Bookkeeping has a reputation as the boring part of accounting. It is actually the part everything else depends on. A VAT return is only as accurate as the ledger behind it. A tax planning conversation in month ten is worthless if nobody has looked at the numbers since month one.
What we do
We connect your bank accounts, payment processors and card feeds to cloud accounting software, and reconcile them every month. Receipts are captured by photograph and coded automatically. Where something does not have an obvious home, we ask you rather than guessing and burying it in miscellaneous.
At the year-end, we prepare statutory accounts in the correct format and file them at Companies House, alongside the corporation tax return to HMRC. For sole traders, we prepare accounts that support the Self Assessment return.
Reconciling monthly means errors surface within weeks, when you can still remember what a payment was for. Reconciling annually means reconstructing a year from bank statements and guesswork — which is slower, more expensive, and less accurate.
What is included
- Bank, credit card and payment processor feeds connected and reconciled monthly
- Sales and purchase ledgers maintained, with aged debtor and creditor reports
- Digital receipt capture through Dext or Hubdoc
- Fixed asset register and depreciation schedules
- Year-end statutory accounts prepared under FRS 105 or FRS 102 Section 1A
- Accounts filed at Companies House and the CT600 filed at HMRC
- A plain-English summary of what the year's numbers actually say
Accounts receivable and payable
Two of the most common cash-flow problems have nothing to do with profit. The first is invoices going out late. The second is nobody chasing them once they are overdue.
We can run both ledgers for you: raising sales invoices on schedule, monitoring what is outstanding, sending structured payment reminders, and keeping supplier payments organised so nothing important gets missed. Businesses that fail are usually profitable on paper and out of cash in reality.
Software
We work in Xero, QuickBooks and FreeAgent. If you already use one, we work in yours. If you are starting from scratch, we will recommend based on how you invoice, how you get paid and whether you carry stock — not on which one we prefer. In most plans the licence is included in your monthly fee.
Making Tax Digital
MTD has already removed the option of keeping VAT records on paper, and is being extended to income tax in stages. Anyone still working from spreadsheets and a folder of receipts will need to move at some point. Doing it calmly now is considerably less painful than doing it under a deadline.