8. If I Were You: The Next 90 Days (30 Sept – 29 Dec 2026)
The single most important thing
Run one real MTD quarter by hand for 3–5 paying practices before you build anything.
- Segment: UK sole practitioners, small firms and bookkeepers with 20–300 MTD IT clients and no suite that already chases.
- Job: "Get my MTD clients' records in before 7 November without me chasing them."
- Why now: the quarter to 5 October closes this week. The chase runs 6 Oct – 7 Nov 2026. That is the concierge window. The next one runs 6 Jan – 7 Feb 2027, and v1 must be ready for it.
- How: a Tally form per client type, a WhatsApp Business account, SMS through Twilio, email, and a Google Sheet as the deadline board. Charge £99 per practice for the quarter. Automate only what you've done by hand at least 20 times.
Week by week
| Weeks | Dates | Goal | Exit criteria |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1–2 | 30 Sept – 13 Oct | Discovery and design partner. 15 calls with UK practices about the 7 Aug quarter: how many MTD clients, how many chases, how many late, what tool, what they'd pay. Sign one practising accountant or bookkeeper as a paid design partner. Open a Content Snare trial and check how recurring requests count against the "active request" limits. Run the name check. | You can write the top 3 pains in practices' own words, with hours and numbers attached. Design partner signed. 3–5 practices agree to a £99 concierge quarter. |
| 3–6 | 14 Oct – 10 Nov | Concierge quarter. Import each practice's MTD client list. Send chases on a fixed schedule (day 1, day 7, day 14, day 21) by the client's preferred channel. Track every reply on the board. Forward files to the practice's folder. Log what clients get wrong. | 3+ practices paid (day 30, 30 Oct). Every client of every concierge practice chased at least once. Records-in rate measured at deadline minus 14 days. |
| 7–8 | 11 – 24 Nov | Measure and decide. Compare each practice's on-time rate with its own Aug quarter. Ask them to re-book the Feb quarter at the v1 price. Write the first "what we saw" post for the AccountingWEB community (anonymised). | Day-60 kill test (29 Nov): ≥2 of 3 re-book, and on-time rate up ≥15 points. If practices say "Content Snare or our suite already does this", stop. |
| 7–12 | 11 Nov – 22 Dec | Build the thin v1 (web only): CSV client import, deadline board, chase schedule (WhatsApp Cloud API, SMS, email), login-free upload page with "nothing new", chase log and late list, Google Drive and OneDrive forwarding, UK hosting, MFA and audit log. Start Cyber Essentials, the DPA template and ICO registration. | Concierge practices move onto v1 for the Feb quarter with no manual steps from you. |
| 11–12 | 9 – 22 Dec | Pre-sell the February quarter. Publish the free MTD chase kit (letter pack, WhatsApp and SMS templates, late-records fee policy). Offer founding-practice annual pricing locked for 24 months. | 8 practices pre-paid (~15 hrs/week track) or 15 (full-time). Cyber Essentials done. |
| 13 | 23 – 29 Dec | Day-90 decision. Don't sell in the holiday or January weeks. Prepare onboarding for the 6 Jan chase start. | Go into January with the Feb quarter scheduled for every paying practice. |
Kill criteria (write these down now)
- At day 30: fewer than 3 practices will pay £99 for the concierge quarter → change segment once (Xero practices ↔ bookkeepers). Missing twice means stop.
- At day 60: fewer than 2 of 3 re-book, or the main objection is "our suite or Content Snare already does this" → stop. Don't respond by adding features.
- At day 90: fewer than 5 practices pre-paid for the February quarter → cut to one client type (landlords or sole traders) and one channel, and try once more for the Feb–Apr window.
The one thing to stop doing
Stop planning for lawyers, mortgage brokers and immigration consultants.
Each has a bundled incumbent (Docketwise for immigration, Acre for UK brokers, FileInvite for lending), a different vocabulary and different compliance rules. A landing page that says "for accountants, lawyers and brokers" tells a UK practice owner that you don't understand their February. Pick the UK MTD quarter, or stop.
A close second: stop thinking of it as a portal. The client never wants to log in. They want a link on their phone that takes two minutes.
What stays on the long-term roadmap (only after proof)
- Xero Practice Manager client import and the Xero App Store listing (month 4–5).
- "Chase only what's missing", from the client's Xero or QuickBooks books (month 6).
- Self Assessment year-end requests for non-MTD clients (month 9).
- Asking letting agents directly for rental statements, with consent (month 12+).
- Then, only above $10k MRR: a white-label or API version for UK practice-software vendors that lack a chaser. That's the only route to a larger outcome, and it doubles as an exit path.