You follow twenty businesses, and each one sends you its numbers its own way: a spreadsheet by email, bank statements as attachments, a login to yet another tool. Half your day goes on chasing documents, the other half on filing them.
AngelStart opens a workspace for the people who support businesses: accountants, part-time CFOs, consultants, support networks. Your clients run their business in it, and you follow along in the same place, one client file at a time.
Every client file in one portfolio
The portfolio lists your files, each with its stage (business creation, management under way, invitation sent) and its last activity. Find a file by name, filter by stage, and spot an unread message right on the file's row.
At the top of the page, three markers:
- pending invitations, so you know who to chase;
- open files, both running businesses and creations;
- files to complete, when the bank is not connected or a balance sheet is missing.
A file opens from the company number
"New dossier" first asks for its type: a creation to support (business plan, forecast, funding) or a running business to follow (actual figures, cash, management control).
For a running business, its name or its SIREN or SIRET number (the French company identifiers) is enough: the record fills in from the official business directory, address included. For a creation, the project name and the founder's name will do.
Last step, inviting the business owner. The email goes out in your firm's name, with your message. The owner connects their bank, fills in their activity, and you keep the numbers. Don't have their address yet? The file opens anyway, and you can invite them later.
The business already uses AngelStart? No duplicates: you send its owner a request to join your portfolio, either while opening the file or with "Attach an existing company". If they accept, the file joins your portfolio with its full history.
Your team, on the files you assign
Under Team, invite your colleagues by email, and assign them files right away if you like. Two roles:
- administrator: sees every file, manages the team and billing;
- collaborator: sees their own files and the ones you assign.
From the portfolio, "Share with a colleague" decides who in the firm sees a file. The team list shows when each person last logged in. And when someone leaves the firm, you remove them: the files stay with the firm, nothing changes for your clients.
The business owner works with you
Every file has its own conversation with the business owner. You write from the portfolio or from the file, and they get an email for every message. They reply from their own workspace. No more threads scattered across ten inboxes.
On their side, everything happens under Settings › My advisors. They see the firm that manages their file, since when and who opened it, and they can write to the firm from there. The firm sees their activity, their numbers and what you are preparing together. Their bank stays theirs: the firm only has read access to it.
The owner can also invite an advisor themselves, free of charge: their accountant, mentor or business coach. The invited advisor finds the file in their portfolio, no access code needed, and works on it alongside them. The owner can remove that access whenever they want, from the same page.
Already on AngelStart? Open your firm from your account
You use AngelStart for your own company and you also support other businesses? No need for a second account. Under Settings › My profile, "Open my firm" creates and activates your firm with your access code, in one go.
Then you choose, company by company, which ones become firm files and which ones stay yours. A company already covered by your subscription is only billed to the firm once the paid period is over: never two payments for the same company.
One thing to know before you start: becoming an advisor is permanent, and you will no longer be able to create a company in your own name.
In practice, life at the firm
It all starts with your advisor workspace: your firm, found in the business directory, your activity (accountant, part-time CFO, consultant or other), then the access code sent by the AngelStart team. No card to register.
After that, day-to-day work fits in four pages:
- Portfolio, for your files;
- Team, for your colleagues and their roles;
- Billing, which details file by file what AngelStart bills your firm, based on your open files, at the rhythm you choose once for all of them: monthly or yearly;
- Settings, for your firm's details as they appear on your files and invoices.
When a review or year-end comes round, "Export invoices", in a file's menu, prepares an archive with every invoice and a summary table.
And if a client leaves, you close their file: billing stops at the end of the month, and the company goes back to its owner with all its data.
