Same Day Online Accountants

You realise that today is the day your accounts need to be submitted to Companies House. You want to avoid being late and paying a penalty of between £150 and £3,000 (see here). You search for Online Accountants Same Day Service and find CloudBook Online Accountants are offering what you need. You submit a contact form (below) asking if it’s possible to get your accounts done today.

After working through our emails we reach yours and reply “yes, it’s possible, this is what we need”.

This is the first pitfall, do you have everything that we need? Here is the list:

1 > Company or business name

2 > Your full name

3 > Your address

4 > For companies, your 6-character Companies House Authentication Code (webfiling)

5 > Unique tax reference (UTR)

6 > Previous accountant details: firm, address, email address. If you have one.

7 > Previous accounts, tax return, and workings (from you or your previous accountant)

8 > Two forms of identification (one passport or driving license, another confirming name and address)

9 > Accounting records and year-end bank statements. Your accounting records could be access to your online accounting software or you could email a spreadsheet. Either way, all transactions must be categorised (e.g. sales, materials, travel, telephone), and your records must be reconciled with the bank account i.e. the bank balance on your records agrees with the bank balance on your bank statements.

10 > Upfront payment of double the Annual package monthly fee x 12. It needs to be a direct payment to our bank account (no credit card or payment services, sorry). Our fees are double because we’re dropping everything else today to help you all day. It’s non-refundable in any circumstances. If we fail to submit today, we will submit as soon as possible.”

Our Prices

You provide everything we need and make the upfront online payment directly to our bank account.

We are then required to contact your previous accountant and must wait for a response before we can start work.

This is the second pitfall – will they respond quickly? Perhaps you could contact them first to ask. If you don’t have a previous accountant then great, we can skip this part.

It sometimes takes weeks but you’re in luck, your previous accountant has replied within the hour! We’re satisfied with the response and have received any reports from them that you couldn’t provide. So we’re all set to start your accounts.

Replenished and refreshed we get going on your accounts. Here are some of the things that involves:

1 > Entering your previous accounts details so that your current accounts have comparative amounts.

2 > Checking that your bank is reconciled. So that’s making sure the bank balance on your online accounting software agrees with the balance on your bank statements. Or if you use spreadsheets, the total income minus the total expenditure is equal to the change in your bank balance between the start and end of the year. If not, we need to discuss either giving it back to you or asking for more money. Reconciling the bank is part of a bookkeeping service which is included in our Monthly packages.

3 > Checking that all of your transactions are categorised. If not, we may be able to finish off a few transactions for you. If there are a lot, we need to discuss either giving it back to you or asking for more money. Categorising transactions is part of a bookkeeping service which is included in our Monthly packages.

4 > Scrutinising and adjusting your transactions. Has everything been categorised correctly? Has any VAT been recorded correctly? Are you allowed to claim all of the costs you’ve recorded or should they go to a directors loan account or drawings? Should anything be a fixed asset and a depreciation adjustment is required?

5 > Preparing our working papers and completing our checklists and forms. As we are fully qualified accountants (ICAEW), we are required to prepare a file to show that we’ve prepared your accounts etc properly, including details of what’s included in your accounts, and many checklists to help ensure we haven’t missed anything.

6 > Preparing your accounts. Entering the total of each category onto our software. Editing the accompanying pages and notes.

7 > Preparing other reports. Tax return, tax calculation, shorter accounts (for public record), a letter for you to confirm a few things, a review to help you check things.

There’s something not quite right about your accounts. Perhaps there’s a very big unusual payment to J. Smith in stationery costs. Maybe sales have doubled and the amount that customers owe you has increased by the same amount. Perhaps there’s a large HMRC payment and we don’t know if it’s personal tax, VAT, PAYE, corporation tax.  We need some further information from you. So we email you a list of questions. Yes, we email rather than call because we’re online accountants and it gives clear and automatic documentation of what we asked and what you said.

This is the third main pitfall – what questions will we have and how quickly can you answer them?

You promptly provide all the answers we need. So we can finish off preparing the accounts etc. We then upload draft reports to our file sharing service so that you can check you’re happy with everything.

You email us to say that you’re happy with all of the documents we uploaded.

We then upload all of the documents to an online e-signature service. You’ll need to follow the link in each of the emails, then e-sign each document.

Everything is e-signed. That’s all you need to do today. You may have to pay some tax and our emails will explain that.

We submit accounts to Companies House (if you have a company) or to HMRC. We also submit your tax return to HMRC. Subject to being accepted by Companies House and HMRC, we’re all done!

At CloudBook Online Accountants, we value a good work-life balance. We all have families and other commitments, so finish at 5pm promptly and don’t return or check messages until the next work day.