The Swiss company simplifies bookkeeping for companies under 10 employees thanks to a very easy to use online platform.
EZYcount is a digital accounting and invoicing program which purpose is to automate accounting management. In most large companies, the accounting department is managed by internal expert teams using advanced software, but among the self-employed and small enterprises, it is often the CEO who takes care of it. In many cases, he/she has to spend considerable time on complicated Excel sheets, or pay an accountant to do so, which is a big expense. EZYcount is the ideal solution as it allows to delegated low added value repetitive tasks (such as capturing expenses) to an Artificial Intelligence, limiting human error and thus allowing entrepreneurs to appeal to accountants only for the advisory and financial analysis tasks.
AUTOMATIC IMPORT OF BANK TRANSACTIONS
In 2012, Vivien and Barbara Fuhrer came up with the idea of a dematerialized fiduciary assistant. At the time, Barbara’s father owned a garage where he sold and repaired cross motorcycles. He was robbed, and his computer was gone along with all his bookkeeping. 10 months of figures were impossible to find. While helping him, Vivien, who was Financial Manager in a rail vehicles SME, realized that the existing software was too complicated for people who don’t work in Finance. He thus created a small simple online accounting system for his father-in-law. In January 2015, the patent was filed and EZYcount was born: a simplified system, cheap and suitable for all independents. Available only in Switzerland at the moment, EZYcount is an online platform on which the customer enters basic information on the business and then connects his professional bank account, emails, storage services for bills and fees, so that all transactions are recorded by EZYcount. In the current version of the platform, the customer still has to manually validate all income and outflow but, in the future, the application will be able to guess them by itself!
REDUCING FEATURES TO MEET THE CUSTOMERS’ NEEDS
In Switzerland, 87% of companies have less than 10 employees. As the backbone of the economy, freelancers and microenterprises rarely use all the features of complex accounting software. A building contractor will not use the “inventory management” function, just as a digital start-up simply needs its turnover, annual report and tax situation. However, accounting still represents 4 working hours per week and 5000 Swiss francs (4400€) per year on average. With EZYcount, VSEs and self-employed will divide by 5 their accounting expenses and workload. They will still need an accountant to help them with the closing, taxes or various decisions to make; all the rest being digitalized.
A SECURE PLATFORM FOR SMARTPHONE, COMPUTER AND TABLET
The EZYcount team, now composed of 11 people passionate about the self-employed environment, works in full-digital from all over Switzerland to provide a reliable and efficient service. The EZYcount website uses the https secure transfer protocol, which is essential for handling important fiduciary data. Information is stored on a private cloud as well as on the physical EZYcount servers, and penetration tests take place regularly to ensure high security on the website. These security measures reassure the customers and banks that work with the Swiss start-up! The latter will soon launch a fundraising of CHF 2 million (nearly €1.8 million) to achieve complete automation of the system within two years, and then open up internationally. Because one thing’s for certain: self-employed from all countries of the world are waiting impatiently for cheap and efficient help with accounting!
