SpidNums vs Trello: an honest comparison for Canadian firms
A fair comparison for Canadian practices — what Trello does well first, then where the two differ.
Trello is an Atlassian-owned Kanban tool prized for being the simplest, most approachable board product a team can adopt. SpidNums is the better fit when a Canadian firm wants flat USD $1,200-per-firm-per-year pricing, white-label branding on every plan, deadlines generated from Canadian rules rather than from generic recurring tasks, and client data hosted in Canada. Here is the honest breakdown.
What Trello does well
This section comes first deliberately. Trello is a serious product with real customers, and a comparison that pretends otherwise is not worth reading.
- The gentlest learning curve in work management — a new hire understands a Trello board in minutes.
- Fast, dependable Kanban with checklists, due dates, labels and Power-Ups covering most simple extensions.
- A free tier that very small teams genuinely operate on.
- Atlassian ownership: a stable, mature product with a large ecosystem behind it.
Where the fit differs
These are differences in model rather than claims about missing features. Where a capability is not listed for Trello, that means we did not verify it — not that it is absent.
- Card versus client record: a Trello card holds a job. A SpidNums client record holds the client — fiscal year-end, contacts, assigned services, engagement letters — and each period's jobs hang off it, so history accumulates in one place.
- Deadline logic: SpidNums generates deadlines from Canadian rules — GST/HST by each client's cadence, the T2 six-month clock, year-end reminders a month early. Trello is a general-purpose board where firms typically enter and re-enter those dates by hand.
- Pricing model: Trello's paid tiers are per user. SpidNums is a flat USD $1,200 per firm per year with unlimited team members.
- Boards are kept, not lost: SpidNums' Task Master toggles between table and Kanban views, so a Trello-trained team keeps the board habit while the client record does the remembering.
Pricing
Trello does not publish pricing we could verify, so this page does not state a number for it — ask the vendor for a current quote. SpidNums is a flat USD $1,200 per firm per year with every feature included, including white-label branding.
Side by side
| Compared on | SpidNums | Trello |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat per firm | Free tier; paid tiers per user — see vendor |
| Published price | Flat USD $1,200 per firm per year, all features included | See vendor pricing page |
| White-label branding | Full white-label on every plan — app, emails and letterhead | See vendor |
| Canadian deadline logic | CRA-native: T2 six-month clock and earlier balance-due date, GST/HST by client cadence, fiscal-year-end reminders | General-purpose due dates and recurring tasks — firms model CRA rules themselves |
| E-signed engagement letters | Engagement letters built from the services catalogue, signed on a no-login branded page | See vendor |
| Data residency | Hosted in Canada (ca-central-1) | See vendor |
What SpidNums is, plainly
SpidNums is practice management for Canadian accounting firms: the client list, the services each client buys, the deadlines those services generate, the person who owns each one, and the engagement letter that defined the scope. It is not a general ledger, it does not prepare or transmit returns, and it does not calculate payroll — those stay in the tools your firm already files with.
The list below is the complete set of claims this site makes about the product. If a capability is not on it, we do not claim it.
- Multi-tenant white-label branding per firm — name, logo, colours, emails and letterhead
- Colour-coded SLA deadline dashboard ranked by proximity
- Aggregated reminders across tasks, service cadences and fiscal year-ends
- E-signed engagement letters with a public, no-login client portal
- Per-tenant Google Workspace integration
- Client portal
- Staff roles with confidential-client gating
- Canadian-hosted data (Supabase ca-central-1)
- Flat USD $1,200 per firm per year, all inclusive
- CSV/XLSX client import and export
Questions worth asking both vendors
Comparison grids converge because feature names converge. These six questions separate products that look identical on paper, and they are worth asking of Trello and of SpidNums alike.
- How is a deadline generated — from a rule tied to the client's fiscal year-end and reporting period, or from a recurring task somebody configured by hand?
- When a client's filing cadence changes, is that one field or a rewrite of every future date?
- Whose brand does the client see on emails, on the portal and on a signed engagement letter — and on which plan does that become true?
- Where is client data hosted, and is tenant isolation enforced in the database or only in the application? Get the answer in writing.
- What is the total annual cost at three seats and at ten? Ask for the total, not the per-user figure.
- What comes across on migration, and what does not? Clients usually move; documents, notes and completed work usually do not.
Who should choose Trello
A small firm with a short client list and simple cadences — where one board per season genuinely covers the work — should stay on Trello. It is the simplest, cheapest way to run a visual to-do list, and a well-kept Trello board beats an unadopted practice system every time.
If that describes your firm, take the other product seriously. If it does not, the practice management overview covers what SpidNums does in full.
Switching
SpidNums imports client lists, not boards. Trello client data often sits in card titles, descriptions and custom fields, so expect a spreadsheet clean-up step: export, consolidate into the CSV/XLSX import template, import, then assign services so deadlines generate. Old boards stay in Trello as the archive of finished work.
SpidNums imports and exports clients as CSV or XLSX. There is no direct migration connector, so historical documents, notes and completed work do not come across automatically — plan the cutover around a period boundary rather than mid-season.
Frequently asked questions
Does SpidNums have a Kanban board like Trello?
Yes. Task Master, the SpidNums work module, toggles between a table view and a Kanban board, with filters and inline status changes. The difference from Trello is what sits behind the cards: each project belongs to a client record with a fiscal year-end, assigned services and contacts, so the board is one view of the practice rather than the whole system.
Is Trello enough to run an accounting practice?
For a small book of clients with simple cadences, honestly, it can be — a well-kept Trello board is better than an abandoned enterprise system. Firms tend to outgrow it when GST/HST periods, corporate year-ends and staff handoffs multiply faster than cards and checklists can be maintained by hand.
How much does Trello cost?
We have not verified Trello's current pricing and do not quote figures; check the vendor's pricing page. Trello offers a free tier and per-user paid tiers. SpidNums has no per-user element: one flat USD $1,200 per firm per year, unlimited clients and team members, with a free trial and no credit card.
Can I import Trello boards into SpidNums?
Not directly — SpidNums imports client lists, not boards. Export your client information to CSV or XLSX (Trello data often sits in card titles and custom fields, so expect some spreadsheet clean-up), import it with the template, then let assigned services generate the recurring work that cards used to represent.