7. What's Missing: The Gap Between Built and Paid, Renewed, Referred

Assumption: nothing is built yet. So these are gaps between the idea and a business.

7.1 Gaps to pay

Gap	Why it blocks payment	Fix
No defined buyer	"Accountants, lawyers, brokers and immigration consultants" can't be priced, messaged or sold to	UK practices and bookkeepers with 20–300 MTD IT clients and no suite that already chases.
No reason to switch from what they have	Content Snare, Karbon, TaxDome, BrightManager and Glasscubes exist	Lead with three things they don't do: per-MTD-client pricing, a login-free phone chase with "nothing new", and (from month 6) chasing only clients whose books are behind.
No pricing model	Undefined	Starter £39/mo (50 MTD clients, 1 user, 150 SMS or WhatsApp a quarter). Practice £89/mo (200 clients, 3 users, 600). Firm £179/mo (500 clients, 10 users, 1,500). Annual = 2 months free. Concierge quarter £99. Test in calls; these are starting points.
No quantified value promise	"Chase documents automatically" doesn't justify a card on file	"80% of your MTD clients' records in 14 days before the deadline, or your quarter is free." Measure it per practice from the first quarter.
No trust signals	Practices hand over their clients' bank statements	UK hosting, Cyber Essentials, a DPA, ICO registration, a one-page security summary, and files forwarded and deleted.
Wrong buying time	Practices won't evaluate tools in January or in deadline fortnights	Launch and sell in Oct–Nov, Feb–Apr and Jun–Jul only.

Gap	Fix
A bad quarter (clients still late) triggers cancellation after the deadline	Weekly board email in the 4 weeks before each deadline. A "worst 10 clients" list with a suggested escalation. A post-deadline report that shows improvement against last quarter.
Low switching cost	Accumulated chase history, client contact preferences, per-client templates, and the late-records evidence the practice bills against. Leaving mid-year means rebuilding the schedule before the next deadline.
Nothing to do between deadlines	Self Assessment year-end requests (Oct–Dec) and bookkeeping clients' monthly requests fill the gaps.
Price shock as MTD client counts grow	Tell practices upfront how the bands work. Offer founding practices a locked price for 24 months.
A suite adds the feature	Integrate with the suites where possible (XPM first). Win on the client's phone experience, which suites treat as secondary.

Gap	Fix
Nothing visibly shareable	The client page carries a subtle "sent with DocChase" footer. The clients of one practice are often clients of none, but their other advisers (mortgage brokers, letting agents) see it. Weak, but free.
No free hook	Free MTD kits: client letter pack, WhatsApp and SMS chase templates, a late-records fee policy, quarterly checklists by client type. Email-gated.
No community presence	AccountingWEB community posts before each deadline, a short "what we saw this quarter" data post after each one (anonymised on-time rates), and AAT branch talks.
No referral economics	One free month per referred paying practice. Bookkeepers who bring their own accountant partners get a discount.

Missing entirely from the idea.
Channels that fit: Xero App Store UK (Content Snare's 73 reviews show it works), AccountingWEB community and Any Answers, AAT branches and licensed-member groups, accounting podcasts (for example No Accounting for Taste), LinkedIn, and one partnership with a small UK practice-software vendor without its own chaser.
Channels that burn cash: Google Ads on "client portal for accountants" (bid up by suites), and exhibition stands at Xerocon London or Accountex before $5k MRR.

Current: "client document and information collection portal". Generic, and already owned by Content Snare.
Better: "Get your MTD clients' records in before every quarterly deadline, without chasing them yourself."
One sentence, one buyer, one outcome, four times a year.

Product-led with founder calls: free kit, then a 14-day trial timed to a quarter, then a 20-minute setup call for every practice in year 1.
No outbound cold email at scale. UK accountants get a lot of vendor email, and PECR rules apply to unsolicited marketing to sole traders (unverified in this run; check before any campaign).

Area	Requirement
UK GDPR and DPA 2018	The practice is the controller, and DocChase is the processor. Sign a DPA with every practice. Minimise what you keep. Delete after 30 days by default.
ICO registration	Register as a data processor with the ICO (fee tier unverified).
Messaging	WhatsApp Business Platform: utility templates only for chases, opt-in recorded, per-message charges. SMS: sender ID registration, and opt-out text on every message.
Security	Cyber Essentials by day 90. ISO 27001 later, if deals demand it.
Advice	DocChase never gives tax advice to clients and never files with HMRC. Say so on the client page.
AML	Out of scope. State that DocChase is not an ID or AML check.

Not provided. You need, at minimum: one full-stack developer comfortable with messaging APIs and OAuth (Xero, Google, Microsoft), and one practising UK accountant or bookkeeper as design partner. Without the second person, the day-30 checkpoint will fail.

Activation: MTD client list imported and the first chase sent within 7 days.
Per quarter, per practice: % of clients in by deadline minus 14 days, chases per client, "nothing new" share, and median client response time.
Business: trial-to-paid, M3 retention, logo churn in the 2 weeks after each deadline, band upgrades, and lost-deal reasons by named competitor.