SurePrep, which makes tax automation software for the professional tax return preparation market, has received a “significant minority investment” from Bregal Sagemount, a growth-focused private capital firm. Financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.
Tax automation software is becoming an increasingly attractive investment, with the current administration’s overhaul of tax law, as well as the recent Supreme Court decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, allowing states to collect taxes on online goods sold and delivered in their jurisdictions.
SurePrep’s solutions automate tax preparation workflow tasks, and the software works with clients of all sizes. SurePrep reports it will use its first institutional investment to further enhance its customer service and product offerings, including 1040Scan and TaxCaddy.
1040Scan uses optical character recognition to automatically bookmark, organize and export data from documents. SurePrep also offers an optional service to verify the accuracy of OCRed source document data before it is exported to the accountant’s tax software of choice. The auto-verification tech in 1040SCAN automatically works with data from PDF documents.
TaxCaddy is SurePrep’s mobile document management solution. The solution uses pro forma data in an accountant’s existing tax software (including CCH Axcess Tax, CCH ProSystem fx Tax, GoSystem Tax RS, Lacerte and UltraTax) to create a questionnaire and document request list for the client. Clients can use the TaxCaddy app for iPhone and Android to complete the questionnaire.
"We are very excited to bring in the Sagemount team as a strategic and financial partner," said David Wyle, founder and CEO of SurePrep, in a statement. “We have a tremendously exciting future ahead of us as we strengthen our technology and processes, grow our client base, and expand into new product categories. The investment will allow us to further accelerate our development roadmap to better serve our clients of all sizes.”
“SurePrep has a large white space opportunity ahead of it,” added Pavan Tripathi, a principal at Bregal Sagemount. “Its unique solutions drive meaningful value for accounting and wealth management firms, and we look forward to working with the SurePrep team on product and market growth initiatives.”
Vista Point Advisors served as the financial advisor to SurePrep, while Inflection Point Law provided legal counsel to the company. Goodwin Procter provided legal counsel to Bregal Sagemount.
