UKStartups

I believe there should be a modern, fully integrated suite for accountants  covering client management, bookkeeping, tax, accounts, CoSec and everything in between – built to work seamlessly in todays world with AI agents and external services.

But today you have two choices:

• Stitch together great point solutions that don’t truly talk to each other.
• Or buy into a suite that does a bit of everything — and locks you into its often mediocre in-house solutions for everything.

Neither is ideal.

We’re building something different.

Today, our Practice Management platform is live in public beta. It’s the foundation – the system of record – for a connected suite of applications we’re going to build over the coming months and years.

You won’t be forced into our bookkeeping.
You won’t be forced into our tax.
You won’t be forced into anything.

We’ll integrate properly with other systems — as we already do. And as we build more products, we want you to choose them because they’re better. Not because you’re trapped inside our ecosystem.

Each product we build, as well as being fully integrated with one central client record and one ledger, will also be the best it can be as a stand-alone solution. Standing on its own merits.

Which brings us back to today.

Even before the rest of the suite exists, our Practice Management platform stands on its own. It’s not a placeholder. It’s not a thin layer waiting for other modules. It’s a fully-fledged system designed to run your firm properly today – CRM, proposals, engagement letters, workflows, billing and more.

If you’d like to help shape what comes next, we’d love you to take a look – visit Sodium Practice Management

I’m amazed by how many developers I know of that still aren’t embracing AI as a core tool in their day-to-day work.

When I dig in to why the reasons usually fall into three categories:

• Fear of the unknown
• Assumptions about poor quality
• Or simply enjoying writing code manually

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When I built Staffology in 2018, I used an approach called API-First. You build the public API first, then your customer-facing UI consumes it just like any external developer would. There’s nothing you can do in the app that you can’t also do through the API. No shortcuts. No hidden endpoints. The API never becomes a second-class citizen.

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Every now and then someone gets in touch and asks if and how they can enter the US as a UK citizen with a criminal record.

For a little context, I was arrested in 1999 with a large quantity of class A drugs in Atlanta, Georgia. I served a little time there then a five-year custodial sentence in the UK.
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A year on from leaving IRIS & Staffology, I’ve recently announced my New Thing on LinkedIn, in collaboration with Chai Deshpande—someone I’ve had the pleasure of working with, on and off, for over a decade.

There are over a million CIS subcontractors in the UK, all paid under a specific set of rules known as the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS).
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In 2018, five years after exiting KashFlow, I found myself advising several SaaS companies. Among their needs was a requirement for a web-based payroll solution with a truly comprehensive API—something that I was surprised to discover didn’t seem to exist.

Driven by a mix of curiosity and boredom one afternoon, I decided to have a go myself. How hard could it be? It didn’t matter if it went nowhere – I was just curious as to what the challenges were.

Eighteen months later, I looked up from my laptop having created and launched Staffology Saas Payroll and grown a customer base spanning from small accounting firms to large tech platforms.
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Hello! It’s been a while – two years in fact – since I last posted here.

There have been a few random things that I wanted to waffle about so will hopefully find time to make some more substantive posts over the coming months.
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I may have mentioned once or twice how important I think it is to keep your investors updated on how your business is progressing. Read more »

I often speak to founders who have a new SME-focussed SaaS product they want to bring to market, or an existing solution they want to grow.

Understandably many of them want to tap in to the installed base of existing and well-established vendors serving the same market and want to know how much commission they should be paying to make it worthwhile. Read more »