The question
Why does running three companies mean paying for three subscriptions?
It is not a mistake and it is not greed. It follows from a decision almost every bookkeeping product made early on, and once you can see that decision the pricing stops being surprising. It just stops being reasonable for you.
The thing being sold is a set of books, not a person
Bookkeeping software is built around one company: one chart of accounts, one VAT registration, one year end, one set of statutory deadlines. Nearly every product attaches the subscription to that object - the organisation, the company file, the set of books - rather than to the person logging in.
That was a sensible choice when it was made, because the overwhelming majority of customers have exactly one company. It is only strange from where you are standing if you have more than one, and the software has no way of noticing that you do.
A second company is not a second product
Serving a second set of books costs a software company some storage and some computing time. It is not another copy of the product, another support team or another year of development. The price of the second subscription is not set by what it costs to provide; it is set by what the first one was worth.
In the general case that is ordinary business. Software is priced on value rather than on cost almost everywhere. It simply lands badly on the specific person who did nothing unusual except incorporate twice.
The money is only half of it
Three subscriptions means three of everything else as well. Three logins, or one login awkwardly shared. Three places your accountant has to be invited, and three invitations to chase. Three password resets. Three sets of bank connections to renew, each expiring on its own schedule.
People running more than one company usually describe the admin before they describe the cost, which is a fair sign of which one actually takes up their week.
- A separate sign-in per company, or one shared between them
- Your accountant invited separately to each
- Bank connections renewed separately, on separate dates
- Deadlines tracked in whichever place you happen to be looking
This is a much more ordinary situation than it sounds
A contractor with a trading company and a property company. A family that put a holding company above two trading ones because an accountant sensibly suggested it. Someone who started a second thing and kept the first one open. A partner in a practice who also runs their own consultancy.
None of that is exotic structuring. It is what happens to people who keep working, and the software treats it as an edge case because the pricing model was settled before anybody asked.
What the alternative looks like
The books still have to be separate. That part is not negotiable: no figure from one company may reach another, and each needs its own accounts, journals, reports and filings. What does not have to be separate is everything around them - the login, the invitations, the deadline view, the rate you pay.
Alwen charges the same for your first company and your fifth, invites your accountant and your bookkeeper in at no cost, and keeps one sign-in across all of them. See how the books stay separate while everything else stays together, or read the current rates on the pricing page.
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Do you run more than one company?
We would like to hear how you handle it today, including the parts that are more annoying than expensive.