Cloud accounting provider FreeAgent has broken its £1m target in its first crowdfunding drive on Seedrs.

The Edinburgh-based company closed the round with £1,214,905 for 3.21% equity thanks to the backing of 700 investors.

Founded in 2007 by Ed Molyneux, Olly Headey and Roan Lavery, FreeAgent provides cloud-based accounting software to help micro-businesses and freelancers manage their accounts, log expenses, send invoices and forecast tax bills.

The 75-strong company says that more than 40,000 customers in 100 countries currently use its system having recently acquired US start-up 60mo as part of its expansion into the US market.

It will use the investment to accelerate product development and push its services to the estimated five million micro-businesses in the UK.

Molyneux commented: “We’re absolutely thrilled to have surpassed our target and to have become one of a select group of UK businesses to have raised more than £1m through crowdfunding.

“We chose this route because we wanted to make it easy for small business owners to invest in our business, and the fact that many of our new shareholders are customers who use and love FreeAgent really reinforces our decision.

“We’re now looking forward to introducing even more people to our software and accelerating our product development so that we can continue to be the best accounting solution for micro-businesses, freelancers and their accountants.”