How Railz real-time data enables ORCHID•B to provide back-office services for small businesses

Railz and ORCHID•B: Making it easy for entrepreneurs to manage their finances

ORCHID•B is the finance platform for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and startups to launch and run their company with the same prowess as large enterprises. Orchid•B supports businesses by enabling financial, legal, and tax literacy and inclusion. ORCHID•B is the first fully integrated one-stop-shop for administration services including business registration, banking, insurance, payroll, tax and statutory returns with an account that can be opened in under 10 minutes. ORCHID•B makes the stressful and complex administrative processes of a business a breeze to handle.

Small business owners are bogged down by back office tasks, such as finances and legal work

In North America, there are over 31.7M small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). SMBs are core to every country’s economy, representing more than 60% of employment globally. Back office efficiency is difficult to achieve - especially if you are a one-person operation. Back office inefficiency is a $480B problem and entrepreneurs experience the same challenges that large scale operations do with regards to handling all that is involved. Every company, no matter the size, needs to properly manage their taxes, payroll, legal, banking, and more for their enterprise. 39% of business owners are already working over 60 hours a week to make their business succeed. Cutting the administrative work down to a few minutes a day, paired with real-time access to data on an on-going basis, helps entrepreneurs focus their time where it’s truly valued.

Claudio Romano, co-founder and CEO of ORCHID•B knew there had to be a better, and more cost effective, way for entrepreneurs to access these services and to achieve back office efficiency for SMBs. Claudio has first-hand experience of what entrepreneurs face when it comes to the administrative and financial stresses a new business has.

Claudio states, “After spending 25 years working for large blue chip companies working in Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A), technology transformation, and consulting, I started, operated, and then closed down a small consulting business over a 3 year period. During this time, I learned firsthand that entrepreneurs require the services of up to 20 different providers to administer their business at the most basic level. A small IT contracting business with 5 employees spends up to $ 25,000 a year in back office fees. 200 processes need handling every year, in separate systems that don't talk to each other. Including the billable time of the owner, that can mean $ 65,000 every year.”

Claudio began interviewing various entrepreneurs across all types of businesses - from bakeries to import and export companies to anesthetists to lawyers and accountants. He learned that they all suffer immensely from huge bureaucratic procedures and lack of services providers that make business administration feel simple and easy.

Shortly after launching ORCHID•B, the team joined Fintech Cadence where they have access to a fintech entrepreneurial community to support their growth and now work out of Station FinTech alongside many other startup founders. Building a fintech that supports entrepreneurs, while being surrounded by other entrepreneurs, is an important support system to have in place.

Real-time data access empowers ORCHID•B’s business owners to manage their finances with ease

Railz enables ORCHID•B to provide their small business and startup owners with real-time access to simple accounting data points. Many business owners would agree that they are not interested in the mechanics of accounting, such as updating a chart of accounts, journal entries, or end of year adjustments and prefer to rely on their accountant to use accounting software, such as Xero and QuickBooks, to “balance the books” on a daily basis.

ORCHID•B empowers entrepreneurs to push and pull the key data points to the various accounting tools and service providers. “Push” examples are items such as invoices that will be produced directly on the ORCHID•B platform and pushed into the accounting tools. “Pull” examples are items such as a financial year end date that will trigger different alerts and processes, such as HST filing obligations via the ORCHID•B platform.

With Railz’s ability to provide access to the real-time accounting and financial information that small businesses need to complete their financial reporting, ORCHID•B can build an open platform that entrepreneurs can rely on to be accurate, up-to-date, and supportive of their back office needs.

Orchid B is empowering small business owners to take finances into their own hands with Railz’s real-time data

Business owners can use ORCHID•B’s single log-in point to access all of their accounting data in one place. Railz’s real-time data allows business owners to view their most recent, and historical, financial transactions across invoicing, payroll, taxes, and more.

“The Railz team has been close to us from day one. Railz has no trouble adapting to our size and listening to our feedback. They are working closely with us while we develop our proof of concept and have made onboarding to their platform from both a contractual and technical standpoint seamless.” - Claudio Romano, co-founder and CEO, ORCHID•B

Orchid B is changing how SMBs handle their back office with Railz’s normalized, real-time data

Claudio states, “I walk into the office knowing that we are solving a huge problem for our team - and also 99% of companies globally.”
The ORCHID•B team are practicing entrepreneurs and they know how important inclusivity and accessibility is to the success of their individual businesses - and financial literacy is a huge part of that. Their skills range from banking, anti-money laundering, software development, product management, marketing, accounting, and program management. The team has first-hand experience with the challenges entrepreneurship presents and are all keen to solve the hurdles around administrative and financial tasks for small business owners. Financial technology, such as the platform ORCHID•B is building, empowers small business owners to succeed.