The product helps freelancers, self-employed people and owner managed businesses by automating bookkeeping and tax tasks using rich payments data.

4,500 sole traders opened accounts following Coconut’s first current account product launch in January. Following the fantastic response, 5,000 limited companies pre-registered for the new, limited company product, highlighting the need for a faster and more mobile solution to accounting for the smallest businesses.

The new product will be a welcome addition to Coconut’s product roster. It benefits not only new limited company customers but also those transitioning from sole trader to limited companies, helping them comply with more stringent reporting requirements such as year-end accounts and VAT filings and managing cash-flow.

Sam O’Connor, Co-Founder and CEO of Coconut said:

“We have the most powerful sole trader tax and bookkeeping tool in the UK and our customers are really happy with it with many investing in our recent crowdfunding. Our vision is to bring everything you need to run your business into one simple product. By launching our limited company product we can support one person or owner managed businesses and 5,000 have already pre-registered. We’ve been blown away by the support of our customers and community. Coconut makes managing your business an instant and simple process so our customers can get on with growing their business.”

Coconut has identified that the 5m smallest businesses in the UK are the most underserved by the current products in the market like traditional bank accounts, cloud accounting packages and tools like receipt and invoicing apps. The Coconut app brings everything these businesses need into one place.

O’Connor continued, “Cloud accounting packages and traditional bank accounts really haven’t kept pace with the mobile and fast-paced nature of work today. Our customers want to be able to manage their business finances in one place with minimal effort. It sounds simple, but just showing profit and loss from the current account in real-time is quite a revolutionary idea for banks. But when you add in the most powerful invoicing tool on the market, transactions with accounting intelligence, you really give people control of their business. And our customers are really excited.”

2018 has seen a huge amount of progress for Coconut and since the launch of the first product, the Coconut team recently smashed the Crowdfunding target of £500,000 by four times, driven largely by Coconut’s customer community. Additionally, Coconut was announced this month as one of Nesta’s Open Up Challenge winners, designed to support innovative SME focused fintech products that utilise open banking. Coconut was awarded £200,000 and will use the prize to help develop in more products for the benefit of the self-employed and small business owners across the UK.