After establishing itself as an accounting software platform for small businesses and self-employed professionals with paying customers in 160 countries, FreshBooks has announced that JPMorgan Chase & Co. has made a “strategic investment” in the company. FreshBooks aims to differentiate itself by creating easy-to-use accounting software that has a non-accountant user in mind while delivering “best-in-class” customer service, the company said in an announcement.
“Our mission is to reshape the world to suit the needs of self-employed professionals and their teams,” FreshBooks CEO and Co-Founder Mike McDerment said in the announcement. “We see a significant opportunity to combine the strength and scale of JPMorgan Chase’s banking and payments capabilities with FreshBooks’ expertise in software design to create mass adoption for small businesses, and propel us closer to achieving that world.”
JPMorgan Chase’s investment comes after two previous institutional funding rounds for FreshBooks, including a July 2014 $30 million USD ($40M CDN) Series A funding round and a July 2017 $43 million USD ($57M CDN) Series B funding round. A JPMorgan Chase representative will be joining FreshBooks’ board of directors as part of the investment.
Bill Clerico, head of SMB product for Chase Merchant Services and CEO of WePay (the integrated payments business of JPMorgan Chase), said in the announcement, “FreshBooks is one of the smartest, easiest-to-use software options for small businesses, and we’re thrilled we can support their growth with this investment.”
Clerico continued, “Since earlier this year, our 4 million Chase for Business customers have been able to sign up for FreshBooks through our small business marketplace and we’ve seen lots of demand. Helping software companies like FreshBooks grow by serving our small business customer base is a key differentiator for us in the fast-growing integrated payments market.”
FreshBooks announced its redesigned and rebuilt platform in September 2016 and has added more than 100 new apps and integrations to help customers automate more of their workflow since then. Integrations include G Suite by Google Cloud, Gusto, Slack, Shopify, HubSpot, ZenDesk, MailChimp, MileIQ, Proposify, Trello, Asana, Basecamp and more. In February of this year, FreshBooks announced the addition of bank reconciliation and double-entry accounting to its software.
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