Business consulting and services startup OneCFO recently launched its web app to address the challenges posed by siloed finance and accounting applications, manual accounting processes, and fragmented communication channels. The app also automates various financial tasks including reporting, budgeting, forecasting, tax filings, payroll, and more with just a single click, streamlining operations for businesses.
Founded in November 2022 by Jay Olos, OneCFO is a fractional CFO services provider catering to small and mid-sized businesses and fast-growing tech startups. The company provides integrated cloud accounting systems, ERPs, payroll software, business intelligence, and other software into one platform, creating a complete finance and accounting package for its clients.
OneCFO’s services face growing demand: surveys have found that 71% of businesses outsource a portion of their accounting requirements, while 65% seek full-time assistance from firms to manage tax compliance and other intricate tasks.
on every user dashboard.
OneCFO embarked on its journey with the mission of helping startups grow by simplifying essential financial tasks such as bookkeeping, tax management, payroll, and outsourced CFO services. This endeavor stemmed from the understanding that not every founder possesses a robust financial background, while also drawing upon the pain points Olos himself encountered as an accountant, auditor, angel investor, founder, and CFO.
According to Olos, the laserlike focus on specific pain points he encountered contributed greatly to OneCFO’s edge over other solutions like working with outsourced CFOs.
“We have clients who switched to us after working with outsourced CFOs. Their reason for switching is that the outsourced CFO is, most of the time, just a glorified accountant whose focus is more on proper accounting and tax compliance. Accounting and tax are important but that’s not just the work of a CFO,” explained Olos. “Business owners and startup founders go to OneCFO because they need financial experts who can help them grow their business, help them craft strategy, source capital, deploy or allocate resources properly, put controls and governance, measure, and ensure cash flow is OK so the business continues and succeeds. Those are just some of the benefits of choosing OneCFO’s tech-enabled bespoke services over others.”
The company’s newly launched web app doubles down on its commitment to helping founders and business owners. Similar to the graphic design app Canva, the OneCFO app was intentionally designed to have a user-friendly interface where comprehensive tax returns, payroll, budgets, and financial reports could be generated with a simple click. The app also allows users to conveniently distribute reports among team members, investors, and managers.
Prioritizing convenience makes sense given the most popular features among OneCFO’s clients so far. Firstly, the easy file repository and management feature replaces the chaos of multiple GoogleFolders with neat organization, searchability, and accessibility. The real-time CFO dashboard also provides instant access to critical metrics like revenue, working capital, and cash burn.
Ever since its inception just a little over a year ago, OneCFO has now closed and completed around 60 client engagements. These clients span a wide spectrum of industries, ranging from edtech to agritech, encompassing fast-growing tech startups, including several affiliated with Y Combinator. In some instances, OneCFO helped startups create not only investment decks but also financial strategy
Amidst all of OneCFO’s accomplishments so far, however, Olos is quick to credit the team around him. “We are blessed to have a solid advisory board who has provided us with really good inputs and advice since Day 1. Data privacy and security are their top-of-mind concerns since we are managing the finances of our clients. The second is scalability through lesser dependency on human intervention. Lastly and the most important of all, they’ve shared really useful product feature recommendations coming from their financial management issues when they were still building their companies before,” Olos said.
In the future, OneCFO looks forward to expanding throughout the Philippines and even the rest of Southeast Asia—a goal Olos feels is achievable given the company speaks the universal language of accounting. “Accounting is the global language in business. As long as there is a business regardless of location, there’s a market for OneCFO,” Olos said.
For now, OneCFO prioritizes sticking close to its clients in the Philippines. “I believe we are entering the golden era of digitization, particularly for small businesses here,” Olos concluded. “We will be forging stronger partnerships with local and multinational companies and brands that share our vision. We will also develop other products and features that small businesses and startups can use so they don’t need to do things manually and inefficiently anymore.”