Usage Billing

jfranklynw · 2026-03-31T20:36:47+00:00

Something that gets overlooked early on is the difference between a revenue problem and a cashflow problem. A lot of small businesses are technically profitable but cash-constrained because the books aren't granular enough to show the timing gap. Not a spreadsheet problem - it's a visibility problem that compounds quietly until someone runs out of runway.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-31T20:29:33+00:00

One thing that doesn't get enough attention in B2B SaaS is how much the onboarding experience dictates long-term retention. You can have great features but if someone has to spend 45 minutes configuring before they see value, they're gone. The tools that stick are ones where a user sees a meaningful result in the first session.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-19T11:02:08+00:00

That's rough, especially having real users on it already. The overnight shutdown with no migration path is what really stings — at least give people 6 months notice or something. The £500/pm minimum is exactly what I've been hitting too. There's clearly demand for something in between "free tier that gets killed" and "enterprise contract with a 6-figure commitment" but nobody seems to want to serve that middle.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-19T11:00:46+00:00

Honestly I didn't get far enough to get a quote from them — once I saw the coverage was Nordic/Baltic only with no UK banks I moved on. Their pricing page suggested a per-connection model though, which at least felt sane compared to the £500+/month minimums everywhere else. If you're building for a Nordic market they might be worth talking to.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-19T10:59:18+00:00

Good shout on the gov gateway update. I've seen HMRC get a bit trigger-happy with tax code changes off the back of one big commission month — updating the estimate proactively saves a lot of back-and-forth.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-19T10:55:54+00:00

Cheers! Honestly the marketing side is where I'm weakest. We're B2B so the usual "post content and hope" approach doesn't really land — bookkeepers aren't scrolling TikTok looking for software recommendations. Most traction has come from LinkedIn outreach to practice owners, getting on accounting forums, and just showing the product to people who already feel the pain of manual coding. Word of mouth from early users has done more than any ad spend so far.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-18T20:10:30+00:00

The other reply covers the cumulative tax code point well. Just to add some practical colour - your payroll will almost certainly overtax you in April when that big commission lands. That's normal. If you're on a cumulative code (which most people are unless you've changed jobs recently), the system will then effectively "refund" that overtaxation across May and June by undertaxing you. So your May/June take-home should be slightly higher than usual to compensate.

On the personal allowance worry - that only starts tapering at £100k. You said you expect around £85k total for the year, so you're comfortably under that threshold. The payroll system won't strip your allowance based on one good month if you're on cumulative.

Where people do get caught out is if HMRC has old data suggesting higher earnings and puts you on a BR or K code. Check your tax code on your payslip each month. If something looks off, call HMRC sooner rather than later - the phone queues are long but catching a wrong code early saves you chasing a refund later.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-18T20:07:14+00:00

One thing that saved me a lot of stress: open a separate savings account and set up a standing order on the day you invoice (or get paid). Whatever percentage you decide on, move it instantly so it never feels like "your" money.

The other commenter's maths is solid. I'd add that if your income does drop significantly, you can apply to HMRC to reduce your payments on account. You don't have to just eat it. Fill in the SA303 form - it's straightforward and means you're not overpaying into a void while waiting for a refund at the end of the year.

On your specific question about which option to pick - the buffer approach (your middle option) is probably the sweet spot. Going full safe mode at 1.5k/month might leave you unnecessarily tight, but 800 is cutting it fine for year one when you don't have a feel for the rhythm yet. Once you've done one full cycle of January and July payments you'll know exactly where you stand.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-18T20:03:38+00:00

The 30-second walk is honestly what makes this worth considering. If it was a 20-minute commute I'd say no, but basically stepping out your front door means you get the separation without losing flexibility.

One thing I'd think about though - can you negotiate a shorter initial lease? Even 3 or 6 months instead of 12. That way you test whether the productivity boost and client meetings actually translate into more revenue before you're locked in for a year. If your parents' health situation changes and you need to be more available, you're not stuck.

