Van Swaaij plans to leave Skype and focus on Crunch and other ventures when (or perhaps if) eBay’s planned sale of its 65 percent stake in Skype to a private investor group for $1.9 billion goes through.

Birch says he’s backing the venture because of his own accounting frustrations as a freelancer and disappointment with accountancy firms that “use Excel spreadsheets as the mainstay of my interaction with them”. Birch invested £150,000 in mobile social network Wubud last year

It might be attractive to investors, but it’s far from the only online accounting site: Freeagentcentral.com, Kashflow.co.uk, Xero and Clearbooks.co.uk are just some of them. But by focusing on sole traders and freelancers, and with its all-too-appropriate name, Crunch.co.uk is trying to differentiate itself by targeting the thousands of people who have lost jobs in the recession and are looking to build self-employed careers.