Ten years building the cloud accounting platform that keeps small businesses moving
Client
Sage
Sage needed to take its desktop heritage into the cloud, and keep it moving for the long haul
How do you build a platform that hundreds of thousands of small businesses trust with their books, their bank feeds and their tax returns? Then keep making it better, year after year, under full audit?
From desktop to cloud
Sage Accounting is Sage's flagship product for small businesses, going head to head with Xero and QuickBooks. It does the work that keeps a business running: Making Tax Digital submissions to HMRC, open banking feeds and a long list of third-party financial workflows. Hundreds of thousands of businesses rely on it, along with the accountants who support them.
For more than ten years, we were Sage's product engineering partner across web and mobile. At our peak, eight Kyan people sat inside the Sage team. Around a fifth of the code that runs the product is ours.
A cloud platform built for the long run
We helped build the Ruby application backbone that took Sage's desktop products into the cloud. It's a multi-tenant platform, designed from day one for huge numbers of businesses working at once. Every one of them expects their numbers to be right, every time.
One design system, every screen
We built the mobile-first design system and the React component library behind both the web product and the mobile app. Every new screen inherits the same patterns, the same accessibility standards and the same Sage brand. The result feels like one product, wherever you use it.
Connected to everything that matters
Small businesses don't run on one app. We built the public and internal API layer that connects Sage Accounting to more than 50 external platforms. That means marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, open banking providers and HMRC's Making Tax Digital service, all talking to the books in real time.
Part of the team, not a supplier
We never worked at arm's length. Our engineers shared code reviews, security audits and quality gates with Sage's own team, and met the same external audit standards. That's what regulated financial data, open banking and HMRC integrations demand.
It's the kind of partnership we love most: long-term, deeply embedded and trusted with the things that really matter.
By the numbers
years as Sage's product engineering partner
10+
of the Sage Accounting codebase built by Kyan
~20%
external platforms connected
50+
