Freelancers bid goodbye to Sage? Welcome Crunch.co.uk [kwiqq]

Posted on | April 30, 2009 | View Comments

Darren Fell

One of the many inspiring things about Richard Branson is his passion to take on the big boys like Coke, Pepsi, British Airways and a never ending list of brands. I think perhaps we have just discovered our local Branson, goes by the name of Darren Fell. If you are in the Email marketing business or based in Brighton you might have already heard of the award winning founder of Pure 360. Darren is now out with a new venture: Crunch which I would describe as Accouting SaaS (Software as a Service) for freelancers. Think Basecamp or Salesforce for accounting.

Crunch.co.uk

Crunch spotted a gap in the market i.e. freelancers paying way too much for their accounting needs every month. Another problem Crunch is trying to solve is complexity of the accounting software out there. If you have used some of the commercial packages in the market, you would know the system often requires you to do a PhD to completely understand the functionality . Crunch has a simple interface and is aiming at a niche market to address their issues.

Crunch.co.uk Simple Interface: Site on logging in

Functionality

Crunch is currently in private Beta fully launched and has some useful functionality. Firstly it is an one stop shop for all your accounting needs i.e. tax return, expenses etc. It also generates invoices and provides a list of suppliers and customers for the freelancer. There are some other really cool features, which will be added to the site shortly, watch this space !

History of Crunch

The idea for Crunch came about in 2007 when the founders put together the concepts for the web based application. The team consists of Darren Fell, Drew Griffiths and Steve Crouch. With a combined experience of a successful internet entrepreneur, a web agency owner and an accountant. They also seeded the venture with capital and started developing the project in J2EE (Java Enterprise Edition).

J2EE is a solid framework built in Java developed by Sun Microsystems. J2EE is often used by financial houses and banks to provide a secure systems. Having chosen J2EE, you know the system will be rock solid.

Crunch dedicated to Freelancers

Most SaaS target SMEs (Small Medium Enterprises) or large organsiations. Its a breath of fresh air to see a company focused completely on individual business people and freelancers. Brighton is certainly a haven for freelancers with many creatives, programmers, accountants, copywritters dotted around the city. This makes the geographic location favourable for Crunch, in getting out there and signing users onboard.

Crunch’s initiatives are not limited to their website they are also sponsoring and providing content for freelancers on Freelance Advisor which includes blogs, podcasts, jobs and events for the community. The site will soon feature an interview with Moo‘s founder , Richard Moross.

We are anxiously waiting for the site to come out of beta launch features on its roadmap. It can soon become a must have for all freelancers in the UK.

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