Tech news: AuditBoard goes wide with AI tools

April 26, 2024 10:10 AM

AuditBoard announces AuditBoard AI now generally available; Earmark launches web app; and other accounting technology news.

AuditBoard announces AuditBoard AI now generally available

Risk management platform AuditBoard announced that its artificial intelligence capabilities are now generally available. AuditBoard AI incorporates generative AI and other private AI models to surface insights, provide suggestions and automate workflows like report summarization, issue creation, control mapping and more. AuditBoard AI leverages generative content to draft risk and control descriptions, uses AI models to identify duplicative work, maps controls across frameworks, and identifies gaps in controls and risk mitigation plans.

Earmark launches web app

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CPE and CE content platform Earmark launched a wholly rebuilt mobile app and new web app. The Earmark web app is available at earmark.app and allows accounting and tax pros to access and complete courses in their web browser. Additionally, creators can embed courses directly on their websites. The rebuilt mobile app, available on iOS and Android, offers improved performance and user experience.

Insightsoftware touts new AI and SaaS capabilities for Logi Symphony

Insightsoftware, a finance and accounting solutions provider, announced new AI and SaaS capabilities for Logi Symphony, its flagship embedded business intelligence and analytics software suite. Logi AI offers adaptable generative AI "chatflows" with grounded prompts that are context-aware, ensuring relevance and accuracy. Chatflows can be tailored to avoid irrelevant correlations, providing meaningful, actionable insights to users. Logi AI integrates a built-in data governance model with support for any large language model or small language model, and integrates any language model with customer data.

OneStream offers narrative reporting feature

OneStream HQ

Financial management platform provider OneStream Software announced a new automated Narrative Reporting approach within the OneStream platform. OneStream's Narrative Reporting unifies report creation, from narrative assembly to data analysis and editing. Beyond assembling narrative reports, users can also analyze and gather financial context to reports, charts, spreadsheets and documents within Narrative Books linked live to validated OneStream data directly in the report. Narrative Reporting can be embedded into the close, planning and other workflow processes with built-in approvals. Users can collaborate on formatted Narrative Books with Microsoft Office. They can add comments, track changes and view all activities to streamline approvals and minimize reporting errors. OneStream will unveil its Narrative Reporting capabilities at OneStream Splash, its annual customer conference, on May 20-23.

Oracle releases cloud financial solutions specifically for federal agencies

Oracle announced Oracle Cloud Federal Financials, a solution in Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning specifically for federal agencies. The industry-specific solution enables federal agencies to automate finance processes and leverage embedded AI and generative AI to reduce costs and enhance the quality of services they provide to constituents. Specifically, the solution automates federal accounting, budget planning and execution, fund controls, delinquency processing and debt collection. It offers direct integration with the U.S. Treasury; and enables access to Oracle's dedicated government data centers that are FedRAMP and Impact Level authorized. It has the ability to dynamically increase and decrease consumption cost based on workload requirements via Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and accesses Oracle's quarterly update cycle.

Aico introduces transaction matching solution

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Financial close software platform for large businesses Aico released its Transaction Matching solution to help companies with reconciliation tasks. Users can match thousands of transactions from any data source . With Aico's platform, users can directly post journals, clear open items, substantiate general ledger accounts and assign action items to request support from colleagues, as well as track other closing and account reconciliation activities. It lets users choose transactions from multiple sources, including different file formats, as well as pull real-time data directly from their ERP systems. Users can configure multiple matching rules, including one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many, with different degrees of confidence.

Fortanix announces general availability of Key Insight

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Cybersecurity solutions provider Fortanix announced the general availability of its Key Insight solution. Fortanix Key Insight automatically reveals what data has been encrypted, the type of encryption keys, and which workloads use them in Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure cloud environments. This way, users can assess how their cryptographic posture aligns with their policies, letting them prioritize remediation steps. The system uses data-driven heatmaps to pinpoint risks, gaps and priorities against established policies, regulations and industry standards. The software implements corrective actions to improve cryptographic security, with monitoring and reporting capacities to demonstrate continuous improvements.

Recurly introduces new dashboards with built-in benchmarks

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Subscription management and billing platform Recurly announced its new dashboards with built-in benchmarks. The new dashboard reports — fueled by the trends of more than 60 million subscribers on Recurly — bring benchmarking data and actionable analytics to merchants enabling them to identify opportunities and make decisions in the subscription landscape. Benchmark insights include the percentile of subscribers that are new or returning each month; percentile of initial signup transactions that fail; percentile of active subscribers that discontinue their subscriptions, either voluntarily or involuntarily; and percentile of renewal invoices that entered dunning and were recovered during the dunning window. Recurly's new intelligent benchmarks are part of Recurly's core reporting and analytics suite, allowing merchants to analyze metrics and understand performance against industry cohorts over specific timelines.

