Pandle is online accounting software helping to save business costs for many small businesses. It’s an online accounting service which has a completely free version which has most features a small business needs from accounts software. It also has a Pro version which comes with automatic bank feeds. We can get Pandle Pro for our clients for just £2.50 plus VAT per month.
With online accounting, you can log in from anywhere to access and update your accounts. There’s no need to update the software or backup your data because they do this for you. You can give your accountant access to your account, then they can log in at the same time as you, to view, fix, and advise you throughout the year, then easily and quickly produce year end accounts. You should also save business costs on your accountant because you’re making their job easier. See more benefits here .
Why pay hundreds of pounds on software installed onto your computer, or waste hours messing about with spreadsheets that don’t give you many instant reports?
Online accounting has made it so much easier to do your own bookkeeping, you don’t even need to enter anything. You can either sync directly with your bank accounts, or you can download your transactions from online banking, then upload them to the software. All you need to do is tell the software where to put each transaction.
You can then produce many useful professional reports as often as you like, helping you run your business smoothly.
Save business costs on a bookkeeping service, by quickly and easily doing it yourself.
In the age of ‘cloud-computing’ it has become easier and cheaper to set up and run your own business. Some accountants are taking advantage of this, moving from traditional offices to a more cloud-based service. They are probably based away from the high street or even at their homes, communicating online and meeting via videocalls. With much lower overheads, their fees should be much lower, yet you should get the same standard of service if you use fully qualified and experienced accountants. So you save business costs while still getting a great service.
Combined with the use of online accounting, some of these ‘new breeds’ offer a fixed price menu of services, payable in easy monthly instalments. So you know exactly what you will be paying, unlike the more traditional method of charging you by the hour, where the accountant can be rewarded for working slower!
Why pay hundreds of pounds more for an accountant working in a nice high street office?
Here we explain the 2022 Xero Price Increase. How much Xero’s Prices are increasing. Why Xero’s prices are increasing. Also, the alternatives to Xero. With CloudBook Online Accountants, you can choose whichever software suits you the best.
Here are the Xero Price increases over the past two years:
| Package | Starter | Standard | Premium |
| 2020 price £pcm | 10 | 24 | 30 |
| 2021 price £pcm | 12 | 26 | 33 |
| 2021 increase | 20% | 8% | 10% |
| 2022 price £pcm | 14 | 28 | 36 |
| 2022 increase | 17% | 8% | 9% |
| 2 Year increase | 40% | 17% | 20% |
Xero state that they are constantly enhancing and improving their product. That the pricing is in line with the value of Xero in the current market. It will help Xero to respond quickly with new tools and services that business might need. Also that it will improve Xero in the future.
In our opinion, Xero is certainly improving all of the time, however those changes are small. Where the changes are not small, they usually come at an extra cost, such as the Expenses or Projects add-ons. The core platform, in our opinion, has not improved enough over the past two years to justify up to a 40% increase in the Xero price over the past two years. Having said that, it is still the best online accounting software for small businesses. So if you can afford to continue using it, you should.
With CloudBook Online Accountants, unlike other accountants, you can use whichever software you prefer. We don’t make you use Xero software, so you don’t have to pay their high prices. As well as that, you’ll probably save on accountancy fees too, with our low fixed monthly fees.
To avoid the price increase, could you downgrade your Xero plan? The Starter plan now has unlimited bank transactions and allows up to 20 sales invoices and 5 bills per month. Instead of using bills you could just attach them to the bank transaction. The Standard plan is only missing multi-currency which is only essential if you have foreign bank accounts. If you have few foreign currency transactions you could convert them manually.
Pandle is unlimited and comes with multi-currency and bank feeds for £5pcm. We can get it for £2.50pcm. It’s relatively new, sometimes slow, and takes a while to get used to. However, it should cope with most things you use Xero for.
QuickBooks is our next most popular software after Xero. It does most things that Xero can do and is quite easy to use. Their Simple package is £12pcm, Essentials £22pcm, Plus is £32pcm.
