Paris-based accounting software startup Pennylane today disclosed that it has raised 50 million euros, or about $57 million, in funding from a group of investors led by Sequoia Capital.

The investment is the latest in a series raised by startups developing tools to automate companies’ accounting operations. 

Pennylane’s newly announced Series B financing round brings its total outside funding to $96 million. The startup reportedly plans to use the new capital to hire 500 more employees by year’s end, primarily by expanding its engineering teams.

Pennylane, incorporated as Rev SAS, provides a cloud-based accounting platform that is used by small and medium-sized businesses companies to manage their finance operations. The startup also counts hundreds of accounting firms as clients.

There are many existing accounting applications on the market that promise to streamline companies’ finance operations, but using them often involves a great deal of manual work. One of the most time-consuming tasks for finance teams is importing transaction logs into the company accounting application for processing. Pennylane provides integrations that allow its platform to pull financial information automatically from a company’s bank accounts, which the startup says reduces the need for manual data entry. 

Once a company’s data is in the platform, Pennylane organizes expenses to help accounting teams more easily track corporate spending. Finance professionals can also use the platform to anticipate future expenses, the startup says, including recurring items such as software subscriptions and onetime purchases. 

To simplify procurement-related accounting tasks, Pennylane enables companies to manage supplier payments through a centralized dashboard. For processing sales, the startup’s platform includes features that allow companies to make multiple payment methods available to customers and automate related data entry tasks. 

Besides its feature set for corporate finance teams, Pennylane also offers capabilities geared toward accounting firms. The decision to invest in this area has paid dividends for Pennylane: The startup told TechCrunch that it currently acquires more than 80% of new customers through accounting firms. Pennylane said revenue is growing at a rate of 20% month-over-month but didn’t share absolute numbers.

Pennylane’s latest funding round comes a few weeks after Tipalti Inc., which helps companies complete common accounting tasks faster, closed a $270 million funding round at a $8.3 billion valuation. Earlier, Candis GmbH raised $14 million for its cloud-based accounting platform. Candis’ platform uses machine learning to automate repetitive manual work for finance teams.

The investor interest in the business-to-business fintech market is likely driven partly by the multiple high-profile exits that the segment has seen recently. Marqeta Inc., the operator of a platform that enables companies to issue corporate payment cards, listed on the Nasdaq last year and raised $1.2 billion in its initial public offering. Another corporate credit card specialist, DivvyPay Inc., around the same time was acquired by rival Bill.com LLC in a $2.5 billion transaction. 

Image: Pennylane