QuickBooks Live Assisted Bookkeeping is now QuickBooks Live Expert Assisted

Intuit's Ariege Misherghi speaking at QuickBooks Connect

QuickBooks announced that QuickBooks Live Assisted Bookkeeping service will now be called QuickBooks Live Expert Assisted. A QuickBooks spokesperson said this new name better represents our evolved strategy to prioritize their assisted services in a "do-it-with-me" approach, where Live experts are coaching small businesses on how to get the most of QuickBooks and answering basic product and accounting questions. This will be paired with a new "Live Experts" tab in the QuickBooks Online left-hand navigation bar for all small businesses, including those connected to accountants. This tab will let small businesses know when they are eligible to purchase QuickBooks Live Expert Assisted.

LevelTen Energy launches clean energy tax credit marketplace

Emissions rise from the American Electric Power Co. coal-fired John E. Amos Power Plant in Winfield, West Virginia.

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Energy transaction solutions provider LevelTen Energy introduced the LevelTen Tax Credit Marketplace to facilitate the purchase and sale of federal clean energy tax credits. LevelTen's newest marketplace enables corporations, tax advisors and sustainability advisors to procure tax credits from a network of approximately 600 clean energy developers in the U.S. It includes streamlined management of requests for proposals, deal diligence and transaction execution. Furthermore, tax credit buyers have the option to leverage LevelTen's full suite of transaction infrastructure — multiple clean energy marketplaces, transaction software and data dashboards — to procure a power purchase agreement or renewable energy certificates in addition to tax credits.

Partnerships and integrations

Carbon accounting solutions provider Greenly announced the availability of its software on the Intuit QuickBooks App Store. Through Greenly, users have access to automated carbon footprint calculations, real-time emissions tracking and reporting, customizable sustainability metrics and goals, and integration with leading financial and accounting platforms. … - Vertex, Inc, a tax technology solutions and a member of Oracle PartnerNetwork, has been selected to join the Oracle Independent Software Vendor Accelerator for SaaS Initiative. Through this partnership, Vertex can now integrate essential tax solutions into Oracle Fusion Applications… Compliance solutions provider Sovos has aligned with the Digital Business Networks Alliance as an early member, contributing to the mission of rapidly deploying a framework of standards and supporting services for seamless electronic data exchange in the U.S., across the Atlantic and globally. … Regulation solutions provider iDenfy, which specializes in ID verification and fraud prevention, has been contracted by Fidesta Ltd, a provider of international corporate and trust services. iDenfy will provides ID verification, AML, phone and address verification solutions to Fidesta LTD so Fidesta can, in turn, streamline its customer onboarding process and reduce costs.

New hires and appointments

Melio, a B2B payments platform for small businesses, announced the appointment of Boaz BenDavid as its first CFO, effective May 26. BenDavid will play a pivotal role in driving Melio's financial strategy and operational excellence as the company scales. Most recently, BenDavid served as VP of finance at Nasdaq-listed Nayax, a global commerce enablement, payments and loyalty platform. BenDavid has also served in senior management roles at the First International Bank of Israel and KPMG. … Subscription management platform Recurly announced the appointment of Lina Tonk as chief marketing officer to its executive leadership team. As the CMO at Recurly, Tonk will be responsible for building customer- and partner-centric teams, amplifying brand exposure, and delivering growth at scale.

New funding

Business solutions provider Rippling has raised $200 million in new financing and signed agreements with investors to repurchase up to $590 million of equity from current employees, former employees, and early investors. The financing was led by Coatue with participation from Founders Fund, Greenoaks and other existing investors. Dragoneer is joining the round as a new investor. The financing values the company at $13.5 billion. … Finance and accounting operations platform FloQast announced the successful closure of its Series E funding round, raising $100 million. The round was led by Iconiq Growth, with Roy Luo, representing Iconiq Growth, joining FloQast's board of directors. BDT & MSD Partners and WiL (World Innovation Lab) also join as first-time investors, alongside the continued participation from board member Meritech Capital as well as Sapphire Ventures. With this latest investment, FloQast achieves a post-money valuation of $1.6 billion. … FinQuery, formerly LeaseQuery, a provider of AI-powered spend management solutions, announced a $25 million minority investment led by Periphas Capital and supported by Lavelle Capital. The funding will accelerate product innovation and support strategic M&A.