Clear Books is set to expand internationally by opening our first subsidiary in the Netherlands.
Until now, Clear Books has focused exclusively on building our UK customer base and increasing our share of the UK cloud software market. With this move, business owners in the Netherlands will now be able to take advantage of our simple, easy to use ‘online boekhoudsoftware‘ (online accounting software!) Clear Books NL B.V. will be headed up by Sander van Oyen who for the past five years has worked as sales director for a leading Dutch online media company. He has over 10 years of experience setting up businesses and exploring new markets.
Since being formed by current CEO Tim Fouracre in 2008, Clear Books has grown year on year and now serves more than 8,000 small business customers and accountants. With the opening of Clear Books NL B.V. the intention is to replicate this success in The Netherlands.
“Since setting out, our strategy has been to focus on serving UK small businesses and the accountancy community and we will continue on this path as our British-based customers increasingly enjoy the many benefits of cloud software services,” says Tim Fouracre. “It is clear, however, there is an opportunity to expand internationally and we now view Europe as the next phase of our geographic spread. If we are successful in the Dutch market, we will certainly explore other territories.”
Clear Books NL B.V. will share many similarities with Clear Books in the UK. However, products are being designed and developed to accommodate national differences in areas such as taxation. Following an initial beta-trial in November 2014, the plan is to have Clear Books NL B.V. up and running and providing initial cloud software services to customers in January 2015. These will be free of charge for the first quarter of 2015 and if users like what they see, they can pay for services from April 2015 onwards.
Clear Books NL B.V. Director, Sander van Oyen, said: “There are several incumbent accountancy software players in The Netherlands. However we believe Clear Books can occupy a niche position, providing feature-rich services at very competitive prices. As has been the case in the UK, we will be focusing very much on the small business sector, especially as The Netherlands has a very high number of self-employed people and small companies.”
Over the past year, Clear Books has successfully raised over £1.5m through customer crowdfunding that has seen more than 1,000 of our small business and self employed customers invest in the company.
