Running your own business can be incredibly rewarding, but maintaining and managing your accounts often requires a great deal of time and money – two resources that the newly self-employed and business owners don’t exactly have in spades. This begs the question – is it possible to effectively manage your accounts, for free?

When the lightbulb went off in your head about being your own boss, we doubt very much that the prospect of spreadsheets, calculators and receipts, or paying for a high-street accountant were the parts of the puzzle that filled you with excitement.

But if you’re a freelancer, contractor, or small business owner looking to reduce outgoings and increase productivity, you might be pleasantly surprised to discover there’s a brilliant solution to solve your bookkeeping woes.

Free entry-level accounting software is here!

Crunch Free is smart, easy-to-use accounting software built for business owners, not accountants.

With the incoming Making Tax Digital rules, gone are the days of storing your receipts in a shoebox and panicking when it’s time to do something with them. With Crunch Free, you can easily add unlimited expenses and receipts while you’re out and about, while also using the software to send (unlimited) invoices and see how much money you’re owed. 

It quietly keeps everything organised in the background, so your books don’t turn into a weekend project. With so many features you’ll love, from setting up recurring invoices to automatic payment chasers and Open Banking feeds to automatically import business transactions. 

We have a great TripCatcher app to make it really easy to track and record business mileage directly into Crunch Free, and, if you want to make expenses even easier to record, our expenses app ‘Snap’ lets you take a photo of a receipt and automatically uploads a categorised expense to your account. 

Crunch Free by name, free by nature

With Crunch Free, the word ‘free’ isn’t simply a metaphor. It’s not called ‘Free’ because it frees up your time to be doing more important and interesting things – although this is certainly true!

It’s not just a free trial either, one that rolls over into a paid subscription, like many of our competitors do. Crunch Free is free for everyone, and always will be for as long as you want to use it.

There are other so-called free competitors out there, but often when you look at the small print there are hidden extras or limits to the number of invoices you can send or the expenses you can record. With Crunch, though, there are no such restrictions. We let you send as many invoices as you want and record an unlimited number of expenses. The only thing you’ll notice is that there are a few Crunch adverts placed to help keep it free.

Even more features in Crunch Plus

If you love the idea of software that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, you’ll love Crunch Plus. For just £10+VAT/month, you get everything in our free software plus even more features designed to take the headache out of managing your accounts. 

Some of our client’s favourite features include the Personal Tax Estimator, Bulk Importer for invoice and expenses, and Auto-Match which lets you reconcile hundreds of matches in seconds. Crunch Plus is also fully MTD compatible, both for MTD for VAT and MTD for Income Tax. So you’re fully compliant, at a cost you’ll love.

What’s the competition doing?

Starling business accounting software

With Starling Bank, accounting tools are built directly into their business banking experience. That means you can only use their accounting software if you’re already a Starling business banking customer. Everything sits inside the same ecosystem, so your banking and accounting are tied together from the start.

For some people that works well. If you’re fully in the Starling ecosystem, it keeps everything in one place. But it does mean you don’t really have a choice of bank if you want to use their accounting tools.

Crunch Free is designed to work with any UK business bank account. You’re not locked into a specific provider, and you don’t need to switch banks just to get access to your accounting software.

Instead, you can connect your existing account through free Open Banking feeds and keep everything flowing automatically into Crunch. That gives you more flexibility over how you bank, while still keeping your accounting organised in one place.

‘Free’ no longer the flavour at Coconut

Another challenger in the market, Coconut, has moved away from the fully free model it originally launched with.

Today, Coconut operates on paid subscription plans for bookkeeping and Making Tax Digital features, with pricing that scales depending on the level of functionality you need (for example, invoicing, tax submissions, and expense tracking).

What used to be positioned as a “free alternative” has now become a structured paid tool only like much of the market over time. 

With Crunch Free, those core essentials like invoicing, expenses, and Open Banking feeds are still included without needing to upgrade just to keep things running.

Waving goodbye to Wave in the UK

We always thought Wave was a good little app, but recently, they Wave-d goodbye to their UK users. With active UK market support withdrawn, meaning it is no longer a practical day-to-day accounting solution for UK users.

That shift left a gap in the market for simple, genuinely accessible accounting software, which is exactly where Crunch Free continues to sit.

Easily upgrade to your perfect accountancy package

Crunch Free is the perfect tool for sole traders and limited companies; using it frequently will mean all your expenses and invoices are easily managed, and your bank transactions are automatically imported for you to reconcile in just a few clicks. Optional, one-off payment bolt-on services such as ‘Ask an Accountant’ for affordable access to Crunch’s experts are also available, offering advice and support to those looking to keep on top of their business finances and become more tax-efficient.

As a sole trader, this means that when it comes to Self Assessment time you’re presented with all your lovely, organised bookkeeping, ready to enter into HMRC’s online system. But should you decide you need expert Self Assessment support and want to upgrade to our Sole Trader Pro package that comes with Self Assessment included, as well as unlimited support and expert advice from our accountants, you can do so quickly and easily, with zero fuss.

Limited company owners may be looking for extra support when it comes to filing their Corporation Tax return, annual accounts and all the other statutory filings that are part of their responsibilities as a director. You’ll also want to be able to pay yourself as a director, usually with a combination of salary and tax-efficient dividends. If you have other ways of managing this, then Crunch Free may be all you need. However, if you’re looking for all this plus unlimited support and expert advice it’s really easy to upgrade to one of our complete limited company accountancy packages.

Interested in Crunch Free?

Great, let’s get you started!