Jennifer Jimenez
James Walter Finagraph
Editor's Note: This is another profile in our series of exclusive interviews with some of the accounting industry's leading executives and thought leaders.
It started at age 16. That's when Finagraph founder and CEO James Walter began his small business education. He started a software company and wrote software for his teachers to help them with basic tasks. He ran a bulletin board (ahead of that thing call the internet) from his bedroom that gave people all over the country a way to connect.
He was 16. He had no formal education in running a business. The kid had moxey. That's why 30 years and seven small businesses later, James holds multiple patents in the fields of media and technology. He works with numerous Seattle-based startup incubators mentoring other CEOs.
Today, Finagraph creates tools for the financial services industry and for accounting professionals that benefit small businesses. James and his company, Finagraph, partner with companies like Jack Henry to improve its loan document collecting process for small businesses. It works closely with companies like Moody’s Analytics to bring business credit scoring to small businesses, which is typically only available to bigger businesses. It partners with bookkeepers, accountants and business advisors to give them the tools they need to boost small businesses.
Insightful Accountant sat down with James to get his thoughts on what the future looks like in the accounting space and what you should expect from Finagraph moving forward.
Give us a snapshot of the Finagraph brand.
Finagraph creates financial technology that helps small businesses. Some of our tech is used by major institutions like Moody’s Analytics and Jack Henry, to speed up the loan process for small businesses. And some of our tech is used directly by small businesses and their accountants to help them get an instant, clear picture of the vital financial stuff happening in the business.
Tell us about Flight.
We designed Flight to help businesses stay in business. I’ve owned numerous businesses and I know the struggles. How do you see the most important cash flow stuff before things go sideways? How can you run a business and still have time to keep a close eye on the books? Flight does it for you. You fly the plane and we’ll keep an eye on the gauges. After integrating with the accounting package, we serve up the stuff that matters: the anomalies, the trends and the key data points.
To make Flight really work, we put it in a streaming activity feed. So it’s like Quickbooks and Facebook mashed together. You can invite whoever you want to your feed. You can share documents, and you can comment back and forth right in the context of the data.
Flight is the un-dashboard. It’s more dash, less bored. It’s also free, so there’s no reason not to try it.
Why is this such a valuable tool for today's accounting professionals?
Flight solves a couple of key issues. First, with so much noise in our working day, it can be hard to know when something needs attention. Flight checks in on your finances and bubbles up when you need to pay attention to something. If everything is ok, Flight doesn’t sound the alarm, which means you can focus on the things that matter. Second, Flight gets you out of email and puts you in direct contact with clients in a very relevant and contextual way.
Business owners get peace of mind. We call it the guardian angel effect. They can rest easy knowing that if there are any anomalies in the finances, Flight will let them know about it.
What has been the feedback from the marketplace?
Amazing. I’ve launched quite a few products over the years and the personal responses to Flight have been heartwarming. I’ve been getting hugs at conferences, and accountants and bookkeepers have said how this will greatly improve how they work inside their own company and how they interact with their clients.
Flight is a completely new way for accountants to work with their clients, and when a bookkeeper or an accountant sees Flight for the first time, and "gets it," their whole face lights up. It’s incredibly rewarding to be creating something that so clearly hits the mark.
What are some of the things you're doing to help accountants continue to make that transition into the cloud?
One great thing about Flight is it works with both cloud and desktop accounting systems. For those clients who are hesitant to move to the cloud, it shows them the path by keeping them on desktop, but shows key information in Flight, which is enabled by the cloud. It will show up on their computer, or their phone, or their tablet, showing the power of using the cloud, even if it’s just a small step. So accountants can cloud-enable those hesitant clients without making the big scary cloud move.
What do you expect to see from the accounting space as we head into 2018?
Accountants and bookkeepers are in the middle of app overload. There is going to be a need to align all of these apps they use with their clients, in a streamlined way. Our vision for Flight in the future is that it will integrate with other apps in this space, creating a consolidated, powerful place for using many, if not all, of them.
What type of other partnerships are you developing?
We plan to create alliances with other valuable accounting apps like Expensify and TSheets. This way any app you use will be Flight-enabled, giving you a single place to monitor all the important activity between accountants and their business clients.
What does your to-do list look like this year?
Hire more great people, build additional partnerships to add more key notifications into Flight, and let all the bookkeepers, accountants and businesses out there know about it.
What’s the next "best thing" for you?
Getting Flight into the hands of accounting professionals and their business clients everywhere. Wide adoption of Flight would be the next "best thing" for anyone who wants to help keep businesses in business.
What should every accounting professional know about Finagraph?
Accounting professionals who use our tool with small businesses are going to have a massive impact. This is because small businesses make up 99 percent of employers in the U.S. They’re relentless – 58 small businesses open every single hour, around the clock in the U.S. That’s a lot of optimism. That’s a lot of chances for us to be of service. We do that best in partnership with accounting professionals.