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Tide and Sage tie-up to offer SMB tax and accounting tool

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Banking service Tide has launched a partnership with Sage to offer small businesses a complete end-to-end accounting and tax solution embedded within its platform.

26th May 2022
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Targeting UK small business owners and the self-employed, the Tide Accounting tool claims to offer users an integrated, automated accounting and bookkeeping service from within their bank account. It is currently available to non-VAT registered sole traders.

A release accompanying the launch outlined that the product connects banking data from Tide business accounts and its existing finance and admin tools to Sage’s accounting and compliance services – essentially embedding accounting and taxation into Tide’s mobile and web platforms.

Tide account holders will be able to complete financial and compliance processes such as self assessment and year-end accounts, and the tool will provide members with updated reports whenever a new transaction is processed and offer real-time insights.

Tide’s accounting and compliance solution is available to its members in the UK, with additional features and support for businesses to be added over the coming months. It is unclear at this stage whether the Tide Accounting product will be available across all of Tide’s pricing plans. Tide has been approached for further information.

Simple and more affordable

Founded in 2015 and launched in 2017, Tide has more than 400,000 SME customers in the UK (equating to a 7% market share). Its CEO Oliver Prill commented that through Tide Accounting, small business owners “will get access to a simple and more affordable accounting software tailored to their business”. 

With Making Tax Digital for income tax self assessment (MTD ITSA) coming onstream in 2024, bringing an estimated four million taxpayers into the digital taxation fold, Prill believes banking service providers such as Tide have a role to play in helping the smallest businesses stay compliant and focus on growing their business.

“As most SMEs don’t plan for self assessment, tax liabilities often come as unplanned pressure on their cashflow,” he continued. “Tide Accounting will give them access to first-hand insights that will help them plan better.”  

First announced in May 2021 and trialled over the past year, the Tide Accounting tool has been developed using Sage’s accounting and compliance as a service (ACaaS) platform – a service Sage hopes more banks and software as a service (SaaS) platforms will adopt to acquire features usually only found in a pure cloud accounting product as part of their day-to-day operations.

Sage’s executive vice president of small business, Neal Watkins, commented that the partnership “seamlessly links customers’ bank account and accounting software, making it easy for small businesses to digitalise and automate sales transactions straight into their ledger. 

“Combining the power of the Sage network, with Tide’s leading banking services, we are unlocking the silos financial data sits within – supporting customers to thrive through invisible accounting,” added Watkins.

The presence of Sage in the partnership is also notable given that the software giant recently invested more than £9m in business current account and accounting app CountingUp – tangentially a competitor of Tide, and even more so given the announcement outlined above.

Old habits

While many have lauded Sage’s recent moves to bolster its cloud credentials, including the launch of its Sage for Accountants platform and the acquisitions of Futrli, AutoEntry and GoProposal, this latest move could spark concern that old habits may be resurfacing and the Newcastle software giant risks spreading itself too thinly.

Adding further intrigue to the story, earlier this month Tide launched a tie-up with tax and accounting app Coconut which allows self-employed people who open a Tide business bank account to connect to Coconut through open banking.

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