Revolutionizing Financial Reporting: InScope Secures $14.5M Funding

InScope: Revolutionizing Financial Reporting with AI

For those unfamiliar with accounting, the complexity of preparing financial statements is evident even at a glance of a 10-K or 10-Q.

Despite efforts by traditional platforms like Workiva and Donnelley Financial Solutions to simplify financial reporting, experienced accountants Mary Antony and Kelsey Gootnick found themselves frustrated by manual obstacles within these tools.

Having met at Flexport seven years ago, where Gootnick was the controller and Antony was the assistant controller, the duo stayed connected as they moved on to different companies like Miro, Hopin, and Thrive Global.

Regardless of their workplace, Antony and Gootnick encountered the same manual challenges repeatedly.

In 2023, they co-founded InScope, an AI-driven financial reporting platform that automates many aspects of the financial statement preparation process. The startup recently secured $14.5 million in Series A funding led by Norwest, with support from Storm Ventures, Better Tomorrow Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

While InScope does not yet fully automate income statement and balance sheet generation, it streamlines a significant portion of manual tasks, such as math verification and formatting. Antony, the CEO of InScope, estimates that standardizing dollar signs and commas alone can save accountants up to 20% of their time.

In the past year, InScope has experienced a 5x growth in its customer base, attracting prominent accounting firms like CohnReznick, a top 15 national ranking firm.

While it may take time for risk-averse accountants to fully trust AI in financial statement preparation, InScope aims to achieve that goal eventually.

Sean Jacobsohn, a partner at Norwest, invested in InScope based on client feedback praising the time-saving benefits of the product.

Jacobsohn believes InScope’s success lies in the founders’ unique expertise in reinventing financial reporting technology, a challenging and intricate domain that demands a deep understanding of the end user’s needs.

Antony acknowledges that accountants are not typically inclined to launch startups but credits their entrepreneurial skills to years of working in dynamic environments at high-growth startups.