We built this because we needed it ourselves.
Aligned exists because the person who built it got tired of being told her spreadsheet wasn't good enough.
The MTD announcement landed. So did the sales pitches.
When HMRC announced Making Tax Digital, the accounting software industry did what it always does - saw an opportunity to sell.
Suddenly every vendor had an MTD product. Suddenly your spreadsheet wasn't compliant. Suddenly you needed to buy their platform, migrate your data, learn their system, and pay their monthly fee. Every quarter. For every client.
If you're an accountant with 30 clients who each send you a spreadsheet, that's 30 subscriptions. Or hours of re-keying into someone else's software.
If you're a landlord tracking three properties in Excel, that's an accounting package you never wanted for a problem you'd already solved.
Meet Charlotte
Charlotte Kieran
Founder
Charlotte spent 20 years inside the accounting software industry - at Sage, Exact, Bottomline, and NetSuite. She knows how these companies think, how they build, and how they price.
She left to raise her family, manage her own property portfolio, and take on a role as Chair of Governors at a local school.
When MTD was announced, she didn't see it as a former tech executive. She saw it as a landlord. She had a spreadsheet that worked. She resented being told to scrap it for an expensive subscription.
So she built a tool that took her spreadsheet and filed it to HMRC. No re-keying. No new platform to learn. Just upload, map, submit.
Once it worked for her own portfolio, the next step was obvious. If it works for one landlord's spreadsheet, it works for any spreadsheet. And if it works for any spreadsheet, it works for the accountant managing 30 of them.
"I come from a family of entrepreneurs. I knew exactly who would end up carrying the cost of MTD - the small business owner. I wasn't going to let that happen without building an alternative."
How we think about this
Your spreadsheet is your system.
You've spent years building it. It works. MTD doesn't mean you need to throw it away - it means you need a bridge between your spreadsheet and HMRC. That's what Aligned is.
You shouldn't pay more because HMRC changed the rules.
MTD is a legal requirement, not a premium feature. We're free during HMRC's soft landing period, and we'll always be transparent about what we charge and why.
You should understand exactly what gets sent to HMRC.
Every mapping is reviewed by you before submission. Every submission is logged with a full audit trail. Nothing goes to HMRC without your sign-off.
The company
Upload a spreadsheet. See how Smart Map works.
No credit card, no commitment.
Create your account in 30 seconds - no credit card, no setup.