Accounting Seed
If your business already uses Salesforce as a business platform, we highly recommend giving Accounting Seed software to gain visibility into your real-time finances. And you can customize the fields to handle all your unique financial data like a boss.
Now, here’s the thing to consider: if you want to steer clear of relying too heavily on Salesforce for updates and development, it might be worth exploring other accounting solutions. The connection to Salesforce can also put a bit of a damper on integrating with other platforms from third-party providers.
What is Accounting Seed?
Accounting Seed, a full accrual accounting app on Salesforce, offers real-time financial tracking throughout the business lifecycle, from marketing to financial statement production.
Key features include General Ledger, Financial Reporting, Billing, Cash Receipts, Accounts Payable, Cash Disbursements, and Project Accounting. It aims to simplify back-office operations, freeing up time for customer service.
| Pros | Cons |
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Our Ratings
| Usability - 9.4 | Has a modern and customizable interface; users with limited accounting experience can learn processes quickly, training is also available. |
| Support - 9.5 | Typical responses are within 1 hour, though some may take up to 24 hours; both Accounting Seed University and Knowledge Base provide written documentation and video tutorials. |
| Features - 8.3 | Straightforward yet robust accounting functionality; certain features are locked behind different packages like ERP (Orders and Inventory); there is not a mobile app. |
| Security - 10 | Backed by the Salesforce platform; data is backed up on a weekly basis and encrypted; has multi-factor authentication; data can be exported into CSV or PDF files at any time. |
| Value - 8.8 | Plans start at $250 per month; custom pricing options are available to best fit business needs; more modules, such as payroll and ERP, are available at an additional cost. |
| Performance - 9.3 | Functionality was fast and responsive; moving between different modules was easy; no notable slowness or performance issues. |
| Scalability - 9.7 | Robust customization options make it easy for Accounting Seed to grow with your business; user permissions can be assigned and changed. |
Features
A few standout features of Accounting Seed include:
In-Depth Customization
One of the distinctions offered by Accounting Seed is the ability to heavily customize data fields and reports. Just a few areas you can add include:
- Formula
- Roll up summary
- Lookup and/or external relationship
- Checkbox
- Currency
- Date/Time
- Geolocation (via longitude and latitude)
- Number
- Percent
- Phone
- Picklist (includes multi-select)
- Text area (allows separate lines, images, and links)
- URL
Custom data tables can be built to track these different fields. You can even change the labels used on the tables, fields, and dashboards to fit your pre-existing business terminology. All of this is done through clicks and drag-and-drop functions, so no coding is required.
Multi-Currency Support
Accounting Seed offers multi-currency support, a critical feature for any business looking to operate on a global stage. This support includes tools for tracking exchange rates and creating reports with different currencies.
Audit Trail Security
Accounting Seed is intended for users with some degree of accounting experience, even if it does not require full certification. A minor error from an inexperienced user, such as entering a decimal point in the wrong place, can compound into a larger issue later. Fortunately, the software was developed for non-accountants, so these types of mistakes should be rare.
In order to protect businesses and sensitive financial information, Accounting Seed creates audit trails to log all transactions. Other security features include user permissions, access controls, and data encryption.
Being able to track changes and maintain a record of transactions provides your business with extra security, protecting your financials from data breaches and simple human error alike. This can also keep your business compliant with federal cybersecurity standards.
What Features Are Missing?
When reviewing Accounting Seed, one missing feature stood out:
- Mobile app: Accounting Seed does not have a dedicated mobile app at this time. Features can be accessed through salesforce when on a mobile browser, but this does not offer the same level of easy usability.
Another issue is the reliance on Salesforce. For instance, anything more than light customization of PDFs will require Salesforce-based tools like Conga Composer and Drawloop. Of course, this heavy integration with Salesforce will be a benefit for those companies which already use and like the platform. For others, though, this dependence could be a dealbreaker.
Pricing Plans
| Plan | Pricing | Features |
| Basic | $250 per month (minimum) | The basic version of Accounting Seed includes:
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| Custom | Request a quote |
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Of course, you will also need Salesforce to use Accounting Seed. While there are a variety of versions, basic plans start at $25 per user per month. This can make costs add up quickly for small businesses looking to add Accounting Seed to Salesforce. Volume discounts are available based on the number of total users.
FAQ
Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions about Accounting Seed:
##!What is Accounting Seed used for? Accounting Seed is an accounting software built on the Salesforce platform. Founded in 2011 by a CPA and technologist, the software was designed to allow businesses to work from a single platform for all accounting needs.
Do you need Salesforce to use Accounting Seed?
Yes, Accounting Seed is 100% native to Salesforce and cannot work without it. This also means seamless integration to any Salesforce application such as Sales Cloud, Revenue Cloud, and Service Cloud along with access to pre-built integrations between Sales Cloud and Accounting Seed.
There are additional connectors designed specifically for Salesforce Non-Profit (NPSP) and Salesforce Field Service Management (FSM).
Alternatives
Summary
Based on our experience, we recommend Accounting Seed for any businesses which want to consolidate all their real-time accounting functionality onto Salesforce. It is also best suited to small and midsize businesses than enterprise-level corporations, although it can scale as companies grow. New releases of Accounting Seed also make regular updates to the software based on a combination of internal advancements and customer requests.
Accounting Seed plans start at $250 per month and advanced customization can increase costs. This can price out some smaller companies and startups. Additionally, companies may want to skip Accounting Seed if they do not use Salesforce in any capacity.
User Reviews of Accounting Seed
I was thrilled when I came across Accounting Seed. It’s native to Salesforce, and I could take our Excel documents and connect that to Salesforce through Accounting Seed.
What Accounting Seed is doing on this platform is leading change. I think it’s a fantastic opportunity for the breed of accountants who are coming out now to have a much more vital role in businesses. Now they have an opportunity to be advisors into the business.
For many years there was the focus on the integration between Salesforce and Accounting Seed and the power it could bring. Growing up around them has been a mini-environment of its own of financial software that dovetails into Accounting Seed. With all the tools available, more and more can be automated. We can help find growth areas.
It is an elegant system that will allow you to modify and enhance your business, very cost-effectively. When you’re on one platform, you, in essence, have a data warehouse and the reporting and analysis capabilities of that are fantastic. It takes keystrokes out but it also eliminates errors because you’re bringing the data in straight from the source. Our customers have found ways to use Accounting Seed in ways I never imagined.
Accounting seed is a 100% native application built on Salesforce. We’re the #1 native application for five years in a row. Customers can run their accounting inside of Salesforce as well as CRM and other applications so they are consistently in one environment for their core business needs.
A lot of people don’t understand how painful it is to use multiple systems, so any CRM to ERP integration usually has 5 to 25-30 fields they share between and it’s difficult to maintain with 3rd parties and APIs. We take care of that problem.
Accounting Seed is an open architecture application so you can customize it like the rest of Salesforce. All of this leads to automation. The same technology stack we use to write the application is available to Salesforce customers so the sky is the limit.
