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Hello, brilliant person who didn't start a business to do bookkeeping.

Books that add up. Worries that don't.

Sumsational is UK bookkeeping and accounts for small businesses and the accountants who look after them. Your bank lines arrive on their own, Sprocket says where each one goes (and why), and you nod. Invoices, receipts, payroll, reports and the year end all live in one tidy, double-checked set of books.

Less admin. Less dread. More “oh, is that it?”

Ask for an invite See what's inside
  • Bank lines sort themselves, with your nod
  • Made for UK tax and HMRC
  • Your accountant gets a seat
  • Built phone first
Bank · Starling business · demo

All sorted. Five lines, zero spreadsheets. Kite & Co's invoice is marked paid.

  • STRIPE PAYMENTS UK+£1,240.00
    MatchPays invoice #1042, Kite & Co
  • ADOBE CREATIVE CLD−£56.98
    Your ruleSoftware subscriptions
  • TFR TO WISE GBP−£500.00
    TransferTransfer to Wise
  • HMRC PAYE−£412.18
    MatchOctober's PAYE bill
  • TESCO STORES 2231−£23.40
    HunchProbably office supplies
Nodded through ✓Undo

A demo with made-up lines. In the app, nothing posts until you say so.

Let's be honest about the books.

Bookkeeping isn't hard. It's heavy.

Nobody lies awake over double entry. It's the weight of it all: the shoebox of fading receipts, the statement you meant to download in March, the mystery £47.99, the invoice you forgot to chase, payroll lurking behind payday, and the email from your accountant asking for “just a few bits” by Friday.

Each one's small. Together they're a fog that follows you round. We call it the dread ledger, and it never balances. Sumsational is here to close it.

The dread ledger, itemised

  • Typing up statements2 hrs/mo
  • Hunting for receipts1 hr/mo
  • Decoding that £47.9930 min/mo
  • Chasing late payers1.5 hrs/mo
  • Last-minute payroll1 hr/mo
  • Year-end panic3 hrs/mo
Hours lost a month9 hrs
With Sumsational: a few nods over a cuppa.

Illustrative, not a survey. Your shoebox may be bigger.

How it works

Plug in. Nod. Breathe out.

  1. 1

    Plug in

    Connect your bank in a couple of minutes, read-only. Six banks and payment apps plug straight in; any other bank comes in by statement upload.

  2. 2

    Nod

    Sprocket suggests where every line goes: paying an invoice or bill, a transfer between your accounts, one of your rules, or what that payee usually is. You nod, fix or skip.

  3. 3

    Breathe out

    Reports, the cash forecast and the year end read straight from the books, so they're always current. Ask “can I afford it?” and get a straight answer.

Playful on the outside. Pernickety on the inside.

A friendly face on a forensic ledger.

Money is rarely a laughing matter, so the jokes stop at the buttons. Underneath, Sumsational is proper double-entry bookkeeping, built the way a fussy accountant would insist on, with the rules enforced by the database itself rather than by good intentions.

  • Every posting balances to the penny, in every currency
  • Posted journals are never edited or deleted, only reversed, so the trail stays whole
  • Lock a period and nothing can post into it. Not even by accident
  • A full audit trail: who changed what, when, and from where
  • Reports read live from the ledger, never from a stored total
  • Sprocket suggests. A person always confirms

What's inside

Everything the books need, in one set of books.

No bolt-ons, no export-import shuffle. A receipt becomes a bill, the bill meets its bank line, the bank line feeds the forecast, and the year end reads the lot.

Your bank, on tap

Bank lines that turn up on their own.

Starling, Wise, Stripe, PayPal, Monzo and Revolut Business plug straight in, read-only, and top themselves up through the day. Bank somewhere else? Drop in a CSV or OFX statement and Sumsational spots the duplicates for you.

  • Read-only: we can look, never move a penny
  • Feed keys sealed with AES-256 and tied to your business
  • Stripe payouts split into sales and fees, properly
  • A reconciliation check that tells you when it all ties up

Shoebox of receipts? Hand it over.

Snap the receipt. Skip the typing.

Throw receipts in the Shoebox the moment you get them. Sprocket reads each one and drafts the bill, or the out-of-pocket claim if you paid with your own card. You check it, tap yes, and it's in the books. When the payment shows up at the bank, it matches itself.

  • Supplier bills and out-of-pocket claims in one place
  • Claims you're owed run through the directors' loan account
  • Nothing posts until a person says it looks right
  • Undo reverses the posting rather than rubbing it out

Get paid, not ghosted

Invoices that get paid, not parked.

Send a tidy invoice with a link your customer can open on their phone. See when they've looked at it, see who's late, and when the money lands Sprocket matches it and marks it paid. Credit notes, part payments and foreign currency are all handled properly.

  • Numbers from a locked counter: never skipped, never reused
  • VAT shown only if you're VAT registered
  • E-invoices (UBL 2.1, Peppol BIS 3.0) built in, ready for when the rules change
  • Use OrchestratOS too? Link them and both share one numbering

Payday, minus the panic

Payroll for small UK companies. Yes, even directors.

PAYE, National Insurance and student loans worked out with this tax year's HMRC figures, including the directors' annual earnings period that trips up so many tools. Approve a pay run and the payslips, journal and HMRC submissions are built for you.

  • Payslips and P60s, ready to send
  • FPS built for on or before payday, EPS before the 19th
  • Paying yourself irregularly? Skip a month and the nil EPS is built for you
  • Sprocket nudges you when payday's coming

Know where you stand

Where you stand today. Where you're heading next.

Profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow and who owes whom, always up to date because they read straight from the books. Then the bit everyone actually wants: a 13-week cash forecast, and a plain answer to “Can I afford it?”

  • Aged debtors and creditors, so you know who to chase first
  • A dashboard that says what changed, in plain English
  • Tap any figure to see the journals behind it
  • Ask about a purchase before you make it, not after

Year end, minus the year-end dread

A year end that feels like ticking a list. Because it is.

A checklist walks you through the year end. Corporation tax is worked out with that year's rates, your accountant signs it off, you approve it, and the year locks itself so nothing can wander in afterwards. Micro-entity accounts, the CT600 with iXBRL and the Companies House filing are drawn up from the same books.

  • Company details filled in from the Companies House register
  • Accountant signs off, director approves: in that order
  • Approving posts the tax and freezes the year
  • Built for UK limited companies

For accountants and bookkeepers

Bring your clients. Keep your sanity.

One practice account, every client's books in its own sealed compartment. Invite your clients in, give everyone the role that fits, and do the review and sign-off steps where the work already is, instead of over email.

Zero cross-client exposure is the rule we built on. The database checks who's asking on every single row, so a slip in the code hands back nothing at all, never somebody else's books.

OwnerAdminAccountantBookkeeperViewer (read only)

Built phone first

Do the books in the queue for a flat white.

Sort a week of bank lines with your thumb while the kettle boils. Snap a receipt before it fades. Approve payroll from the sofa. Every screen is designed for a phone first, not squeezed down from a desktop.

No smoke, no mirrors

What's live, and what's on the workbench.

Everything above works today, in the beta. A few things are built and waiting on someone else's paperwork, and a few are next on the bench. We'd rather tell you than pretend.

Built, waiting on the paperwork

Sending payroll to HMRC

Waiting

FPS and EPS are built, checked and signed. Sending them straight from Sumsational switches on once HMRC issue our filing credentials.

Filing the year end

Waiting

The CT600, iXBRL accounts and Companies House message are drawn up for you. Filing them from here waits on HMRC and Companies House credentials.

Open Banking for every UK bank

Waiting

Every other UK bank through an Open Banking provider is built and tested, and switches on once enough of you need it. Until then: six direct feeds, or a statement upload.

Next on the bench

Making Tax Digital for VAT

Soon

VAT returns straight to HMRC for VAT-registered businesses, worked out from the books you already keep.

The switch kit

Soon

Move your history over from QuickBooks (then the others) without retyping a single line.

MTD for Income Tax

Soon

Quarterly updates for sole traders and landlords, as HMRC's rules arrive.

Plays nicely with OrchestratOS. Doesn't need it.

Sumsational is the finance half of a two-product family. Run your marketing on OrchestratOS? Connect the two if you like. Don't? Sumsational has its own sign-up and stands perfectly well on its own.

A note from the workshop

I'm a copywriter, not an accountant. For years my books lived in a big-name accounting app and a folder called “receipts (sort out)”. The software was clever. It just never felt like it was on my side. Every month-end felt like an exam I hadn't revised for.

So we built the bookkeeping I always wanted: one that does the heavy lifting, explains itself in plain English, tells you what it's not sure about, and never, ever fudges a number. My own company's books are the first ones moving in.

The sums still matter. The dread doesn't have to.

Chris, founder, Sumsational

Questions, answered

The bits people usually ask about.

Is it proper accounting, or a toy with a cute gear?+

Proper. Sumsational is double-entry bookkeeping with a UK chart of accounts, balanced journals, lock dates, an audit trail and reports your accountant will recognise. The gear is just there to make it less lonely.

Will Sprocket change my books without asking?+

No. Sprocket suggests where things go and drafts bills from receipts, and he marks his hunches as hunches. Nothing is posted until a person confirms it, and every undo is a reversal you can see, not a quiet edit.

Is connecting my bank safe?+

We never see your banking password. Direct feeds use read-only access, so nothing can move money. The keys are sealed with AES-256 encryption, tied to your business, and never sent to a browser, a log or an AI. Disconnect any time and the access goes with it.

I'm a director paying myself a small salary. Will payroll cope?+

That's exactly who it was built for first. It handles the directors' annual earnings period, months where you skip pay (with the nil EPS built for you), and reminds you before payday so the FPS is ready on time.

Does it do VAT?+

If you're VAT registered, switch it on and VAT is split out on bank lines, bills and invoices. If you're not, you won't see it at all. Filing VAT returns through Making Tax Digital is next on the workbench.

Can my accountant work in it with me?+

Yes, and they'll like it. Invite them as an accountant or bookkeeper, or give someone read-only access. Practices get every client's books in one place, each one sealed off from the others.

Do I need OrchestratOS?+

Not at all. Sumsational has its own accounts and stands on its own. If you do use OrchestratOS, you can connect the two: sign in with your OrchestratOS account and let invoices share one numbering.

What does it cost?+

Nothing while it's in beta. We'll publish prices well before the beta ends, with plenty of notice, so there are no surprises on your own books.

Is this tax advice?+

No. Sumsational does the sums and keeps the records; a qualified accountant is still the right person for advice. Plenty of what we've built is there to make their job quicker, not to replace them.

Close the dread ledger for good.

We're letting businesses and accountants in a few at a time, so everyone gets a proper welcome and a hand moving their books over. Ask for your invite and we'll shout when your seat's ready.

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