SaaS and Technology · Technology
A practice management SaaS for CA firms, from idea to paying customers
A subscription product for small chartered accountant firms to track client compliance deadlines, collect documents through a client portal and bill retainers, built with its two founders through The Startup Engine. The product went from a validated problem to a paid launch with self serve sign up, plans and GST invoices built in.
- Client
- A two founder startup in Ahmedabad, one a practising chartered accountant, building software for small CA and tax practitioner firms
- Region
- India
- Sponsor
- Co founders, product and commercial
- Duration
- 4 weeks of validation, 14 weeks to paid launch, then a monthly product cycle
Engagement model
TSE: The Startup Engine
The Startup Engine paired the founders with a product pod from problem interviews to launch, with scope agreed in short stages so the founders only paid to build what early users had asked for.
How TSE worksThe team
- Product strategist1
- Full stack engineer2
- Product designer1
- QA engineer (shared)1
The challenge
Where things stood
- The founders had a clear problem from their own practice, chasing clients for documents before GST, TDS and income tax due dates, but no evidence that other firms would pay to solve it.
- Their first plan covered accounting, payroll and tax filing in one product, which would have taken a year to build before anyone could try it.
- Small firms buy on price and trust, so the product needed self serve sign up, a free trial and clean GST invoices from day one.
- Firms' clients are not technical, so the document upload side had to work from a WhatsApp link on a phone without an app download.
The approach
How we ran it
Weeks 1 to 4
Problem validation
Ran interviews with CA firms in Ahmedabad, Surat and Vadodara alongside the founders, and tested a clickable prototype. The scope narrowed to three things firms kept asking for: a compliance calendar per client, document collection and retainer billing.
Weeks 5 to 11
First usable version
Built the client master, a compliance calendar generated from each client's registrations, task assignment to articles and staff, and a client portal opened from a WhatsApp link for uploading bank statements and invoices.
Weeks 12 to 15
Pilot firms
Put the product in front of a small group of pilot firms for a full GST return cycle. Fixed what broke, dropped two features nobody used and added bulk reminders, which every pilot firm asked for.
Weeks 16 to 18
Paid launch
Added plans by number of clients, a free trial, Razorpay subscriptions with UPI autopay and cards, GST compliant invoices, and a simple admin for the founders to manage accounts and refunds.
What it looks like
Representative screens
Drawn to show the kind of system we delivered. Client screens and data stay private.
Subscription: Desai and Associates, Chartered Accountants
- Plan
- Practice 100, up to 100 clients
- Billing
- INR 1,499 per month plus GST, UPI autopay
- GSTIN
- 24AAJFD7314K1ZP
- Seats
- 6 users, 3 partners and 3 staff
- Active clients
- 84
- Next invoice
- 1 Nov, INV-2024-01672
- Signed up, 14 day trial started
- Clients imported from Excel
- Autopay mandate approved
- First paid invoice issued
- Upgrade offered at 100 clients
What we delivered
Modules and features
- Self serve sign up with a free trial and onboarding checklist
- Compliance calendar per client for GST, TDS, income tax and ROC due dates
- Task board for partners, staff and articles with due date reminders
- Client document portal opened from a WhatsApp link, no app or password needed
- Retainer and one off fee billing for the firm's own clients
- Subscription plans, Razorpay autopay and GST invoices for the product itself
- Founder admin for accounts, plan changes, refunds and usage
What changed
Outcomes
- The founders launched to paying firms with a product shaped by pilot use
- Firms collect client documents through a simple phone link
- Sign up, trial, payment and invoicing run without the founders handling each new customer by hand
- The founders own the code and run a monthly release cycle with the same pod
Looking back
The four weeks of interviews saved months. The founders were sure payroll belonged in the first version, and not one pilot firm asked for it, while bulk WhatsApp reminders, which no one had planned, became the feature firms mentioned first. We would keep the short paid stages; they let the founders stop or change direction without a large sunk cost. What we would do differently is set up product analytics before the pilot starts, because the first few weeks of usage were the most telling and we only have partial data for them. We also spent too long on the founder admin before launch, when a few manual steps would have been fine at that size.
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