FreeAgent is geared towards small business and freelancers. Natwest and RBS customers can get it for free. We can get it for our clients for £17.50pcm.
Kashflow is less popular than it used to be. However, if you have straightforward accounting transactions, it can work well for you. Starter is £9pcm, Business is £18pcm or with payroll is £24pcm.
Quickfile is used by a few of our clients. It’s less easy to use but it can be free if you have less than 1000 entries per year, otherwise it’s just £45pa. If you want automated bank feeds, that’s an extra £15pa.
If you’re not VAT registered, you could use a spreadsheet (e.g. Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers) to do your accounting. While we prefer online accounting software, if your accounting transactions are straightforward, a tidy spreadsheet would be ok. All transactions need to be categorised.
We have our own free software which very basically allows you to list your sales and expenditure. It can also submit MTD VAT returns.
There are many other online accounting software platforms available. We’ll consider doing your accounts etc using any online accounting software. Look out for ones that can link to UK bank accounts and are MTD compliant. Unfortunately, this excludes Wave accounting which is a free alternative if you don’t need those things.
About Us Our Prices Instant QuoteWe hate calling ourselves cheap accountants! We prefer low cost accountants, or competitively priced accountants, but that’s too much of a mouthful! However, compared to traditional high street accountants, we’re certainly a lot cheaper. Even most online accountants aren’t as cheap as we are. So cheap accountants it is then. But does that mean cheap and nasty? Does it mean cheap and slow? Does it mean cheap for a short time then gone forever? Certainly not, to all of those!
We’re as cheap as £50 per year if you only need a personal tax return (i.e. no accounts). Or we are as cheap as £20 per month if you do need accounts as well as a tax return and advice. Click on Instant Quote to calculate our fees – instantly! You don’t need to wait for an email but we will follow up the instant quote with a detailed quote and then up to 4 emails. We promise to leave you alone and to not send you spam. Or click on Pricing to view all of our packages and fees.
Traditional high street accountants probably wouldn’t get out of bed to do accounts for anything less than £1,500, or simple personal tax returns for £250. Online accountants vary, but unless you have a very low amount of annual sales, there aren’t many that are cheaper accountants than us – not by meaningful amounts anyway. You have to watch out for add-ons too, like a personal tax return, mortgage references, annual forms submitted to Companies House, meetings. All of these are included in our accounts packages. Also, are they fully qualified accountants?
You can see from our Client Reviews that we’re the opposite of nasty! Friendly, delightful, patient, understanding and excellent are just a few of the attributes given to us. Also, we are a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). They are the oldest and most prestigious of accountancy bodies. ACCA and ICAS are the other UK bodies that other accountants should be members of to be fully qualifed. As an ICAEW member, we are regularly inspected to ensure we follow strict quality and ethical guidelines, otherwise we get fined and even disqualified. So whatever we do, it will not be nasty, even though we’re cheap accountants.
We promise to respond to messages within 1 day, to monthly/quarterly jobs within 8 working days, and to annual jobs within 22 working days. In fact we’re normally much quicker than that, but we have to allow for the occasional busy periods and holidays etc. Compared to what a lot of our new clients say when they move from other accountants, and based on our experience, that’s not at all slow! Cheap accountants but not slow accountants.
We certainly hope we’re not going to disappear anytime soon! Since 2013 we’ve been providing a great service to many loyal happy clients. We also try to keep on top of the technology curve, keeping ahead of the pack. In fact we specialised in online accounting back in 2013, not long after the start of Xero and Quickbooks Online. We also have all our systems in place and ready to go to help more and more businesses like yours in their quest for cheap accountants.
We do everything online from home. So our costs are low. Also, by doing everything online, and having most of our clients use online accounting, we’re very efficient. We also have automated systems to do a lot of the admin work for us. So it takes less time to give you a great service. Read more about how we work.