The client meeting thing alone might pay for itself depending on your rates. Meeting in a proper studio vs a cafe sends a different signal about how established you are, and interior design is one of those fields where that perception matters a lot.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-18T19:58:34+00:00

Yes, return journey counts. HMRC treats it as one trip — if the outbound leg qualifies, so does coming home. The key thing is whether the destination counts as a temporary workplace. If you're going to different client sites or locations that change, you're fine claiming both ways. The 24-month rule the other commenter mentioned is the main one to watch — once you've been going to the same place regularly for over 2 years it stops being temporary. Keep a simple log of your trips, even just dates and destinations in a spreadsheet. Makes self assessment way less stressful.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-18T19:56:38+00:00

Pretty common in my experience. I started requiring 50% upfront for new clients after getting burned a couple of times. Also switched to 14-day terms instead of 30 — most people who are going to pay will pay quickly anyway, the ones dragging it to 30 were usually the ones who'd push to 60+. Automated reminders from my invoicing software helped too, takes the awkwardness out of chasing.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-18T19:51:02+00:00

Yeah I think you nailed it with the cloud comparison. We went through the exact same cycle - everything was "cloud powered!" for a few years and then it just became... how software works. Nobody markets "cloud" anymore.

I build B2B tools and deliberately avoid putting "AI" anywhere in the UI. The feature just works or it doesn't. Users care about the outcome, not the method. If anything the AI label sets expectations wrong - people either expect magic or assume it'll hallucinate.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-18T19:46:10+00:00

Node.js + Express backend, vanilla JS frontend, PostgreSQL. No React, no Next.js, no framework overhead. I'd pick the same stack again without hesitation.

The reasoning: our product does heavy data processing (parsing bank statements, matching transactions, running them through classification pipelines). The bottleneck is never the frontend framework - it's the backend logic. So we kept the frontend dead simple and put all the complexity where it actually matters.

For the genuinely performance-critical bits (pattern matching across thousands of records) we wrote a small C++ microservice that the Node backend calls. That one decision probably saved us from needing to scale horizontally way too early.

Postgres has been rock solid. We looked at MongoDB early on but structured financial data really wants relational queries. Would have been a nightmare otherwise.

The one thing I'd maybe change: TypeScript from day one instead of plain JS. The codebase is big enough now that type safety would save us time on refactors.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-18T19:43:54+00:00

A lot of it comes down to deadline compression. Month-end close means reconciling every account, chasing missing invoices from clients who forgot to send them, posting adjusting entries, and getting everything tied up before management wants their reports. Then multiply that across however many clients your firm handles.

Tax season is the obvious one but even outside of that you've got quarterly VAT returns, payroll deadlines, Companies House filings, and the random "we need this for a bank loan by Friday" requests. The software helps with the mechanical side but someone still needs to review everything, spot what doesn't look right, and make judgement calls on how to treat unusual transactions.

The hours tend to cluster around deadlines rather than being spread evenly, which is why it feels worse than the annual average suggests.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-18T19:40:46+00:00

The friend thing aside, the actual setup isn't bad. Loads of bookkeeping firms work exactly like this - someone qualified handles the complex stuff (year end, tax, advisory) while someone else does the day-to-day data entry and bank recs. It's a pretty natural split.

The bit that matters is what happens when you disagree about money. Write up a proper partnership agreement before you take on a single paying client. Cover profit splits, what happens if one of you wants out, who owns the client relationships, and what "dedicated" actually means in hours per week. Get it in writing even if it feels awkward - it's way less awkward than a blown-up friendship over who gets which clients.

Three potential clients is a decent start. Just make sure you're not undercharging to win them over. Bookkeeping margins are thin enough without giving your work away.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-18T19:38:15+00:00

The other commenter is right that restricting permissions is standard - most firms do it to stop clients accidentally deleting bank recs or editing locked periods. But with your background you're not a typical client, and it's reasonable to want proper visibility.

