Accounting Seed has deployed the Spring 23 of its accounting platform, the first of three it rolls out annually. It follows the Winter 23 it delivered in November 2022. The numbering matches the Salesforce numbering and fiscal year, hence the anomaly. While it has left behind its naming convention, the release contains several new features, enhancements, and bug fixes.
Banking Integrations
Accounting Seed can already integrate with any bank using custom integrations that leverage its new Bank Connect APIs. However, this can be time-consuming. Many customers already use Yodlee as a bank integration provider. Spring 23 adds another fully configured bank integration provider, Plaid. Plaid works with over 7,000 fintech partners, including retail and challenger banks. It will allow Accounting Seed users to have enhanced integration with their bank.
Using the integration, customers can select their bank and create an automated download of the latest transactions.
Reduced storage costs
Storage costs are one of the issues with cloud software on the Salesforce platform, as data is continuously added. Accounting Seed has recognised this and created a feature that enables administrators to delete source documents.
Sensibly, Accounting Seed also gives clear guidance on how companies should approach the problem. This includes advising that administrators must check the retention policies for each type of stored document, sometimes 7 years. It also recommends that the data is downloaded and stored off-platform.
Further enhancements for multi-entity organisations
Accounting Seed has also continued the work it started in its Magnolia releases on multi-entity accounting with Spring 23. Accountants are now able to configure default GL Accounts by Ledger. Users can select which transactional and budget ledgers they wish to use. For organisations using the consolidation feature, Accounting Seed creates the records for each to match the default GL account record.
Other enhancements
The release notes include details of 14 further enhancements. These include:
- Check print now supports 140 characters using the alternate payee name field. Very useful for customers that have long names. Checks and PDF files created using the name will automatically resize based on the number of characters.
- Another usability improvement is that journal entries from bank direct connect now have more meaningful entry names, including a date.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
The banking integration with Plaid is a major step forward as Accounting Seed looks to internationalise its solution. Plaid is recognised as one of the leading bank integration platforms. It will be interesting to see whether Accounting Seed looks to extend the integration further or move on to other aspects.
Over the next couple of releases, Accounting Seed is looking to develop the accounting platform in two key areas:
- AR and AP automation, possibly with additional partnerships
- Integration to Salesforce’s CRM Analytics (Tableau). This will give dashboards and analytics a major update, and it will be interesting to see what Accounting Seed produces.
Using this partnership approach, Accounting Seed will accelerate its solution’s capabilities far faster than trying to develop the functionality itself. It is a sensible approach that will give it a greater appeal.