So we might be cheap accountants, but we’re also good, fast, and we hope to be around for a long while yet! Give us a try. You can cancel or change packages at any time. There is no tie-in period, we would only charge you for the actual work done. Get an instant quote now or contact us if you have any questions.
Contact Us Our Prices About UsIs it time to do your annual accounts? You might be wondering: what do I need to give my accountant to do my year end accounts? If you’re using old methods of bookkeeping, and a traditional accountant, read further down below…
…and use online accounting you might not need to do anything! We are accountants who specialise (since 2013) in online accounting, working with free online accounting software such as Pandle as well as better software that charges a monthly fee, like Xero. We can just log in to view your accounts, take what we need, and request any further information required such as year end bank reports. It’s so much easier, and quicker, and it saves you accountancy fees! See our low monthly fixed fees or read about all the other benefits of using online bookkeeping including doing your bookkeeping on the beach!
You don’t have to wait to save on accountancy fees or benefit from online accounting software. If you use spreadsheets or accounting software, we will still be able to do your accounts this year, probably for the same low online accountancy fees. Then we’ll help you move to online accounting software.
This helpsheet provides you with an overview of the information to provide to your accountant (a traditional one) to enable completion of your end of year accounts. Of course, the more you do, the less amount of time they have to spend on the routine compliance aspects of your affairs, so the lower your accountancy fees or more time is available to assist you with developing your business. Or use online accounting which does much of this for you and, as online accounting specialists, we can help you onto it for free.
However, every business is different and you should discuss your own requirements with us.
Between us we can decide what you can prepare for us and what we will prepare ourselves. Talking helps to eliminate any misunderstandings.
It’s also helpful to agree a time schedule for when you will provide the records and for when we will have your accounts ready for discussion.
Basic ways in which you may find you can help…
If you’re feeling more adventurous, you can also assist by
By using reconciliations and control accounts on a regular basis during the year, you help to ensure there are no errors in the records.
Not every business will have all of the following records but if you do, you should provide them to us covering the year (plus one month after)…
In addition the following schedules will assist your accountant in completing your end of year accounts:
We can help you avoid all of the above by moving you to online accounting for free. There are many benefits to online accounting, and some of the online bookkeeping software is completely free. It also means we can work with you throughout the year, giving advice and providing reports when you need it most, not after the year end when it could be too late. Your year end accounts and tax become easier and quicker to do, so you pay less fixed accountancy fees.
Contact Us Our Prices About UsCheaper accounts are here! For as little as £20 per month plus VAT, you can now have a great and efficient accountancy service from CloudBook Accountants.
This new cheaper accounts service is available to businesses who already use online accounting and just need the basic service from a fully qualified, experienced accountant. For those that may need more help throughout the year, our Annual+ package is just an extra £10 plus VAT per month, and comes with unlimited general advice and quarterly reviews of your online accounting records.
Firstly, we do everything online, from signing you up to signing your accounts off – see how we work. It’s easier and a lot more efficient, so it takes us less time overall to provide services to you. Secondly, online accounting has improved immensely over the past few years. If used well, it usually makes the task of preparing your accounts and tax returns simpler. It also means it doesn’t take us much longer to prepare accounts for a larger business with tidy online records, than it would for a smaller business. So we can offer the same fixed fees to virtually all businesses that use online accounting well.
CloudBook Accountants launched back in 2013 as an online accounting specialist. At the time, online accounting was still relatively new and many businesses were making their first move online from manual or desktop accounting. Today, we recognise that the majority of small businesses are now reaping the benefits from online accounting and have been doing so for some time now. As such, those businesses probably don’t need as much help as before with their online accounting. That’s why we’ve launched this more basic package.
The new Annual package is priced according to the following business types:
Contact us now to start benefiting sooner from our cheaper accounts package.
In this post we’ll explain how to do a VAT return in Wave Accounting.
