A CPA in suburban Atlanta manages 80 small business clients. Her inbox: 400 unread emails. Some are client questions she needs to answer. Some are bank statements she needs to file. Some are QuickBooks notifications. Some are IRS notices requiring urgent action. She spends the first 90 minutes of every day just triaging email, trying to figure out which fires to put out first. Meanwhile, critical IRS deadlines hide in the noise.
Accountants drown in communication. Each client sends documents via email, asks questions via email, and receives deliverables via email. Add in vendor notices, software notifications, and regulatory updates, and the inbox becomes unmanageable. Karbon ($59-79/user/mo) offers email integration with practice management, but it is full workflow software when some accountants just need better email triage. Jetpack Workflow ($36-45/mo) manages tasks but doesn't solve the inbox problem.
The opportunity is a unified inbox for accountants at $29-49/mo: connect email and automatically categorize by client, priority, and type (document, question, deadline). Surface IRS and state notices at the top. Link emails to clients in your practice management. One view of all client communication, sorted by urgency. Not full practice management — just inbox sanity for accountants who are drowning in email.
📊 Market Evidence
🏆 Competitor Landscape
How existing players stack up in this market
| Competitor | Pricing | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Karbon | $59-79/user/mo | Practice management + email |
| Jetpack Workflow | $36-45/mo | Workflow management for accountants |
| Financial Cents | $39-59/user/mo | Accounting workflow + client portal |
| Canopy | $50-100/mo | Tax practice management |
| Practice CS | Contact sales | Thomson Reuters practice management |
Practice management + email
Workflow management for accountants
Accounting workflow + client portal
Tax practice management
Thomson Reuters practice management
Score Breakdown
Good market signals with room for growth
Market (20%) + Revenue (20%) + Trend (15%) + Competition (15%) + Build (15%) + Pricing (15%)
🚀 Start Building
Copy a prompt into your favorite AI coding tool and start building this idea right now.
Build a SaaS product called "Unified Accountant Inbox". ## Product Overview Messages, tasks, files from all clients in one view ## Problem Messages, tasks, files from all clients in one view ## Solution Build Unified Accountant Inbox ## Target Audience indie hackers, small businesses, and solopreneurs ## Tech Stack - Next.js 15 (App Router) with TypeScript - Tailwind CSS v4 for styling - Supabase for auth, database, and storage - Vercel for deployment - shadcn/ui for UI components - Framer Motion for animations ## MVP Features to Build 1. Landing page with clear value proposition 2. User authentication (sign up, sign in, forgot password) 3. Core product functionality based on the solution above 4. Dashboard for users to manage their data 5. Pricing page with at least 2 tiers (free + paid) 6. Basic settings/profile page ## Known Competitors Karbon, Jetpack Workflow, Financial Cents, Canopy, Practice CS ## Key Risks to Address Standard market entry risks ## Deployment 1. Set up Supabase project and configure environment variables 2. Deploy to Vercel with `npx vercel --prod` 3. Set up custom domain 4. Configure Supabase RLS policies for security ## Instructions Start by creating the project structure, then build the landing page first. Use server components where possible. Make it mobile-responsive from the start. Focus on getting the core value loop working before adding polish.