SMB Team Management Platform Homebase Reveals $71M Series C Round

Homebase, a Software-as-a-Service (Saas) platform that helps small businesses manage their hourly teams, revealed a $71 million Series C funding round on Thursday (July 29).

The company said in an announcement that it will use the money to grow its products and services, while also rolling out new HR and payroll tools.

“Launched out of a desire to innovate how local businesses manage their hourly teams, Homebase is enabling owners and employees alike to spend less time on busy work and more time on getting work done and growing their businesses,” the firm said in the release.

According to Homebase, about half of America’s five million small businesses spend up to 30 hours a week on things like payroll, scheduling and administrative paperwork.

“I started Homebase to make life easier for my family members and friends in local businesses, who weren’t being helped by technology,” John Waldmann, founder and CEO of Homebase, said in the announcement. “Everything from their hiring to their scheduling was stuck offline. Like millions of other restaurants, retailers, cleaners, bars, doggy daycares and other incredible local businesses, they were forced to choose between paper or solutions that weren’t designed for them.”

Homebase also announced the addition of two new products to its suite. The company’s payroll tool is now available to customers in 27 states, with the remainder of the U.S. and Canada due to be added soon.

Homebase says it offers timesheets and payroll on the same platform, saving businesses the hassle of manually transferring data from one system to another. Meanwhile, the company says its new pay advances tool enables employees working for Homebase clients to access some of their wages before payday to cover unexpected expenses, without resorting to payday loans or overdraft fees.

“This type of benefit has gained popularity with large companies, and now small businesses can offer the same perk to their teams, with zero cost or liability to the employer,” the release said.

Homebase’s announcement comes two weeks after Square’s purchase of the frontline employee platform Crew. As PYMNTS reported at the time, Square hopes to use Crew’s services to scale labor management tools and meet the needs of larger sellers. Square has also said the purchase will give it an edge in terms of what it can offer clients for messaging, scheduling, tracking and more.