Wave provide good free online accounting software. It’s paid for by small adverts at the side of the screen that you’ll hardly notice. Wave Accounting is a Canadian company who have built free accounting software mainly for Canada and the USA. But it can also be used in the UK and you can certainly work out what should go onto a VAT return in Wave. AS explained below, on anything other than the normal VAT scheme, you will need to adjust what is shown on the VAT return in Wave.
VAT is a sales tax and that’s what it’s called in Wave Accounting. You’ll first need to set up your VAT rates by going to Settings (cog button), Sales Taxes, then Add a Sales Tax. See the image below for the settings you’ll need for the standard UK VAT rate at the time of publishing this post.
You may also need to set up other rates for your VAT return in Wave such as zero rate (0%) and the EC Reverse Charge rate which is explained below. Once you’ve set up the rates of VAT in Wave, you can then start adding or claiming VAT in Wave as follows:
Sales invoice and Bill: once you add a line to a sales invoice or bill in Wave, simply select the appropriate VAT rate. Wave will work out the VAT for you based on the percentage entered.
Transactions: add or select the income or expense in Transactions, then click on show details. The Taxes box will appear so you can select the appropriate VAT rate as shown below.
The report you’ll need to do your VAT Return in Wave is the Sales Tax report. Just select the start and end dates for the period that your VAT return needs to cover then click on Update. Any transactions on which a VAT rate has been selected will appear in the report. The report is separated into a section for each VAT rate.
The summary report shows the totals and the audit report shows every transaction. The Payable columns are for income and sales (excluding VAT) and VAT on income and sales. The Receivable columns are for expenses and bills (excluding VAT) and VAT on expenses and bills. Then the difference between the two VAT amounts is the net VAT payable or receivable.
The normal accrual basis VAT scheme is where you calculate and pay/claim VAT at 20% based on the date your customers are invoiced or the date you are billed. If you are on the normal accrual basis VAT scheme, you can use the VAT Return in Wave as it is.
The normal cash basis VAT scheme is where you calculate and pay/claim VAT at 20% based on the date your customers pay you or the date you pay suppliers. If you are on the normal cash basis VAT scheme, you need to adjust your VAT Return in Wave. The adjustments are shown below. You’ll need the Aged Receivables and Aged Payables reports both at the start and the end date of the VAT period.
Currently, calculating flat rate VAT in Wave isn’t possible. But you can easily find the VAT inclusive income amount you need by running a Sales Tax Report and adding the Payable amounts for before tax (net) and tax (VAT). Don’t forget that all income needs to be included in the flat rate scheme calculation, so you may want to use a ‘Zero’ rate or a ‘No VAT’ rate on income where VAT isn’t charged so that it appears in the report. Once you have your total VAT-inclusive income, just apply your flat rate percentage to calculate the VAT payable.
Use the same workings for sales as shown above in Normal Cash VAT Return in Wave. Then add the net and VAT amounts, then apply your flat rate percentage to calculate the VAT payable.
Currently, you can’t submit your VAT Return in Wave. So just like some other leading software, you have to log into your HMRC account and enter the amounts manually.
Our Quarterly package from just £40 plus VAT per month includes VAT returns as well as Accounts, Tax Returns, Management Accounts and general support and advice. Contact us for more details.
CloudBook Accountants are BeanBalance accountants. BeanBalance is free online accounting software that you can use to do your bookkeeping and more. Do you use BeanBalance and need an accountant to do your accounts and tax returns? CloudBook Accountants can use BeanBalance to do those for you.
Free online accounting software like BeanBalance and Wave are great at helping you do your bookkeeping. If you know what you’re doing you may even be able to use BeanBalance to do your VAT and Payroll. Otherwise, you will need an accountant to check your VAT and Payroll before submitting to HMRC. You will definitely, despite what BeanBalance suggest, need an accountant to produce the reports required that comply with the latest laws and regulations (e.g. accounts, tax returns). Then submit the necessary reports to HMRC and if applicable Companies House. CloudBook Accountants can use BeanBalance to do your bookkeeping, accounts, tax returns, payroll and VAT returns.
