Thanks for coming back for
another episode of Count Me In,

MA's podcast about all things affecting
the accounting and finance world.

This is Adam Larson,

and I'll be bringing you right up to the
start of our conversation for episode

167 of our series.

Today we hear of from the
co-founder and CEO of SoftLedger,

Ben Taylor.

SoftLedger provides real time visibility
to critical financial data with their

cloud native business management
platform and APIs. And in this episode,

Ben talks about some of the specifics
relating to APIs that can truly benefit

today's accounting and
finance professionals
working on current accounting

systems. To learn more,

stay tuned as we turn our attention
to the main conversation now.

So Ben,

I know our conversation today is around
accounting systems and I first want to

give you an opportunity to share a little
bit of background about you and your

company and then, you know,
how it all came about.

So my first question really is what are
some of the limitations with current

accounting systems?

Hi, yeah. Thanks for having me on
we view like accounting systems,

as we think of them, you know,

the ones you use in your job at a
corporate accounting department is it's a

general purpose system.

And so general purpose accounting
systems started in the early eighties or

I guess late seventies, but then came
to market broadly in the early eighties.

And essentially that brought together a
bunch of specific purpose systems in one

place where you could form financials
in, you know, in your general ledger,

from your general ledger.

And then that progressed over time to when

cloud accounting became or
cloud computing became a thing,

then these became cloud based systems,
then you could access them from anywhere.

And that that's great,

changes it so that you don't have to
worry about running your own servers and

some other things like that
and use a subscription model,

but it didn't fundamentally
change how those systems work.

They're still somewhat rigid in
that it makes it tough to connect to

other systems and it,

makes it tough to configure things
in certain ways that are, you know,

unique to your business. And so
that's what we've done is, you know,

early eighties was version
one of an accounting system.

And then late nineties is when the
cloud accounting systems came out

initially now, or 20 years later.

And the cloud's been around for
enough that if you design a system

specifically with cloud computing in mind,

you'll design it differently
and that's what we've done,

and there's just a number of benefits,

but I'd say that ease of configuration
to unique business cases and

then connecting to other systems are
among the biggest benefits to that.

So let's dig into that a little bit
deeper now, as we talk about, you know,

connecting the accounting system
with different systems and you know,

how we can do that more efficiently,

I understand the reasoning behind it
or the capabilities come from APIs.

So give us a little background on APIs
for those who may not be familiar and

really talk about how they help in this
scenario that you've described so far.

Sure. Yeah,

that is a big part of this
API is application programming

interface. That's what it stands for.

And it's essentially a way of
communicating with a software application

if you're using browser based application
and you're clicking on buttons and

to create journal entries, for
instance, what that's doing is that's,

that's programming the application
and API allows you to do that

programmatically. So it
allows you to do that via

just setting up code to
automate your processes.

And so the more stuff you can do via API,

the less you need to actually really key
things into the application yourself.

And so the better,

the more available a software application
is to being programmed via API.

The more you can automate.

So, you know, again, APIs, they
work between a number of systems,

and I understand that legacy
accounting systems have APIs as well.

So what is the differentiating factor?

What is it really that
we're talking about here?

So it's a great question that
the difference between legacy

systems and how they've approached
APIs and us is for legacy

software accounting software providers,
the API was kind of an afterthought,

it happened after they already
built the system initially.

And what that means is you can't
access everything in the same way

as as you can via the user
interface. There's just,

it's really tough to
do that after the fact,

whereas we've constructed
our system to use the API

with the user interface, from the get go.

And so what that means is it's,
everything is programmable via API.

If you're building an integration
with another application,

you can use our application
programmatically in the
same way as you can as an

end user. And that just, it, you know,

it removes friction essentially in the
process of creating integrations in a way

that that can really make new integrations
possible in a way that you couldn't

do before.

I got it. So,

based on your experiences
and the ease of use,

I suppose you could say, right, as far
as the, the benefits over your system,

compared to APIs being
added after the fact, right,

how has this API driven
accounting system really

gained traction? You know,
what are some of the, you know,

do you have any examples or some
business cases that outline improved

efficiencies or whatever
goes into your target users?

Yeah, absolutely. So there there's a,
a few different cases we work with.

The first one is, you know,
a CFO and controller or,

or controller trying to automate
their transactions for their,

their internal business
processes. And if you,

if you have internal systems that
you need to bring a high volume of

transactions in, for,
or at least, you know,

complex transactions in from
then having access to an API

allows you to bring those in automatically
just remove the manual work from that

process.

And then what's something that's
interesting also is that we have some

customers where the first person to
reach out was a software engineer because

our platform and our API are
constructed in a way that that is

what you'd want to use if you're
working with it as a software engineer.

And so it's interesting
that as engineering's more
involved in decision making

process for internal
systems, that's you know,

that's something that we
only see increasing in
importance in the in the coming

years.

