get this out of the way: accounting can be dry - although that doesn’t mean the business behind it has to be. In fact, it’s one of the most exciting, yet overlooked, areas in fintech today - a service industry that can finally be automated with technology, and that also serves as a gatekeeper to the rest of a company’s back office. New digital services across banking, payments, and payroll have made this opportunity possible.

Now, most of the accounting and bookkeeping tasks that were done by hand can be automated. Structured inputs, like a list of transactions from your bank account, in; structured outputs, like a journal entry, out - and with Accountancy Cloud’s technology in the middle. Accountancy Cloud is transforming a service industry into a software category.

What tips would you give an aspiring entrepreneur?

You just have to be yourself. You can't ever really train to be a CEO. The buck stops with you because as CEO you will be the one making the decisions for the best interests of your business. You'll win some, you'll lose some and you'll break a few things along the way. But that's OK because you'll learn and be better from the experience.

Oh and get used the fact that you never have time to complete your to-do list!

What's the hardest part of being a founder?

When you have an idea and create something from scratch you are super-invested in it, so the lows are really low, the highs are really high. I don't think there is an in between. That, over time can affect your mental wellbeing if you let it.

If you weren't building your startup, what would you be doing?

I'd be a professional rugby player. I used to play and have a huge passion for Wales rugby.

What gets you out of bed in the morning?

My biggest motivation is my family. I'd like to look back and ask myself ‘what have I done in my life?’ Over the years, I’ve conditioned myself to get up every day and keep things going, despite the odds. We should all aim to look back at life with no what-ifs, and be proud of what we’ve achieved. That’s what my family have instilled in me.