Our journey started 2003 in London when we began developing one of the world’s first online accounting platforms. The Internet was still fairly new, ipads had not yet been invented, and Nokia phones were all the rage. But we didn’t like using fax machines, found emailing Excel spreadsheets of our expenses frustrating and couldn’t understand why someone had not developed a system where this could all be done online! So we decided to forgo the Contiki tours and settled down in our small one bedroom flat over the top of Tennessee Fried Chicken in South London and gave it a go ourselves.
In 2005 we officially launched a new accounting service in the UK called No Worries Company Services Ltd with a handful of contractors who were already using our online accounting software. Where other contractor accounting firms were charging their fees at 5% of the contractors turnover, we brought a new idea to the market with charging a flat monthly fee. We also had another secret weapon – online accounting software that we had built ourselves.
Simplifi is the next generation of our cloud accounting software that sees us packaging nearly two decades of experience in software, accountancy, and tax, into a cloud-based accounting software product that is 100% focussed on the needs of freelancers, contractors, and small businesses. Right now, our business is headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand, with a team consisting of some of the best people we have ever worked with spread across New Zealand, United Kingdom, and Canada.
Our mission is to continue to supply a world-class accounting software that is solely driven by the needs of freelancers and contractors who work in every corner of the earth.
Prior to 2003 we were experimenting with the Internet while working full-time as freelancers in North America and London, UK.
To test the waters, we launched a free online company formation product in the UK at a time when formations could only be done by post. We were surprised by the uptake, and encouraged to keep building our online accounting product.
No Worries Company Services Ltd is launched in the UK with all our freelancer/contractor clients using our new online accounting software. A software that was built by contractors for contractors. We also introduced a radical new pricing structure – a flat monthly fee, that quickly saw all our main competitors scramble to follow suit.
Hello Seagrave Road. The business had finally grown up and moved out of our flat into its own space. While we would bake in this small ground floor office in the summertime, we couldn’t be happier as we attached our little name plate outside the door and welcomed our first two employees. We also partnered with HSBC Bank to simplify the process of setting up a bank account for new contractors to the UK market.
Our number of software Users climbs rapidly when new MSC legislation is passed that sends a whole lot of new business our way #lucky! This also meant that we had outgrown Seagrave Road so we moved to our new office space at Elysium Gate – hello air conditioning! Lots of freelancers in the UK can now email an invoice straight to their recruitment firm using our software.
Time for a new logo! Companies House finally replaces its 20yr old system for company formation with a new online processing system. Finally our printer can take a breather! We now sat patiently waiting for them to look towards online filing of Annual Accounts and VAT returns. In the meantime we continue to listen to feedback from our clients and streamline our software while constantly talking with and encouraging Companies House and HMRC to move more of their reporting requirements and processes to online.
We now had over 10 years of user feedback that we had been using to constantly refine and update our software. Time for a thank-you gift: a brand new web app where they could complete core accounting transactions straight from their top of the line iPhone 4!
Our cloud accounting software finally has its own name, Simplifi. It's hosted with AWS, and has been rebuilt completely using modern industry standards. It's actually one giant API with a nice looking UX/UI that is built to scale. All the functionality from the old system is retained, with far greater scope now to add new features.
Our patience has paid off. HMRC approaches us for assistance and after several months of trials and testing, at 08:43am on 01 June 2018, we file the world's first VAT return to the HMRC using the new Making Tax Digital initiative. We make a room full of HMRC developers, and project managers very happy today.
We get busy integrating UK payroll, bank feeds compliant with the new UK open banking regulations, and AI-enabled receipt scanning into Simplifi. Our smart reconciliation features now also start to take shape.
We wanted a different logo, so we changed it!
After a crazy 18 months of focusing mainly on our employees and clients and helping them with some radical life changes COVID-19 brought to the world, we released our Simplifi software as a stand-alone product. You no longer need to be an accounting client of No Worries to gain full and exclusive access to the world's best cloud accounting product for freelancers. We now have nearly 20 years of first-hand experience doing this, and we're ready to branch out. We have Users in the UK, Belgium (thats a random one 🙃) and New Zealand. Simplifi has been built to work in any country in the world.... so here we go.
We started out including 12 main currencies in our accounting software, and so far only 4 of them are heavily used. But we figure why stop at 12, so now we support 174 different currencies with FX rates automatically updated every 3 hours.
