People: Giving Pain to the big boys

‘Sage should only be used in cooking,’ declares Quentin Pain, as he prepares a series of new autumn launches for his Accountz accounting and book-keeping software, with which he hopes to challenge sector leaders such as business software specialist Sage Group.

Pain, a former budding rock musician and motorbike courier who computerised the courier business in the 1980s, sold it to Securicor and then set up software business Apricote Studios, is launching a ‘hybrid of Apple and Google’ in October to provide simple book-keeping systems for small businesses, based on principles he expounded in his late-1990s book Accounting for Everyone.

Autumn should also bring the launch by Accountz of a ‘new interface for all software – you press a magic button and the software takes you through complex transactions, showing you how they are being done and why’. At the same time, Pain plans to launch new software for tracking share movements in time for the 2012 edition of ‘Home Accounts’, to enable users to see an up-to-the-minute value of all their different assets.

Business angels have so far put £2 million into Accountz, which Pain suggests could double turnover this year to £1 million and break into the black in the first quarter of 2012. ‘My software removes the fear most non-specialists have of accounting and bookkeeping,’ argues Pain, whose no-less-versatile mother switched careers herself from antiquarian bookselling to psychotherapy.

His next target is Sage. ‘They need to move over,’ he asserts.