Ignition (formerly Practice Ignition) reshaped the proposal-to-payment workflow for accountants. Click through a beautifully designed proposal, sign electronically, set up the direct debit, the engagement starts. It is genuinely best-in-class for that specific motion. Accupe takes a broader view: the proposal is one moment in a year-long client lifecycle, and the platform should govern all of it. Here is how the two compare honestly.
Where Ignition Excels
Ignition's proposal builder is mature. Service catalogues, tiered pricing, recurring vs one-off billing, and built-in direct debit collection through GoCardless or Stripe make it a powerful conversion machine. For firms whose pain is signing new business cleanly, Ignition is hard to beat.
Where Accupe Excels
Accupe handles engagement letters natively with built-in e-signatures included on every plan. The engagement is then connected to the live work - Smart Boards, the Client Hub, compliance screening, deadline tracking, AI document analysis. Ignition stops at the signature; Accupe begins there.
Crucially, Accupe is honest about what it is not. We do not collect direct debits ourselves. We do not generate invoices and chase them through GoCardless. If your bottleneck is payment collection, you may want both Accupe and a billing tool.
AML and Onboarding Compliance
Ignition includes basic identity checks via add-on partnerships. Accupe ships with OpenSanctions screening, KYC document capture in the Client Hub, and Compliance Radar to monitor ongoing risk posture across the full client base. For UK firms required by MLR 2017 to maintain ongoing monitoring, Accupe's embedded compliance layer is a meaningful differentiator.
Practice Management Depth
Ignition is not a practice manager. It does not run Smart Boards, manage time, surface filing deadlines, or organise the wider job pipeline. Accupe does all of this. For firms looking to consolidate vendors, Accupe replaces both a practice manager and an engagement-letter tool.
Pricing
Ignition pricing starts around £79 per month for the entry tier and rises to £249+ for higher volume. Accupe Growth at £55/month for five users includes engagement letters, e-signatures, practice management, AI and Compliance Radar.
For firms that genuinely depend on Ignition's direct-debit collection, the spend may still be justified. For firms whose proposals are simpler, Accupe's native engagement letter flow is sufficient.
When to Run Both
A reasonable architecture for many UK firms: Ignition for the cold proposal and recurring billing, Accupe for the live engagement, work governance, compliance and client communication. They are not strict competitors so much as adjacent tools.
Verdict
Ignition is the best proposal-to-payment specialist on the market. Accupe is the broader practice operating system. If billing automation is your bottleneck, keep Ignition and add Accupe for everything that happens afterward. If your billing is already handled elsewhere, Accupe alone covers the proposal, the engagement letter, and the entire downstream operation at a fraction of the combined cost.