Honest comparison

Capium alternative

Capium is practice software for accountants. This site is free browser tools for the sums inside the work. We do not file, we do not hold clients, we carry nothing from one year to the next and there is no support desk. Here is the whole gap, before anything else.

14 free tools linked from this page · 10 with no account at all · 4 AI tools that need one

We have not used Capium, and we are not going to describe somebody else’s product from memory. So this page does something slightly unusual: it compares free browser tools against what practice software is *for* — the job it does inside a firm — and sends you to their own site for anything specific about theirs. Every claim below about the paid side is a claim about the category, not about their feature list.

A practice suite is bought to run a practice. Clients, authorisations, deadlines, filings, workflow, and a company that is answerable when a submission fails at five to five. Everything here is a single-purpose page that reads a file you already have and gives you numbers back. Those are different products, and pretending otherwise would waste your afternoon.

What practice software does that we do not

Read this list first. If more than one line on it matters to you, buy the software.

It files. Returns to HMRC, accounts to Companies House, payroll on or before payday. That is the reason a practice buys it. Nothing on this site submits anything anywhere; there is no connection to HMRC in any tool here.
It is recognised software. Filing under Making Tax Digital has to go through software HMRC has recognised. Recognition is an approval a vendor applies for and then maintains — it is not a feature that can be written in an afternoon. We are not on that list, and no page here claims to be.
It holds your client list. Names, references, authorisations, who has signed what, and when each thing is due. We hold nothing. Every tool starts empty and forgets you when the tab closes.
It carries figures from one year to the next. Last year brought forward, so this year’s comparatives are right without anybody retyping them. Ours cannot, because for us there is no last year.
Somebody is accountable. A contract, a support desk, and professional indemnity behind the product. Here there is a contact form, and pages that tell you which figures they are least sure about instead of guaranteeing them.
Work moves across a team. Jobs assigned, reviewed, signed off, with a record of who did what. Our tools are one person and one file, and the only record is the download.

Side by side

6 rows go their way and 4 go ours, and the ones they win are printed first. Nothing in the right-hand column is a claim about any particular product’s price or features — we have no way to check those, so we do not state them.

What you need	Here, free, in your browser	Practice software you buy
Filing to HMRC or Companies House	No. Nothing here submits anything to anybody.	The reason it exists.
Recognised for Making Tax Digital	Not recognised. The VAT tool works out the nine boxes and says on its own page that it cannot file them.	Recognition is the vendor’s obligation. gov.uk publishes who holds it, and that list is the authority.
Client records, authorisations and deadlines	None held. Nothing is stored on our side at all.	Held for you, with the dates attached.
Comparatives brought forward	No history exists to bring forward.	Carried from year to year.
Several people on one job	One person, one browser tab.	Assigned, reviewed and signed off.
Somebody answerable when it goes wrong	A contact form, and pages that state their own uncertainty.	A contract and a support desk.
A client’s books leaving the office	They do not. The file is read by your own browser, so there is nothing to disclose and no processor to name. The AI tools are the exception and say so on their own pages.	Hosted software necessarily holds client data — which is normal and usually fine, and is a processing arrangement you have to paper.
Doing one sum, today, for a client you took on this morning	Open the page and do it.	It lives inside the client record, which is right once the client is set up.
A bank reconciliation or a debtors ageing on a one-off engagement	Drop in the statement or the invoice list and get the report, with the unmatched items named and a likely reason against each.	Available, once the engagement is in the system.
Cost of the arithmetic	Free. No account, no per-client charge, no seat.	Priced per practice or per client. Their own site has the current figures; we will not guess.

When you should buy practice software

If you are running a practice, you are almost certainly in this list. That is not false modesty — it is what the list is.

You file. Returns, accounts, payroll. Free browser tools cannot do it, and that is not a gap we can close with better writing.
You have clients rather than a business. A client list with deadlines against it is a system, not a spreadsheet, once it gets past about a dozen.
You need last year. Comparatives, brought forward balances, the prior return. We have no memory at all.
More than one person touches a job. Review and sign-off leave a trail, and a trail is the product.
You want somebody on the other end of a phone in January. Reasonable, and not something a free static page can offer.

What you can do here for nothing

Everything below runs in your browser unless it is marked “free to try”, which means an AI tool with an account and a monthly allowance. None of it files anything.

The books and the reconciliations

Double-entry, bank matching and who owes what.

Bookkeeping: Trial Balance, P&L and Balance SheetBring a bank statement, a sales day book or a set of journals into a real double-entry ledger and get the trial balance, profit and loss, balance sheet, VAT or GST figures and every account’s ledger back. Charts of accounts for the UK and India. Runs in your browser — a client’s books are never uploaded.Free Bank ReconciliationMatch a bank statement against the bank ledger from your books — Tally, Zoho, QuickBooks or a spreadsheet — and get the unmatched entries on each side, the matched pairs, and the closing balances explained. Runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.Free Receivables Ageing & Payment RemindersTurn a list of unpaid invoices into a proper ageing report — 0–30, 31–60, 61–90, over 90 days, by customer — and get a reminder letter for each debtor that names their invoices and their total, with the tone stepping up the longer it has been. Runs in your browser; your debtors list is not uploaded.Free Invoice Due Date & Settlement Discount CalculatorWork out payment due dates, late payment interest, and whether an early settlement discount is worth taking.Free

VAT and Making Tax Digital figures

The numbers, and the rows behind every one of them. Not the filing.

