Puzzle Raises $15M for Smart Accounting Software for Startups

Puzzle has raised a $15 million Series A and launched its smart accounting software for startups.

The firm said in a Thursday (Feb. 16) blog post that its solution features both smart accounting software and a real-time financial data platform — a combination that provides the speed, collaboration and intelligence founders and their finance teams need for fundraising, taxes and improving business health.

“It’s no longer enough for founders to build great products; they need to build great businesses too,” Puzzle said in the post. “A startup needs a solution for taxes and financial reporting, but in tighter funding environments founders need to be more on top of their balance sheet and performance metrics than ever before.”

As PYMNTS reported in January, businesses are increasingly turning to automated solutions to remove bottlenecks from both front- and back-end operations, realizing efficiencies across operational verticals that include finance and accounting office to the factory floor and even the loading bay.

PYMNTS conversations with chief financial officers (CFOs) in 2022 showed a strong emphasis on automation in all its forms, as there has been a recent boom in opportunities for automated tools to help companies fuel sustainable growth while reducing human error and manual labor redundancy.

These efficiencies are especially important at a time when inflation and interest rates are rising, investor enthusiasm for initial public offerings (IPOs) is waning and deals have fallen to levels not seen since the 2008 financial crisis.

Puzzle said in the blog post that its solution gives startups access to finances that are real-time and explorable, a picture of financial health that is comprehensive and complete, and financials that are verifiably accurate and help create trust.

The solution also features a learning system that continually improves its categorization, suggestions and anomaly detection and a system that can scale, according to the post.

Whereas legacy accounting systems lead most founders to consider accounting a “dead end for data,” smart accounting software can make it “a starting point of useful financial analysis,” the post said.

“We rebuilt the accounting core, plus all the automation, collaboration and intelligence you would expect with any modern software,” Puzzle said in the post.