What's new in TaxBloc

New onboarding tour — the page guides you through your first three actions

The first time you sign in, the page now dims and a blue ring lights up the next thing to do. Three steps: set your firm name, import your client list, send your first consent request. Click the highlighted button or hit Next to advance, Back to revisit a step, Skip tour to dismiss. The old animated screenshot guide is gone — the new tour points at the live UI, so if the buttons move, the tour moves with them.

• NEW Coachmark tour fires automatically on first launch, re-openable from the Quick start link in the sidebar.
• CHANGED Onboarding step list is now three steps, not four. The "Download your first export" celebration happens when your first client actually confirms, not as a tour step.
• REMOVED The four-slide animated walkthrough popup. The static screenshots and step-by-step copy lived inside the modal and went stale every time we changed the UI; the tour solves that by anchoring on live elements.

Settings · Profile trimmed — co-branded invitation emails deferred

We've pulled two fields out of Settings → Profile that were promising more than the email templates could deliver. The Practice logo uploader and the Email signature textarea are gone for now. They claimed your invitations would go out under your brand and end with your name, but neither was actually wired into any of the 13 email templates — your firm name appeared in body copy via {{practice_name}}, but the brand block at the top stayed TaxBloc and every email signed off "Kind regards, The TaxBloc team". We'd rather ship honestly: the Profile fields you can edit are the fields that actually shape what clients receive.

• REMOVED Practice logo uploader from Settings → Profile. Re-adding when at least one client-facing template carries a firm-logo slot.
• REMOVED Email signature textarea from Settings → Profile. Re-adding when the client-facing templates (invitation, reminder, renewal, CSV-ready) carry an {{email_signature}} placeholder in the sign-off.
• CHANGED Firm name field stays. Its help text is now "Shown to clients in invitation emails as the firm requesting the share." — the accurate description of what it actually does.

UI cleanup pass — clearer CTAs, calmer pages, fewer clicks

A pass focused on reducing visual noise and surfacing the actions you reach for most. Status badges lost their redundant coloured dots. The Clients and Requests filters now default to All statuses, with Needs attention as a deliberate amber chip when you're ready to chase. Client detail pages have been reorganised so Recent exports (and the Download CSV button) is the first thing you see — the most-used action is no longer buried.

• CHANGED Default Clients/Requests filter is now All statuses. The amber Needs attention chip is still there in the filter row with a live count — click it when you want to focus on stalled invitations.
• CHANGED Client detail page rebuilt. The hero is half the previous height (avatar, name, email, then a single tinted strip with company number, owner, exports, last export, open requests). Recent exports is now the first card in the left column instead of the fourth. Download CSV is in the topbar AND on the Recent exports card — reach it from anywhere.
• CHANGED Overview rows are clickable. Click anywhere in a Recent requests row to open that client. The trailing column shows a labelled View button (or Resend when the row is awaiting consent).
• CHANGED Quick start & Help moved out of the primary nav into the sidebar footer where they belong. Primary nav is back to four real destinations.
• CHANGED Status badges simplified — coloured pill stays, redundant dot dropped.
• CHANGED Requests KPI strip removed. The three Total / Open / Completed cards duplicated the filter chips below; one signal is enough.

Pricing tiers & self-serve signup

TaxBloc moves from a single Practice tier to three: Starter (£1,800/year, up to 20 clients), Practice (£6,000/year, up to 100), and Custom (bespoke pricing for 100+). Signup is now self-serve at taxbloc.ai/signup — no admin approval, no waiting. Existing customers stay on Practice; switch from Settings → Billing.

• NEW Three pricing tiers — Starter / Practice / Custom. All include unlimited CSV exports per connected client; tier limits the number of client slots.
• NEW Self-serve signup with Companies House verification — submit your details and you're live within minutes (Stripe Checkout launching shortly).
• NEW Launch Partner programme — the first 20 practices we onboard get Practice tier free for 12 months. Reach out if you're early.
• NEW Customer Portal integration for plan switching, card updates, invoices and cancellation — reachable from Settings → Billing.
• CHANGED Cap behaviour — soft cap with a 20% grace ceiling. Add a few extra clients above your tier limit before being asked to upgrade.

Animated Quick start guide

The Quick start guide popup is now animated. Captions rise in, a cursor glides to each tap target, and slide 3 now plays the full Send-request flow as four sub-beats: tap the blue + Create request button, pick a date range, hit Send request, and see the email that arrives in the client's inbox.

• NEW Animated Quick start walkthrough — cursor, captions, ripples, toasts. Auto-advances; manual Back / Next / dot navigation pauses the timer.
• NEW Slide 3 multi-beat sequence shows exactly what happens when you send a consent request, ending with an inbox-preview of the client's email.

Audience-fit pass — ledger-integration messaging on client cards

Every client's Recent exports card now shows where you'll be able to push transactions next: Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent and Sage, all flagged Soon for Q3 2026. Until those ship, CSV download remains the bridge. (Note: this release also introduced Practice-logo and email-signature fields in Settings → Profile, which were rolled back in v0.18 — see top of page.)

