How kontolink built ‘one swipe accounting’

July 21, 2019 | Louise Basse

Deadlines. Missing receipts. Big piles of invoices.

It’s no secret that the end of an accounting period tends to be stressful for many businesses. Finding the right receipts and matching them to bank transactions is a time-consuming task that most companies dread.

To make accounting a walk in a park, kontolink teamed up with Nordic API Gateway to create a mobile and automated accounting solution to the benefit of their clients.

With access to bank data from all Nordic banks, kontolink was quickly able to offer a new service that meets the demands of the future of accounting.

Let’s see how they did it.

‘One swipe bookkeeping’ on the go

With many years’ experience in the accounting field, kontolink’s CEO Kim Agger knows all about the struggles of bookkeeping. According to him, finding the right receipts tends to be the biggest problem of all.

That’s why he decided to start kontolink. A smart and mobile solution that’s based on real-time bank transactions:

“Our mission was to create a ‘Tinder style’ accounting solution that enables businesses to handle their accounting on the road. If the match between transaction and receipt looks right, you swipe one way to approve it. If it looks wrong, you simply swipe the other way to reject it”, Kim Agger explains.

As most people obtain their receipts when they’re on the road for meetings or conferences, kontolink is made as a smart mobile solution that everyone can use on the go.

A win-win for businesses and bookkeepers

So. Let’s say you jump in a taxi for a meeting in Oslo and you need to keep track of your receipts.

With kontolink’s app, you can easily take a photo of the receipt which then will be automatically matched to your bank transaction, as the app is connected to the bank account. All you have to do is swipe right to accept the match, or left to reject it.

To avoid the frustration of missing documentation close to the deadline, kontolink uses real-time bank transactions to notify the user when new transactions are missing receipts.

And that feature solves a big demand for both businesses and bookkeepers that handle accounting on behalf of the businesses, kontolink’s CEO says:

“Ultimately, kontolink is a win-win solution for everyone involved. Businesses can easily stay on top of their bookkeeping, and bookkeepers will save time and resources looking for the missing receipts”.

The future of accounting is based on real-time bank data

So. How does kontolink actually differ from other accounting solutions?

Whereas traditional accounting is done more or less manually based on the document only — and then later reconciled with the bank — kontolink does the opposite.

“With Nordic API Gateway, we’ve turned the accounting process upside down. Our system uses bank transactions and data from the matched receipts to create the accounting entries. It’s a much more accurate and effective way to do accounting, as real-time bank data will work as an instant reconciliation to validate that the expense is true”, kontolink CEO, Kim Agger concludes.

According to him, kontolink’s service is future-proof, as he believes we’ll see an even bigger integration of bank data in the future of accounting.