10042593A cloud-based app that provides near real-time financial data from accounting platforms to reduce costs and accelerate the process of lending to SMEsClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKLedgerscope is a UK Open Accounting SME with a core project team of Adrian Pearson (CEO/serial entrepreneur), Matthew Steeples (CTO), Rob Furness (Business Development Director) and Steve Aze (Senior developer). There are 5.6M SMEs in the UK, employing 16M people and providing an engine of growth for the economy. Each year, £17.5B of funding is provided to UK SMEs through loans of less than £100K; from 1.13M applications, 700K loans are issued, and the average value is £25K (Bank of England/Statista,2020). Lending to UK SMEs is currently an expensive and slow process. Information is transferred to lenders either on paper, through the post, or in Excel and PDF files by email. The information is often incomplete, of poor quality or late. This is an unsatisfactory situation for both lenders and small business owners and is contributing to the UK's £22B SME funding gap. Many SME owners (an estimated 70%) would rather not pursue funding options and leave their companies to grow more slowly. Ledgerscope is developing a solution to this problem through a cloud-based app that will interface with all SME accounting platforms currently in popular use. It will automatically collect the required data and convert it into standardised financial reports, which will be provided to lenders in near real-time. This will shorten to a matter of hours a process that typically takes 14 days to complete. The app will be offered on a pay-as-you-go basis that will not require expensive or restrictive ongoing contracts, thereby saving both time and costs for businesses.