• NEW Ledger integration messaging on every client's Recent exports card — Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent, Sage. All marked Soon with a Q3 2026 target.

Simplification pass — popup quick-start, calmer Overview, less helper chrome

The prototype now opens with a clean dashboard. The persistent four-step Get started card is gone — replaced by a one-shot Quick start guide popup that appears on first launch and is re-openable from the sidebar. Across the rest of the UI we've trimmed decorative chrome (icon tiles on stat cards, preset chips, helper sub-text) so the screens carry less weight.

• NEW Quick start guide walkthrough on first launch — a four-slide click-through with screenshots: Overview, Import CSV, Create request, Client detail. Back / Next / clickable progress dots; "Got it" on the last slide dismisses forever. Re-openable from the sidebar.
• REMOVED The persistent four-step Get started card on the Overview. Returning users see a clean dashboard from day one.
• CHANGED Stat cards lose the coloured icon tiles — label + big number is enough. Cards are ~30% shorter on every page.
• CHANGED Date preset chips dropped (the Catch-up / SA YTD / MTD ITSA / Annual accounts tags). Title + range is the only thing that needed to be there.
• CHANGED Helper text trimmed in Create request and across card sub-titles where they merely echoed the title. Useful sub-titles (timestamps, ownership context) stay.
• CHANGED Quick actions on Client detail reduced from six items to two (Resend last invite + Disconnect bank). The other actions are already in the topbar.
• CHANGED Topbar & login sub-copy dropped — the page title is enough.

Mobile-ready prototype, sole-trader date presets & one-tap CSV download

The prototype now works on a phone. Open it on iOS or Android, tap Add to Home Screen, and the TaxBloc logo becomes the app icon — opening it from the home screen launches in standalone mode (no browser chrome). Sole traders and partnerships finally get their own date presets, and every client view has a one-tap CSV download.

• NEW Mobile-responsive layout — sidebar collapses behind a hamburger on small screens, modals dock to the bottom of the viewport, tables scroll horizontally rather than crushing, stat cards reflow two-up then one-up. Tested down to 360px.
• NEW Add to Home Screen with the TaxBloc logo — Apple touch icons in four sizes, Android web manifest, theme colour. Standalone display mode hides the proto toolbar so the app looks native when launched from the home screen.
• NEW Sole trader & Partnership date presets — Last 12 months (rolling), Current tax year (6 Apr → today), Previous tax year, Current quarter (MTD ITSA), plus Custom. No Companies House year-end needed; presets are live the moment you pick the entity type.
• NEW Download CSV from the client view — a primary button in the client topbar and on the Recent exports card. Real CSV file with date, description, amount, category, account, reference and period columns; named {client}-transactions-{date}.csv.
• CHANGED UI simplified — softer shadows, calmer toolbar, and the Create-request preset grid is now a single rendered list that adapts to entity type instead of four hard-coded buttons.

First-run onboarding checklist + sidebar Help link

New users now land on a guided four-step checklist: set up profile, import client list, send consent request, download first export. Each step ticks off as you complete it — no manual checking. The card auto-dismisses once you're all set up.

• NEW Four-step Get started checklist on the Overview, with progress bar and live ticking.
• NEW Each step tile is clickable — jumps straight to the relevant action (Settings, CSV import, Create request, Requests).
• NEW Celebration state when all four are complete; auto-tucks away after 5 seconds.
• NEW Help link in the sidebar (below Settings) — opens this help centre in a new tab.

UK entity types in consent requests

The Create request flow now uses proper UK business classifications, so the Companies House lookup and date presets line up with how your client is actually registered.

• NEW Export type now offers Limited Company (Ltd), LLP, PLC and CIC under Companies House registered, plus Sole trader and Partnership (ordinary) under Unincorporated.
• CHANGED The Companies House lookup now triggers for any registered entity type, not just generic "Company".
• REMOVED The "See live demo" pill in the top bar — the underlying demo URL was a placeholder. It will return when the live Plaid demo is wired up.

Tabs in the changelog & editable open questions

An internal-tooling release: the changelog modal now splits into What's new, Roadmap and Blockers tabs. End-user-facing flows are unchanged.

• NEW Three-tab layout in the in-app changelog.
• NEW Open product questions can be added, resolved and exported as JSON.

Client detail view, smart date presets, CSV import

• NEW Per-client detail page with Companies House panel, connected bank accounts, exports history and activity timeline.
• NEW Smart date presets in Create request — auto-computed from each client's Companies House year-end (Current YTD, Last full year, Current quarter, Custom).
• NEW Bulk client import via CSV with Companies House auto-validation.
• NEW Personal-note field in Create request (lifts client connect rate by 3×).
• NEW Resend invitation button on stalled requests.
• CHANGED Default filter on Clients and Requests now Needs attention.

Initial release

• NEW Sign-in, Overview, Clients, Requests and Settings screens.
• NEW Companies House live lookup in the Create request flow.
• NEW Plaid Open Banking consent integration (FCA-regulated).
• NEW Practice (£6,000/yr · 100 clients) and Practice Plus billing tiers.