So I wanna kind of follow up on that for
just a moment here. I know you started,

you know, looking at CFOs controllers,

those who are looking
for certain information,

and my understanding is with
these APIs and the ability

to integrate allows for
more real time data.

Right? So how again, does the, you know,

API driven accounting enhance
real time data available to them

compared to some other accounting
softwares or other, you know,

dashboards that may come
across as real time?

Sure. Yeah.

APIs are what enable real time
financials that that's just

mentioned removing friction in
the process of getting data into

or operational data into your financials.

That's really what it's all about
is the more steps that you have in

between, whatever the
thing happened in your,

and the relevant financial impact
being reported in your financials,

that that just makes it take longer.

And so if you can directly connect the
underlying transactions to what the

financial impact is,

then that's how you start chipping away
at the process of getting a financial

data quickly.

And I think of it as you go down your
chart of accounts and you just see, okay,

my cash account, what,
where is this coming from?

Is it coming automatically from the bank?

Can I code the transactions automatically
use some logic to get them in? Okay,

great. Next, get down to your
accounts receivable account,

and maybe there's a another system that
you're using for invoicing and that

directly feeds into there. And you
just, you know, tick down the list and,

and figure out how to
automate every, every account.

And how much code or, you know, you were
talking about engineering a little bit,

how much of those,

that knowledge or skillset is
required in order to utilize these

systems?

Is this something that the everyday
accountant would be able to essentially

build out or, you know, what
kind of assistance is required?

So it depends, you know, you can use,
you know, our, our system, for instance,

standalone, as an end user
can pick it up pretty easily.

It's fully easy to learn.
It's built for accountants,

but then if you want to get really
into the technical details and

automate things, you can, so those are
both, you know, sides are available.

And then in between, you know,

there's some integration platforms that
help to make it so that non-accounting

users can get more involved in
the integration spec design.

So there's a number of different
ways you can, you can do it,

but having an easy to use
platform and then easy to use

APIs, only help to enable all that.

So APIs, real time data,
you know, new technology,

all this is part of the profession.
And then, you know, step by step,

you kind of gave us how things have
progressed, you know, real time today.

One of the big trends in accounting
is crypto assets, right. And,

and everything that's out there in,

in the crypto world and how that's going
to impact accounting and finance now

just poking around your website.

And I see that you do have some
crypto companies under your use cases.

So I'm just curious,

how does this system work with crypto
and what is it that you're doing for

these companies?

Sure. That's been a big area
of interest. So in 2017,

Jeff, my co-founder and I got
interested in crypto and we

saw these companies doing ICO's - initial
coin offerings - and other complex

transactions. And we realized, you know,

these are small companies that don't
have full accounting and finance

departments that are doing
this very complex thing,

that there's gonna need to
be a system to track this.

And we realized that there
wasn't cuz we, you know,

many companies reached out to contact
us and asked if we could help.

And so we decided in,

in 2018 to release a
crypto specific module,

and we did that in August of 2018.
And so over the past few years,

we've been working with a variety of,

of companies that have cryptoassets in
their operations to it's the same problem

we're solving.

We're just helping them
get those transactions into
their financials quickly,

but they're very complicated.

And there's a lot of considerations
that are unique to crypto.

And so that's why having this,

this specific set of functionality
for these companies has been helpful.

So my last question is, you know,

obviously you were able
to identify a gap, right,

or opportunity where we could take
these systems to the next level and,

you know,

enhance the use of data and everything
else that goes with API driven accounting

systems.

So I'm just wondering if you have any
other thoughts or ideas for your system,

for your platform, for the
profession, really, you know,

what other opportunities in line with
what we're talking about today could be

out there for, you know,

our listeners to think about
and consider down the road.

Oh, sure. You know,

I've learned a ton going through the
process of started with the idea of

there could be a better way to do this,

a faster way to get financial data
and then listening to iterating on

feedback as Jeff and I were building
the product and realizing, okay,

here are some limitations with designing
computer applications or software

applications.

And here are some benefits that I didn't
even realize could exist and, you know,

taking the time to understand what's
available, what the options are.

And you know,

I think there's something great that
comes from having somebody who's an expert

in an architecting software application.

And then somebody with the accounting
experience on the accounting side,

figuring out what the
best overall solution is.

And so I think the more we can
integrate what's available from a

technical perspective, you know,

starts with understanding
what's what's out there.

The more experts in corporate
accounting can, can do that.

The more they can apply it to solving
the pain points in their jobs. And so,

you know,

sometimes it's a tough balance to
have to think about both sides of it,

but I think there's a lot
of benefits to doing so.

This has been Count Me In,

IMA's podcast providing you
with the latest perspectives
of thought leaders from

the accounting and finance profession.
If you like what you heard,

and you'd like to be counted in for
more relevant accounting and finance

education, visit IMA's
website at www.imanet.org.