Elaine Clark joins Coconut’s Advisory Board

• Elaine Clark, the founder of nationwide accounting franchise cheapaccounting.co.uk, has joined Coconut’s Advisory Board
• Coconut is the current account that automates tax and accounting for self-employed people and small business owners
• Coconut has opened 2,500 business current accounts with £10m payments processed since 31st January

 Elaine Clark, an award-winning accountant specialising in advising self-employed people and small businesses, has joined Coconut’s Advisory Board.

Elaine created the Cheapaccounting.co.uk franchise to make small business accounting as efficient and cost effective as possible. She’s bringing her experience to help Coconut build tools that are perfectly suited to the accountants who support these customers.

Sam O’Connor, Co-Founder and CEO says: “Coconut is bringing banking and accounting together to eliminate business admin for self-employed people and small business owners. But we want the accountants our customers work with to also benefit from real-time bookkeeping and rich data because this saves everyone time and money.

“90% of businesses in the UK are owner managed and 90% of the growth in small companies since 2001 are non-employers. These businesses tend to have simpler requirements than bigger businesses but the products out there are complicated and dated, so haven’t kept up with the shift in the market. We think that these firms and the accountants that support them need access to the most advanced technologies and Coconut will provide this in a tailored product.”

Elaine says: “I’m really excited to be working with the Coconut team as they build out the accountancy offering of their product. I think the convergence of banking and accounting will be more transformative than cloud accounting was 10 years ago. We want accountants to be able to harness the full potential of technologies like machine learning to enable them to better service their clients while also improving margins and allowing them to grow their practices. Coconut will soon allow them to do this in a single tailored product.”

Coconut is building a community of accountants in a Facebook group called Coconut Partners. In the same way that customers have been a driving force in the development of features, they aim to do the same with the accounting community.

Coconut is an app-based smart current account combining banking, accounting and tax services designed specifically for the UK’s fast-growing freelance and self-employed workforce. The company launched its iPhone app for sole traders on 31st January and has opened 2,500 current accounts with £10m payments processed. Last week, Coconut pre-approved the first Android customer and continues to build features to support sole traders and in the future limited company contractors.