Unubo, a new British start-up launched a few months ago, is more like a meta: software as a service to help you track the cost of SaaS and other products or services by subscription. are registered at. The web application allows you to add the services you use in different ways, including possibly connecting to your bank account transaction data. From there, he automatically accounts for the relevant costs, presenting the information in a way that is easy to digest.
The idea, says Thomas Leandro, co-founder, was born of his own frustration at having to update the CFO of a start-up he was working on for the cost monthly from all of the 50 or so SaaS applications that the company using. To do the job, he manually entered the data into a spreadsheet after being carefully connected to each service to see the current monthly cost, which often fluctuated depending on the use or the number of seats.
Leandro quickly realized that this was not a good use of his time and that it was a mature task for automation. This was also not a problem of its own, either in its day job or in the same way when it was applied to the growing number of customer subscription services to which he had registered.
"Most businesses and individuals have no idea what they spend on subscriptions to services," he tells me. "In your family life, it's important to know what your monthly expenses are for better financial planning, and businesses depend on cash flow so it's important to be clear on what type of subscription at any time. "
To this end, Unubo allows you to track what you spend on personal and professional subscriptions such as Slack, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and more. The different currencies and billing cycles are simplified into one view, and you can enter items manually, including name, cost, billing cycle, and currency. If you are in the United States or the United Kingdom, you also have the option to log in to your bank account to automatically discover the services you have subscribed to.
"For businesses in particular, it's useful because they often lack this monitoring, with different departments having purchase rights," Leandro says. "For services such as G Suite or Slack, you can optionally authenticate with your login information, to log in via the API, so you can get up-to-date user numbers, or any other item that way, the cost of these particular services is dynamically updated. "
To my surprise, the integration of bank transaction data as a very fast and efficient way to integrate and track the cost of each SaaS service or subscription was something that the first Unubo testers have actually asked.
Another example of how Open Banking – in which UK / European law requires banks to share their data with third-party applications – will create a lot of value outside of FinTech. through features and use cases that might not be immediately obvious.
Meanwhile, Unubo is free for consumers, with pro and pay features planned. "We want as many people as possible to use the app, to help them manage their finances," says Leandro. "We're about to launch a paid plan targeting businesses, and features will include reports (budgeting / forecasting), multiple users, integrations and more."