Tech news: Emburse launches travel and expense analytics solution

May 23, 2025 9:00 AM

Emburse launches solution for travel and expense analytics; Rightworks rolls out three new cloud solutions; AI tax prep solution "Filed" publicly debuts; and other accounting tech news.

Emburse launches solutions for travel and expense analytics

Travel and expense management solutions provider Emburse announced the release of its Emburse Travel and Expense Analytics solution. Teams can view total spend, including direct bookings and corporate-managed travel; identify overspending vs. negotiated rates, and quantify recoverable costs. Users can also pinpoint top spenders by individual or department; enable personalized coaching or targeted policy adjustments; track hotel bookings by vendor, location and channel; uncover rate discrepancies and identify whether leakage stems from user behavior or program gaps. The system lets users compare rates across cities, hotel brands and markets; and gain insights to support strategic negotiations and vendor decisions. The connected dashboards provide a view across travel and expense data, allowing users to navigate between high-level metrics and detailed insights. With built-in drill-down capabilities, users can explore underlying data points, uncover root causes, and gain a deeper understanding of spending patterns.

Rightworks rolls out Cloud Premier, Cloud Protect and Cloud Hosting solutions

Accounting-focused cloud services provider Rightworks released its Cloud Premier, Cloud Protect and Cloud Hosting products. Rightworks Cloud Premier centralizes cloud and desktop app access, data and security in one space. It offers secure remote onboarding and offboarding, two-year data backups, and a built-in AI tool for enhanced research, communication and analytics. Features include ongoing threat monitoring and remediation, antivirus, endpoint detection response, a cloud-managed firewall, device backup, whole-disk encryption and security awareness training. Rightworks Cloud Protect provides cloud-based accounting and tax firms with end-to-end security, enhanced data protection, and centralized control, with access to cloud apps through single sign-on in a remote work environment. Rightworks Cloud Hosting enables firms, businesses, bookkeepers, and individual practitioners to bring their desktop apps to the cloud.

AI tax prep solution "Filed" publicly debuts

Filed founders Atul Ramachadran and Leroy Kerry

Filed, a new AI-driven tax prep solution, publicly launched this week with $17.2 million in funding. Filed automates tax processing, from structuring diverse client documents to validating returns and proactively flagging anomalies based on firm-defined rules. It uses specialized AI that combines foundation models trained on tax returns with a proprietary tax workflow orchestration layer that operates natively on top of existing software, including CCH Axcess, UltraTax, Lacerte and Drake. It features customizable "firm profiles" that mirror existing workflows down to naming conventions, review processes and client communication preferences, as well as workflows that escalate edge cases and ambiguous tax scenarios for human review to enable auditability, traceability and compliance with IRS standards, while supporting both multistate and federal returns. The $17.2 million pre-seed and seed rounds of funding were backed by Northzone, Neo, Raine, Day One Ventures, J Ventures and Greens Ventures, alongside angel investors.

Pramata rolls out Tariff Risk Analyzer

Donald Trump

Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg

Contract solutions provider Pramata released its Tariff Risk Analyzer software. For any company that sells to or buys from international suppliers, the Tariff Risk Analyzer, leveraging AI, uses a company's contract data to calculate the impact of newly established tariff structures on supply chain business relationships and then provides recommended next steps to address tariff-related disruptions. The solution's Tariff Risk Dashboard offers insights on high versus low-risk vendors, notice periods, missing protections and more. Users can view contract renewal timelines and create charts highlighting risk distribution across vendor contracts. It also provides insights into when the organization may have limited negotiation leverage due to proposed tariff-related price changes.

Workday releases bevy of new AI agents

Business solutions provider Workday announced a new wave of Illuminate Agents designed to speed up the hiring processes, improve frontline worker experiences, streamline complex financial processes, and empower employees to find information more easily. They include the:

Contingent Sourcing Agent: Accelerates temporary hiring by identifying talent open to contingent roles;
Contract Intelligence Agent: Enhances legal and business decision-making by reviewing contracts to identify risks, track key dates and fees, and provide ongoing analysis;
Contract Negotiation Agent: Expedites negotiations by drafting applicable contract language, detecting risks and recommending revisions;
Document Driven Accounting Agent: Extracts data from documents to automate billing, invoicing and accounting entries;
Frontline Agent: Enables text-based absence reporting, identifying qualified replacements, and helping with compliance and accurate shift pay;
Self-Service Agent: Powers employee and manager self-service by providing answers to inquiries, assisting with complex tasks, and executing everyday actions on employees' behalf;
Supplier Contracts Agent: Proactively reviews supplier contracts to identify obligations and opportunities, aligning procurement processes with contract terms.

Contract Intelligence Agent and Contract Negotiation Agent are now generally available. Self-Service Agent will be generally available by the end of 2025. Contingent Sourcing Agent, Document Driven Accounting Agent, Frontline Agent and Supplier Contracts Agent will be available to early adopters by the end of 2025, with general availability planned for early 2026.