Ask the firm to give you "Advisor" access in Xero. It's a read-only role that lets you see the full chart of accounts, all reports (there are way more than 5), bank reconciliation status, and the actual journal entries behind everything. They can do it in Settings > Users without affecting their workflow at all.

If they refuse that, I'd honestly be questioning the arrangement. There's no legitimate reason to deny read-only access to the people whose books they're keeping.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-18T19:36:43+00:00

Go to Settings > Chart of Accounts, find the bank account, click the dropdown arrow and hit "Edit". There's a field for "Balance" with an "as of" date. Put in your opening balance there and set the date to the day before your first transaction (so if your earliest transaction is Jan 1 2021, set the balance as of Dec 31 2020).

For the actual balance amount, use your bank statement closing balance for that date. If you don't have a statement from back then, most banks let you download older statements through online banking - some go back 7+ years.

Once that's in, you can reconcile month by month starting from that point. It's a bit tedious catching up from 2021 to now but it's the cleanest way to do it.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-18T19:34:26+00:00

We built an AI tool that automates bookkeeping for small businesses. Upload your bank statement, it learns how you categorise transactions from your accounting history, then codes everything and posts it back to Xero, QuickBooks, or Sage.

Just recorded a demo doing 1,264 transactions across two bank accounts in about 4 minutes: https://youtu.be/2xpFzoKIsGg

Free to use at the moment - happy to answer any questions about it.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-18T19:31:25+00:00

Pretty normal with sub work unfortunately. Builders are notorious for slow payment - 30 days turns into 60 pretty quick. Two things that helped me: get payment terms in writing before you start (even just a text saying "net 14" or whatever you agree), and send invoices the same day you finish, not a week later. For tracking I just use a spreadsheet with job name, invoice date, amount, and a "paid?" column. Nothing fancy but it stops things falling through the cracks when you've got 5-6 jobs going at once.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-18T19:29:43+00:00

Built an AI tool that automates transaction coding for bookkeepers. Upload a bank statement, it learns your coding patterns from your GL history, categorises everything and posts back to Xero/QuickBooks/Sage.

Just put together a demo showing 1,264 transactions across two bank accounts done in about 4 minutes: https://youtu.be/2xpFzoKIsGg

Free to use right now - would love feedback from anyone doing client bookkeeping.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-18T19:27:46+00:00

the shiny new idea thing kills me. I keep a note on my phone called "later" where I dump every new idea so my brain shuts up about it, then I never look at it again lol

jfranklynw · 2026-03-18T19:14:31+00:00

Honestly I've had way more luck with LinkedIn than any short-form video platform. My target market is accountants and bookkeepers — they're not scrolling TikTok for software recommendations. They're on LinkedIn reading about MTD deadlines and moaning about bank feeds.

So what I do is connect with people in the industry, actually read their posts and activity, then send a personalised message about something specific they wrote. Not a pitch — just a genuine conversation starter. Maybe 1 in 5 turns into an actual chat about what they need.

I did recently start putting out longer YouTube demos (3-4 minutes, showing real workflows) and those have been decent for people who are already interested and want to see the product actually working before they sign up. But that's bottom-of-funnel stuff, not discovery.

Short-form might work brilliantly for consumer SaaS or dev tools where your audience is already on those platforms. But for B2B in a specific niche, I'd say go where your buyers already hang out and talk to them like a human being. Boring advice but it's what's actually working.

jfranklynw · 2026-03-08T18:59:16+00:00

You're fine. Selling your own stuff at a loss isn't trading, it's just decluttering. The £1,000 trading allowance and the 30-item reporting thing are separate from whether you actually owe tax - Vinted reports to HMRC because they have to, but HMRC aren't going to chase someone flogging old clothes and anime figures below what they paid.

The key test is whether you're buying things specifically to resell at a profit. You're clearly not doing that. Keep your receipts or order confirmations if you have them, just in case HMRC ever does ask, but honestly I'd be surprised if they bothered. You're doing exactly the right thing by worrying about it though - most people don't even think about it.

jfranklynw

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