51. Receipt Bank

Founders: Michael Wood and Alexis Prenn
Founded: August 2010 (launched February 2011)
Website: www.receipt-bank.com

Sole traders and small business owners will all be aware of the painstaking data entry and frustration that comes hand-in hand with logging business expenses. Founder Michael Wood was trying to find a solution to this himself when he came across a company called Receipt Farm – the service allowed businesses to post in their paper expense receipts, which were scanned in and added to a cloud account. When Receipt Farm decided to shut down before Wood could complete his trial period, he decided to take matters into his own hands and buy the whole operation outright, and Receipt Bank was born.

The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform automatically integrates receipt data into mainstream accounting software for a monthly fee, saving small firms countless hours of manual entry. The proposition’s appeal is self-evident, and with 20,000 current users, more than £1m in angel funding, and a pace of growth regularly exceeding 3% per week, it is clear the consumer base agrees. The next 12 months will see Receipt Bank hatch an attempt to crack the lucrative North American market as the founders continue to deliver on the company’s rich potential.