Zuora rolls out collections product

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Monetization platform Zuora announced Zuora Collections, which embeds collections into the full customer lifecycle, allowing users to combine billing, revenue and collections data while improving retention, cash forecasting and customer account health. Users can segment and prioritize accounts with health scores built on historical payment behavior, engagement patterns and risk indicators; predict expected cash inflows using AI trained on historical collections data, delivering greater confidence in month-end outcomes and forward-looking cash flow; automate outreach based on customer behavior, account risk and billing history to expedite payments; gain an overview of overdue accounts, payment status and risk signals in a single, centralized dashboard; coordinate collections tasks across teams and prompt sales teams to follow up; and assign and track collections actions within a structured workflow.

Iris invests in Instead, will collab on software

Practice management solutions provider Iris Software announced a minority investment in Instead, an AI-powered tax platform. While Iris is not disclosing the financial details, Jim Dunham, president and general manager of Iris Americas, said this is a significant minority investment and part of Iris's ongoing strategy to back innovative and disruptive technology across the markets it serves. The investment will support Instead's ability to accelerate product development and scale its sales and marketing efforts. Iris and Instead will also collaborate closely to share insights, foster innovation and explore how AI-driven solutions can solve customer challenges. While there is no formal integration between the two sets of solutions so far, the companies will be working closely together to align on shared opportunities and accelerate the delivery of solutions for U.S. accounting firms.

2025 VAR 100 deadline extended to May 30

The submission deadline for Accounting Today's 2025 VAR 100 has been extended from May 23 to May 30, so if you are a value-added reseller in the accounting space, you have one more week to send in your survey for consideration in this year's list. There is no cost whatsoever to take part. If your accounting firm also has a technology practice that sells software solutions, please only include your tech practice for the purposes of this survey.

Those interested in taking part should fill out this form by our deadline of the end of the day on May 30, 2025. Any questions should be sent to me, Chris.Gaetano@arizent.com before the end of the day on May 30.

For examples of what this will look like in the end, please see the 2024 VAR 100, the 2023 VAR 100 and the 2022 VAR 100.

Partnerships and integrations

Corporate accounting solutions provider Insightsoftware announced its Spreadsheet Server software now integrates with the Infor M3 Cloud ERP platform, which enables finance teams in manufacturing and distribution to build and refresh reports directly in Excel. … End-to-end payroll and financial management company Strada announced an agreement with employee benefits platform Nayya to deliver an integrated benefits administration solution built on the Workday platform. … Finance platform Brex and procurement platform Zip announced Brex for Zip, which integrates Brex's global card capabilities directly into Zip's procurement workflows. This enables enterprises to accelerate purchasing, prevent unauthorized spend and gain visibility across their procurement and spend lifecycle. … Digital marketing solutions provider Constant Contact announced integration with small business accounting platform Xero, allowing businesses to connect their marketing platform and financial management systems so they can perform tasks like syncing their Xero contacts into email campaigns.

Awards and honors

Accounting talent solutions provider CPAClub announced recent accolades honoring three of its leaders for their contributions to the accounting profession: Brian Yujuico, vice president at CPAClub, has once again been named a 20 Under 40 Influencer by CPA Practice Advisor, which highlights his continued role in shaping the future of the profession through his work improving audit quality, building scalable quality management systems, and mentoring the next generation of accountants, advisors, and auditors. Ellen Sulistio, vice president, and Stephanie Hidalgo, accounting and advisory chief, have also been honored as nominees for the CalCPA Women to Watch Awards, a statewide recognition of leadership, growth and professional excellence. Sulistio was also nominated in the Experienced Leader category, while Hidalgo was nominated in the Emerging Leader category, recognizing rising stars with two to eight years of experience who are making meaningful contributions to the profession. … Vertex, a provider of tax technology solutions, has been recognized by SAP as a finalist for a 2025 SAP Pinnacle Award in the SAP Store category. The annual SAP Pinnacle Awards acknowledge the contributions of leading SAP partners that have excelled in developing and growing their partnership with SAP and helping customers meet their goals. Finalists and winners in 24 categories were chosen based on recommendations from SAP, customer feedback and performance indicators… BillingPlatform, an enterprise revenue lifecycle management platform, announced that MGI Research, an independent industry research and advisory firm, recognized BillingPlatform with the highest overall rating (63) of any vendor in its MGI 360 Ratings report for Agile Billing. The report is designed to help enterprises make informed purchasing decisions recognizing that "agile billing solutions enable companies to price creatively, package flexibly and respond swiftly to market shifts — turning a traditionally rigid process into a competitive advantage."

Other news

Revenue and billing automation platform Ignition announced that Tammy Hahn has joined the Ignition executive team as senior vice president of product. Hahn is responsible for Ignition's global product roadmap and delivery, and will lead and scale Ignition's product organization, including product management and design. Based in San Diego, California, Hahn also extends Ignition's U.S.-based executive team. … Financial operations platform Celery raised $6.25 million in seed funding. The round was led by Team8 Capital, with participation from Verissimo Ventures, Central Street Partners, 97212 Ventures and additional strategic angel investors. This brings the company's total funding to $9 million. Designed for health care and other labor-intensive industries, Celery is developing intelligent audit agents that detect fraud, compliance risks and financial inefficiencies.