tofu vs Briefcase

Quick Verdict

Choose tofu if most of your clients need bookkeeping rather than month-end close, you take on clients through the year, or some clients use Sage or Zoho Books.

Choose Briefcase if you want one tool for capture and month-end close, and its prepayment and accrual schedules would save your team enough time to justify a fee on every client. It can also cost less for a very small practice, with fewer than nine clients on its cheapest plan.

Briefcase is an AI bookkeeping tool built for UK accountants and bookkeepers. It captures invoices, receipts and bank statements, codes them in Xero or QuickBooks, and automates month-end close. It charges for each client, based on the documents that client publishes each quarter. If you're weighing it up, the table below does the maths.

Per Client vs. Per Practice

Briefcase puts every client on its own plan. Which plan depends on how many documents that client publishes in a quarter: 75 on Low, 250 on Medium, 750 on High and 1,500 on Ultra. The list prices are £36, £76, £156 and £236 a month, and accountants and bookkeepers get 75% off. So each client costs your practice £9, £19, £39 or £59 a month.

tofu works the other way round. You choose one plan for the whole practice, sized by the extractions you process each month: £79 for about 800, or £199 for about 2,500. An invoice or receipt counts as one extraction, however many lines it has. Every client and every team member is included, and adding a client adds no fee.

So the answer turns on how many clients you have. With nine or more clients and up to 800 documents a month in total, tofu's £79 plan costs less than putting every client on Briefcase's cheapest plan. With 23 or more clients and up to 2,500 documents, the £199 plan does. At 300 clients, Briefcase costs at least £2,700 a month before a single client moves up a plan. For a practice that size, tofu quotes an Enterprise plan.

tofu plans run for a 12-month term, and your price holds for the whole term. Briefcase rolls month to month instead, and you can cancel any time.

Accruals and Prepayments: Where Briefcase Leads

Briefcase does more than bookkeeping. It spots prepayments and builds the amortisation schedules. It posts accruals as journals that reverse the next period, releases deferred income, and keeps a fixed asset register with depreciation. At month end, it reconciles the balance sheet into working papers you can export to Excel. Every Briefcase plan includes all of it.

tofu doesn't do month-end close. It reads and codes your documents, then publishes them to your ledger. Accruals, prepayments and depreciation stay with your team or another tool.

So the real question is how many of your clients need it. A company with prepaid insurance, annual software licences and accrued costs creates that work every month. A sole trader on the cash basis, now the standard for the self-employed, creates none, because income and costs are recorded when money moves. On Briefcase, you pay the per-client fee either way.

Allowances: Per Client vs. One Pool

Each Briefcase plan comes with a quarterly limit for that client. A busy month can borrow from a quiet one within the quarter, which helps with seasonal clients. But one client's spare allowance can't cover another client's busy quarter.

When a client reaches 110% of its limit, Briefcase moves it up to the next plan by default. Switch that off, and the client pauses at 100% until the next quarter starts.

tofu pools every client into one monthly allowance for the practice, so a quiet client leaves room for a busy one. Limits reset on the 1st of each month. If the practice reaches its limit, new documents wait in pending until you move up, and there are no overage fees.

One difference cuts the other way. Briefcase counts each bank statement as two documents. tofu counts each page as one extraction, so a practice that converts long statements every month uses more of its allowance on tofu.

Accounting Software: Xero and QuickBooks vs. Many

Briefcase connects to Xero and QuickBooks with a two-way sync. For sole traders and landlords, it also offers its own ledger, Briefcase Ledger, which files to HMRC for Making Tax Digital.

Like Briefcase, tofu learns from your ledger's history and posts to Xero and QuickBooks. It also publishes straight to Sage Accounting, Zoho Books and Bukku, and prepares files ready to import for FreeAgent and Sage 50. If your clients use a mix of Xero, QuickBooks and Sage, one tofu plan covers them all.

Where Briefcase Still Works

Being fair: besides month-end close, Briefcase does a few things tofu doesn't.

VAT checks at capture. Briefcase checks VAT numbers with HMRC and assigns a VAT rate to each line, using guidance from more than 100 VAT notices.

A ledger for sole traders and landlords. Briefcase Ledger is a standalone ledger with bank feeds, VAT returns and quarterly Making Tax Digital updates filed straight to HMRC. tofu doesn't offer a ledger.

Expense and mileage claims. Briefcase handles employee expense and mileage claims, with approval and reimbursement in Briefcase Ledger. tofu reads receipts, but it doesn't run claims.

You can also run both: Briefcase for the clients whose month-end close earns its fee, and tofu for everyone else.

How to Choose

You don't have to pick one tool for every client. Start by working out where each one earns its fee.

Step 1: Count documents per client. Your current capture tool's usage report shows each client's monthly volume. Add them up to see which tofu plan covers your practice, then price each client on Briefcase's plans.

Step 2: Mark the clients with real month-end work: prepayments, accruals, deferred income or fixed assets. That's where Briefcase's close automation saves time.

Step 3: Start a free trial and connect Xero, QuickBooks, Sage or Zoho Books. tofu learns from your coding history, so there are no rules to build. Clients send photos or PDFs to one WhatsApp number, with no new app or login.

Step 4: Run the same few clients through both. Briefcase offers a two-week trial too. Compare the entries, then compare the bills.

Every tofu plan includes an onboarding session, and you can process documents the day you connect.