Nobody handed us a manual either
We started out the same way you did — good at the work, and completely on our own with everything around it. Sole Trader Support exists because that part should not be as hard as it was.
We have been where you are
When we started, there was nobody to ask. Which accounting software, whether the cheap laptop would do, why the emails kept landing in people’s junk folders — every one of those was a guess, and a few of the wrong guesses cost money we did not have at the time.
There is more help around now than there was. You can ask an AI at two in the morning and get an answer of sorts. But an answer is not the same as someone who has actually done it — someone who knows which tool quietly stops coping at ten customers, which one is a nightmare to move away from a year later, and which cheap option ends up costing double. That only comes from having done it hundreds of times, and from having got it wrong a few of those.
That is what we are for. Not a chatbot and not a call centre reading a script — a real person who has had their hands on the actual thing, and who will tell you plainly when you do not need what you are asking for.
400+ businesses, and counting
We have set up more than 400 businesses across every sector, from one-van trades to growing teams. That is the whole pitch: we have already made the mistakes, so you do not have to pay to repeat them.
The pattern repeats more than you would think. Someone good at their trade goes out on their own, and within a year the business is running them rather than the other way round — quotes written at eleven at night, invoices raised weeks late, customer details spread across a phone, a notebook and a shoebox. None of that is a failure of effort. It is a failure of setup.
What changes is rarely dramatic. Enquiries land in one place. Quotes go out the same day. Invoices chase themselves. The evenings come back. That is what the businesses we work with actually notice — not the software, but getting their time back.
What success looks like
A sole trader who stops losing jobs because a quote went unanswered. A cleaner whose repeat invoices raise themselves every Monday. An electrician who can find any certificate in ten seconds. Small things, but they compound — and they are the difference between a business that grows and one that just keeps you busy.
Why us
We are not tied to anyone
We are not a reseller and we take no commission for pointing you at one product over another. We recommend what suits your budget and genuinely cuts your admin down. You pay software providers directly, so you own your own accounts and are never locked in through us.
No jargon
You should not need to understand any of this to benefit from it. We explain things in plain English, set them up properly, and stay on the end of the phone when something breaks.