The stuff that isn't on your product roadmap

You're heads-down on the product. This is the five things that quietly go wrong around it if nobody's watching, written by a Chartered Accountant who works with SaaS and tech founders, not a generic accountant bolted on afterward.

Ou-Jue Cheng CA, Straxa Advisory

01 · Money

Getting paid in more than one currency

If a customer pays in USD or EUR, your bank's exchange rate and fees are quietly taking a cut you haven't priced in. Decide early whether you hold foreign currency or convert straight away, and know what each costs you before it's 50 customers instead of 2.

Worth checking

Check what your bank actually charges to convert, not just the headline rate
Decide if you need a multi-currency account before you need one urgently
Price in FX cost, don't absorb it by accident

02 · Bookkeeping

Bookkeeping habits that save you later

Nobody starts a company to do bookkeeping. But the founders who build three habits from day one spend a fraction of the time at year-end that the ones who don't do.

Worth checking

Keep business and personal spending in separate accounts from day one
Record what a payment was for while you remember, not three months later
Reconcile monthly, even if it's five minutes, not a backlog you dread
Set up automated routines and auto-forwarding into your bookkeeping app early. It keeps things organised without extra admin every week

03 · Tech stack

Tech stack choices that hit your finances later

The tool you pick today isn't just today's decision. It's what your bookkeeping, billing, and reporting are built on when the business looks nothing like it does now, selling into new markets, charging in currencies you don't use yet, with volume your current setup was never built for. Some tools scale with you. Others quietly box you in, and you don't find out until you're already stuck.

Worth checking

Can it handle multi-currency properly if you expand into new markets, not just display a different symbol
Can you get clean revenue and churn numbers out of it today, and will that still hold at 10x the customers
Migrating later means moving live customer and financial data. Price that risk in now, not when you're forced to

04 · AI & code

AI-written code and what it means later

“Vibe-coded” features ship fast, and that's exactly the risk. Code you don't fully understand is code you can't fully vet, and that catches up with you at the worst moments: a security review, a funding round, a customer audit.

Worth checking

Someone needs to actually understand what's shipped, even if AI wrote the first draft
Know which parts of your product you could explain to a technical reviewer and which you couldn't
Speed now can mean a rebuild later. Go in with your eyes open, not blind
AI has made building fast and easy, so ask what makes you or your business unique. Often the idea isn't new, but a different purpose and a different person behind it is what makes a technology or app succeed

05 · People

Finding a co-founder

The wrong co-founder relationship doesn't fail at the idea stage. It fails eighteen months in, over equity, decision rights, or who does what, because none of it was written down.

Worth checking

Look for complementary skills, not a friend who thinks like you
Agree equity, vesting, and roles in writing before it matters, not after
Red flag: anyone who won't put the agreement in writing

Talk it through

Want a second pair of eyes on this?

None of this is complicated on its own. It's easy to miss when you're building the actual product. That's the gap this hub is for.

Straxa Advisory can work alongside you as your business grows. Whether that's getting your financials in order as you move into raising capital, or simply making sure you're meeting your obligations to HMRC and Companies House, we can help.