Online Accounting Software with a personal touch
At Clear Books we pride ourselves on our outstanding customer service and the personal way in which we onboard each and every new customer, whether that’s a new accounting practice or a small business owner. We understand that moving to new software to complete your essential small business tasks (for yourself or for your client) can be daunting, confusing, or just seem like a waste of valuable time. So we want to make it a straightforward and quick process.
That’s why we offer free 121 demo’s of our software for every accounting practice and small business which takes out a free trial – be that on our easy to use online accounting software or on our newly enhanced online payroll software. It’s also why we offer all our customers free UK based telephone support with an experienced Customer Support Team.
Given our commitment to being close to our customers and helping them every step of the way, I thought it would be interesting to lift the lid on what goes on behind the scenes at Clear Books – what our customers can expect from our team when they join our community, and what’s coming up in the future.
A tight-knit, dedicated team
Clear Books is made up of a dedicated, loyal, group of people who always put our customers first. We have a huge variety of skills across our team, from developing to testing, from product management to customer support, from customer onboarding to marketing.
Every role is valuable. Lots of our team members have spent many years at Clear Books -– two of whom have recently celebrated their 10 year anniversaries (congratulations John and Alex!).
We also have two new, enthusiastic, members of the team – our new Customer Onboarding Specialist, Tom (to help all our new trialists learn how to get the most out of our software), and our new Marketing Manager, Charlotte (to help more small businesses and accountants find out about how wonderful Clear Books is). Charlotte and Tom both joined our team in the last three months and both are fabulous new additions to our family-feel team.
Continuing to provide outstanding customer service whatever the circumstances
The Clear Books team has been based in Hammersmith, London, since the company’s inception in 2008. Like so many teams over the last 18 months or so, we have spent a lot of time working from home, and we now operate a flexi-working policy with most employees doing a mixture of office and home working. As an online business, we were well suited to remote working and the team adapted brilliantly – retaining their high level of customer service, and high work rate – despite being asked to work from home for the foreseeable future with only 24 hours notice! I was particularly proud of our team when I read one of our Trustpilot reviews during the height of the pandemic which noted our team’s continued efforts during that period.
If we ever thought we might be taking Clear Books and their awesome service for granted, during the Covid-19 period, whilst many blue chip and other large organisations furloughed their staff and the consequence was that their customers received the worst possible service in living memory, Clear Books maintained their 100% awesome service, seriously!
Now that we are operating a hybrid working model, that ‘awesome’ level of customer service remains. Every customer can speak to an experienced UK based support agent, and our customers are delighted with the service they receive. If the query needs to go to our technical support team, our developers are on hand to help even at short notice. It’s down to a full team effort that our Trustpilot rating is an ‘excellent’ 4.7 and full of wonderful comments about the Clear Books team.
Making it easy for new customers to get started
Over the last few months we’ve been focussing our efforts on making it as easy as possible for new businesses to sign-up to Clear Books and to get the most out of our easy-to-use bookkeeping software. We’ve done this through a combination of product enhancements and increasing our personal interactions with customers. We’re ensuring that we have a really intuitive, easy-to-use, product but equally, whenever a trialist or customer wants to speak to someone to get that extra-helping hand, the team is always available online or over the phone.
Enhancing our Online Payroll Software
We have recently invested in our payroll product including making it easier for businesses to switch to our payroll software at any point during the year, and to more easily upload employee information in bulk. There are also loads of enhancements which will benefit our current payroll customers. We want to ensure that we can service all our small business customer needs, so offering them an easy-to-use payroll system to go alongside their online accounting software is the perfect complement.
Strong partnerships with leading businesses in their field
We look for partnerships with top businesses in their field who provide essential small business services. We want to ensure our customers will receive the same outstanding customer service that we deliver, and that our partnerships deliver valuable, smart innovations to our overall small business offering.
Last year we announced our partnership with Metro Bank, whereby new Clear Books customers signing up from the Metro Bank app benefit from a special discount, direct bank feeds and a more seamless experience between their banking app and their accounting software.
This year we announced a partnership with Capitalise whereby we now offer intelligent insights to customers about their cash position and provide them with a seamless loan application journey directly from the Clear Books software. The feedback from our customers on this new feature has been overwhelmingly positive!
The future: Smart Invoicing and Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment
So, what is the team planning next?
We have exciting plans in the New Year when we will be launching our improved invoicing including additional payment options (we already offer card and direct debit payment options), making it even easier, quicker (and cheaper!) for our customers to get paid.
We’re also working on our MTD for Income Tax Self Assessment solution. This is a particularly exciting project for us, and we’re working closely with our accounting partners, small business owners and HMRC to ensure not only is our solution easy to use, but that we can properly support our partners to onboard all their clients in time for the April 2024 deadline.
Clear Books: Online accounting software for small businesses
Clear Books is an award-winning online accounting software for small businesses. Thousands of business owners, contractors, freelancers and sole traders across the UK use our easy-to-use online accounting software to manage their business finances. All users benefit from the outstanding free telephone and email support. Clear Books was launched in London in 2008 and offers a free 30 day trial with free ongoing support and bank feeds. We’re rated as ‘Excellent’ on Trustpilot.
Get a free 30-day trial of Clear Books online accounting software.