VAT Return from a Spreadsheet (the nine boxes)Turn a spreadsheet of sales and purchases into the nine boxes of a UK VAT return — standard accrual, cash accounting or the flat rate scheme — with every box opened up to show the rows behind it, and the sheet checked for net-plus-VAT that does not equal gross, duplicate invoice numbers and rows outside the period. It computes the figures; it does not file them. Runs entirely in your browser.Free Making Tax Digital: Does It Apply to Me?Work out whether Making Tax Digital for Income Tax catches you, and from which April. It adds up your qualifying income the way HMRC defines it - gross income before expenses, across every trade and every property business - shows the sum, names the threshold that catches you, counts your quarterly updates, and gives you the first period and its deadline. Guidance as at 2026-09-20; gov.uk is the authority. Runs in your browser.Free MTD Quarterly Update BuilderTurn the income and expense spreadsheet you already keep into the figures a Making Tax Digital quarterly update asks for. It maps your own category names onto the standard self-employment or property headings, cuts the tax year into its four quarterly periods - standard or calendar - and gives the cumulative year-to-date total alongside the standalone quarter, with every unmatched row listed by name. It produces the figures; filing them needs software HMRC has recognised. Runs in your browser.Free

Between one client’s package and another

The conversions that otherwise become an afternoon of retyping.

QuickBooks / Zoho Books / Tally ConverterMove journals and invoices between QuickBooks, Zoho Books and Tally: a QuickBooks or Zoho journal CSV becomes Tally vouchers, a Zoho invoice export becomes Tally sales vouchers, and a Tally day-book export becomes the journal CSV QuickBooks or Zoho imports. Every voucher is checked to balance. Runs in your browser.Free Excel / CSV to Tally ConverterTurn a spreadsheet of sales, purchases, receipts and payments into Tally import XML — vouchers, party ledgers and stock items — and bring Tally’s exported XML back into Excel. Runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.Free Merge & Dedupe SpreadsheetsCombine up to ten Excel or CSV files into one sheet — columns matched by heading, rows stacked — then remove duplicates on the columns you choose, with every removed row listed by source file and row. Runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.Free

What the client sends you

Including the photographs of it. These need an account and say what they send.

Invoice & Receipt Data ExtractorDrop an invoice or receipt — PDF or pasted text — and get the vendor, numbers, dates, taxes and every line item back as a table you can download for your accounts.Free to try Scanned Invoice & Receipt ReaderPhotograph or scan an invoice or receipt and get the vendor, numbers, dates, taxes and every line item back as a table you can download — the picture is read directly, so a scan with no text layer works.Free to try Bank Statement CategoriserPaste or upload a bank statement and get every transaction categorised to a ledger head — rent, salaries, GST paid, a named customer — as a spreadsheet, or as Tally receipt and payment vouchers ready to import.Free to try Expense Receipts to SpreadsheetPhotograph up to four expense receipts at a time and get one row per receipt — date, merchant, category, amount, tax, currency and how it was paid — as a CSV or Excel file for the expense claim or the books.Free to try

Frequently asked questions

Can a practice run on free tools?

The arithmetic can. The compliance cannot. Everything that has to be submitted — returns, accounts, payroll — has to go through software that is recognised for the job, and none of ours is. What these replace is the part of the week that is a spreadsheet being wrestled into shape, which in most practices is a surprising amount of it.

Can I put client data through these?

Through the browser tools, yes: the file is read on your own machine and never sent anywhere, so there is nothing to disclose and no processor to name. The AI tools are genuinely different and every one of them says so at the top of its page — the text goes to a model through our gateway, personal identifiers are masked on your device first, and you are shown exactly what will be sent before it goes.

Do any of these file anything?

No. Not a return, not a set of accounts, not an RTI submission. They work out figures and show you the rows behind each one. We would rather be plain about it than have you find out on a deadline.

What does Capium cost, and what is in it?

We do not know and we will not guess. We have not tested their product and it would be dishonest to describe it from memory. Their site is linked below.

Will you ever be recognised for filing?

Bridging for VAT is the intended next step and it is not done. Until it is on HMRC’s list, every page here that touches a return says it cannot file, and will keep saying so.

Where to check the things we deliberately did not state

Capium — the product’s own site — price, modules and what is in the current release — their words, not ours
gov.uk — Find software compatible with Making Tax Digital for VAT — who is actually recognised to file a VAT return, from the authority that decides it
gov.uk — Find software compatible with Making Tax Digital for Income Tax — the same list for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax