The desk behind SterlingPeak.
SterlingPeak is run by Hafiza Ayesha Waheed — a UK finance editor covering accounting, payroll, and tax software for British small businesses, accountants, and finance teams.
Hafiza Ayesha Waheed
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
Ayesha writes every issue of The SterlingPeak Briefing and personally researches every product the publication reviews.
I started SterlingPeak because every honest piece of UK accounting software guidance I needed as an SME finance person was either written for an American audience, or quietly sponsored by the vendor being reviewed. So I built the publication I wanted to read.
The publication
What SterlingPeak is, and what it is not.
SterlingPeak is an independent UK editorial publication covering accounting software, payroll platforms, tax compliance, and business operations for sole traders, freelancers, limited company directors, finance managers, bookkeepers, and accountants across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
The publication's editorial focus is Sage UK and the UK SME software stack around it — Sage Sole Trader, Sage Accounting, Sage 50, Sage Payroll, Sage HR, Sage 200, Sage Intacct, and Sage X3 — alongside Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent, BrightPay, Moneysoft, BambooHR, Pleo, and the platforms British SMEs actually run on. Coverage is grounded in HMRC guidance and UK legislation, not US-style benchmarks.
SterlingPeak is not a content farm, not a vendor mouthpiece, and not a generalist software blog. It is a single editorial desk writing a small number of long-form reviews, comparisons, and compliance guides — verified each VAT cycle and corrected when we get something wrong.
How we work
Editorial standards.
The full operating standard sits in our editorial policy. Four principles run through every article.
UK-only editorial
Every guide is written for HMRC, UK VAT schemes, PAYE RTI, auto-enrolment and Making Tax Digital. Not US tax law translated into pounds.
One named editor
Editorial decisions sit with Ayesha. Articles are not auto-generated, not ghost-written, and never published anonymously.
Pricing verified each quarter
Vendor pricing is re-verified at the start of each VAT quarter. Every article carries the date pricing was last checked.
Disclosure on every commercial page
Affiliate relationships are disclosed inline at the top of every commercial article — not only on a footer link.
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