Lockstep CEO Peter Horadan. (Lockstep Photo)

Seattle-area giants including Concur, Avalara, and DocuSign changed the way companies automate their essential business processes.

Lockstep wants to be the next huge enterprise software company out of Seattle to join that group.

The 3-year-old startup is seeing demand grow for its software used to automate the accounting of B2B purchases and payments.

The idea is to use automation to help eliminate the cash traps and cash leaks that occur through the human handling of company books. 

“Paper and envelopes have been replaced by PDF and email, but the core activities of customer onboarding, vendor onboarding, credit decisioning, invoicing, dispute resolution, and reconciliation require menial, manual, error-prone activities that could be automated,” said Lockstep CEO Peter Horadan.

Lockstep on Thursday released Lockstep Inbox, a new free “shared accounting inbox” that manages accounting emails, phone calls, and tasks and integrates with legacy accounting software.

The 120-person startup has more than 20,000 customers and its revenue doubled last year.

Horadan, previously an executive at tax automation company Avalara, said his startup wants to be the “LinkedIn of accounting,” pointing to how anyone can join the “Lockstep Network” for free, and that the company is using a “product-led growth approach.”

“Lockstep has been honing in on the fact that accounting has been forgotten and left behind in workflow automation,” he noted. “Sales has Salesforce. HR has Gusto. Marketing has Hubspot. CS has Gainsight. Even IT has Jira. But accounting has Outlook and spreadsheets.”

Horadan said the larger economic downturn, which is forcing some tech companies to trim costs and lay off workers, “has accelerated the search for efficiency” and is a tailwind for Lockstep.

Other co-founders include Matthew Shanahan, Bill Henslee, and Scot Madill, who left in October.

The company on Thursday also revealed to GeekWire that it received a $2.5 million investment from American Express last year. The amount was previously undisclosed. Total funding to date is $17 million.

Other backers include Point72 Ventures, Clocktower Ventures, Revel Partners, SeaChange, Avalara CEO Scott McFarlane, Avalara co-founder Jared Vogt, former Amazon exec Jeff Wilke, Pioneer Square Labs Managing Director Geoff Entress, and angel investors Ben Slivka, Lisa Slivka, and Charles Fitzgerald.

Lockstep is ranked No. 127 on the GeekWire 200, our index of top Pacific Northwest startups.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.