Case study/Fintech
Accounting Software Integration & Automation for a Financial Advisory Company
Bookkeeping reconciliation automated on a build unicrew took over, with no issues reported as transaction sizes grew in testing.
unicrew took over a partially built financial software solution for a UK financial advisory firm and extended it: automated reconciliation of transactions against invoices, encryption and account protection around the data it holds, and a proposed route through the natural language problem in transaction descriptions.
- Focus
- Fintech
- Market
United Kingdom- Engagement
- Takeover of an unfinished build
- Stack
- NLP
MySQL
ASP.NET
C#
Outcome at a glance
What this project delivered.
- 01Less manual work: automated reconciliation of transactions and invoices freed the delivery team for more strategic work
- 02Data and accounts secured: encryption and user authentication now cover the financial data and the accounts on the system
- 03No wrong answers: the client's review reports no instance of the system doing the wrong thing, which they put down to the communication
- 04Domain picked up fast: on Clutch, the client says the team learned the domain quickly and repurposed technologies they had used before
Project Overview
A financial advisory firm supporting early-stage tech startups wanted its accounting processes to stop eating its delivery team. The firm covers accounts management, tax advisory, EMI schemes, and R&D tax credits, and it is 100% Xero-certified, so anything built for it had to align with that. The goal was software that automated bookkeeping tasks and held financial data securely.
unicrew was brought in to take over a partially completed solution, improve what was there, and add the automation the firm needed.
Challenge
The firm’s delivery teams were carrying manual processes that were slow and easy to get wrong. Key challenges of the accounting software integration included:
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Manual processes: recurring tasks such as reconciling invoices and processing transactions were done by hand, which cost time and let errors in.
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An unfinished build: an existing solution, built with MySQL, ASP.NET MVC, and C#, needed real work before it could meet the business requirements.
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Knowledge that is hard to hand over: the tool had to replicate accountancy logic that is not easy to communicate remotely, and a team joining mid-build had to absorb it before extending anything.
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Security from the start: the system deals with financial elements, so encryption and user account protection were requirements from day one, not a later hardening pass.
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Domain-specific complexity: the software needed to read transaction descriptions with natural language processing, which takes domain knowledge to get right.
Solution
unicrew’s team took over the build and worked on it alongside the firm. The work included:
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Picking up the existing code: unicrew took on the MySQL-based solution, refined the functionality already in place, and added the features that automate the bookkeeping tasks.
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Bookkeeping automation: the software now reconciles transactions against invoices automatically, which is where a share of the manual input had been going.
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Encryption and account protection: unicrew put encryption around the financial data and secured the user accounts, as part of the same accounting software integration.
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A route through the NLP problem: reading transaction descriptions and acting on what they say is a research problem rather than a configuration one, so unicrew proposed the technical methodologies to attack it.
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A small team that learned the domain: the firm worked directly with unicrew’s developer and CTO, who repurposed techniques from earlier work instead of asking for a long ramp-up on the business logic.
Result
The engagement moved a share of the repetitive work off the delivery team and put real protection around the data the system touches.
One part of the brief was still open when the client wrote that review. The natural language work on transaction descriptions was in progress rather than finished, and unicrew’s contribution there was the methodology for getting at it. That is the normal shape of a takeover: the work that unblocks the day lands first, and the research problem runs alongside it.
Automation of this kind rarely arrives as a greenfield project. See how unicrew doubled data-entry throughput with a custom recognition tool, or read what other clients say on our client reviews page.
What the client says
Even though Artelogic didn’t have a background in this area, they learned quickly and repurposed technologies they’d used before in order to solve the business problem. I was very impressed with this ability, as most of the people we contacted before implied that they’d need to spend a lot of time of trying to understand our business logic.
05/Technologies
Technologies on this project
Backend
- ASP.NET
- C#
AI & Data
- NLP
- MySQL
06/Quick answers
The questions behind the project
What did unicrew build for the financial advisory firm?
unicrew took over a partially built financial software solution for a financial advisory firm and extended it. The main piece was bookkeeping automation: the software reconciles transactions against invoices, which is where a share of the manual input used to go, and that freed the delivery team for more strategic work. unicrew also put encryption around the financial data and secured the user accounts on the system, and proposed the technical methodologies for categorizing transaction descriptions with natural language processing. The firm is 100% Xero-certified, so the software had to align with that.
What technology was the accounting automation built on?
The existing solution was MySQL, ASP.NET MVC, and C#, and unicrew picked that up rather than starting again, refining what was already there while adding the automation the firm needed. The natural language work on transaction descriptions was the research problem in the brief and was still in progress at the time of the client's review; unicrew's contribution there was the methodology for getting at it. Encryption and secure user authentication were added as part of the same accounting software integration.
What security work was part of the integration?
The system deals with financial elements, so encryption and user account protection were requirements from the first day rather than a later hardening pass. unicrew put encryption around the financial data the software holds and secured the user accounts on it, as part of the same accounting software integration.
Can unicrew pick up a codebase someone else started?
Yes, and that is what this engagement was. unicrew's developer and CTO took over an existing MySQL, ASP.NET MVC, and C# build, refined what was already there, and added the automation on top. The harder part was the accountancy logic the tool had to replicate, which is not easy to communicate remotely; according to the client's review on Clutch, the team learned the domain quickly and repurposed technologies they had used before to solve the business problem. On a takeover the first weeks go into reading the code and the domain rather than shipping features, and that is the trade for not starting again.