Copenhagen-based Pento, a payroll automation startup, has raised $15.6M (approx €12.8M) in its Series A round of funding. Including this round, the total funding raised by Pento comes to $18.4M, to date.
The startup claims to be on a mission to free companies from onerous outsourcing, and outdated software while building infrastructure that enables the future of compensation products.
Investors in this round
The Series A funding round was led by General Catalyst, with participation from Avid Ventures and LocalGlobe. In addition, the round also saw participation from existing investors, including Point Nine Capital, Seedcamp, Moonfire Ventures, and Hustle Fund.
Besides, strategic angels from Stripe (Thairu and Diede van Lamoen), Monzo (Tom Blomfield), GoCardless (Matt Robinson), Zoom (Eric Yuan), Cuvva (Freddy Macnamara), and Intercom (Des Traynor), among others also invested in this round. A number of angels were existing customers of Pento before the round opened and have seen the benefits first-hand.
Capital utilisation
The proceeds from this round will be used to expand Pento’s remote-first team globally and expand to new European markets. Besides, the funds will also help continue Pento in developing its platform to build advanced features to simplify payroll.
How was Pento born?
Pento was founded by Jonas Bøgh Larsen and Emil Hagbarth Rasmussen as they experienced the pain points of payroll first-hand while growing a business. They found that dedicated payroll software was too heavily designed for accountants and experts, and for them to navigate and learn on the job took too much time. Even outsourcing – to save time and hassle – failed to live up to expectations.
A large proportion of their time was still spent manually managing spreadsheets, bank transfers, sending emails, creating PDFs, and sharing data with their payroll provider. This not only has time ramifications, but presents a significant security risk when highly-sensitive data on employees is being constantly accessed by a third party.
And this is when the duo decided to build Pento – to help solve such problems.
Pento co-founder & CEO Jonas Bøgh Larsen explains, “So much of payroll is still stuck in the dark ages. Companies waste too much precious time and resources attempting to manage payroll and responding to avoidable payroll errors. This makes it seem much more complex and closed-off than it needs to be, which fuels the myth that outsourcing is the only viable solution.
“We want to change that. We’re giving companies the confidence and tools to do it themselves; to make it flexible and easy to get paid in a way that enables everyone to choose for themselves how and when they want it done, without compromising on security, transparency, or speed,” adds Larsen.
SaaS platform to optimise payroll services
Founded in 2016, Pento is a SaaS-based online platform that automates every step of the payroll process from start to end, in real-time. Instead of relying on spreadsheets, PDFs, e-mails, and countless manual checks, Pento gives its customers complete control over every step with easy-to-use, cloud-based tools, real-time calculations, transparency, and online and telephone support.
It’s suitable for SMEs, up to companies with more than 1,000 employees and includes generating P45s, P60s, P32s, P11Ds automatically as well as end-of-year reporting. The service is set at a transparent monthly fee, based on a customer’s employee numbers.
Since 2017, the firm has supported more than 700 companies in the transition away from outdated payroll processes. Pento’s customers to date include tech firms (Pleo, Cuvva), large hospitality brands (Honest Burgers), and retail and e-commerce brands (Lacoste, Beauty Pie).
Pinto reports that since the start of 2021, it has had consecutive record-breaking months putting it on track to increase its customer base and revenue five-fold by the end of the year. It is also set to triple its remote-first team and is actively hiring across engineering, sales, marketing, people, design, and customer service departments globally.
What does Pento offer?
The software has real-time calculators to help employers work out liabilities and automate PAYE, National Insurance Contributions and salary payments. Pento gets rid of payroll deadlines and cut-off dates, offers fast and reliable payroll support, and plugs directly into HMRC – or other country-relevant authorities – for reporting.
Pinto’s co-founder & CTO, Emil Hagbarth Rasmussen, says, “Our integrations with existing software play a key role in what sets us apart. From day one, we said we didn’t want to become a “Jack of all trades, master of none.” We don’t want to spread ourselves too thin trying to be accounting, HR, pension providers and more. Payroll is our bread and butter. Purely payroll. Not only does focusing on improving every single element of payroll make us infinitely more useful for our customers, but we’re building the infrastructure that enables us and other startups to innovate and build the next-generation of new and exciting compensation products.
The company mentions that soon, employees will be able to get immediate and transparent access to pay history and personal pay-related data. Pento can additionally be integrated into existing accounting software, HR products like BambooHR and Hibob (and soon Personio, Humaans and others), plus pension providers to create a seamless workflow.
Additionally, the first version of an open payroll API is already in beta and is being tested by existing customers.
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Danish payroll automation startup Pento raises €12.8M, looks to triple its remote-first team - Silicon Canals
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