For accounts, you’ll need to be on at least the Annual package. The Annual package includes a business and a personal tax return, and advice for about 1 hour per year. Our Annual packages including accounts cost £22pm for sole traders, £33pm for partnerships, or £44pm for limited companies.

Accounts are also included in our packages: Annual+, Quarterly, and Monthly. As well as accounts and tax returns, these packages have more services included in the cost, such as regular reviews of your online accounting, VAT returns, and bookkeeping. All of our packaged accounts prices are detailed here.

Not normally but you can request one. We provide a Summary & Review report with your accounts. This explains in detail what is included in the accounts and the accompanying documents. Where necessary, we will add any additional comments, analysis, notes, questions, and tips. If you are on the Annual+ package or higher, and use online accounting we also provide a review every 3 months. On the Annual+ package you’ll need to reply to the email reminding you that the quarterly review is due.

If you have any questions about anything, you can email us, call us, or video call us. You can book an appointment using the link in our email signature.

If you’re in business, it’s important to know your year end date. It’s the date your accounts and tax reports need to go up to every year. So you may need to do some admin such as value your stock. Also, you could take action before the year end to save or delay tax.

If you are a sole trader you probably have a year end date of 31st March or 5th April (treated as the same date by HMRC). If you have a different year end date it will say on the last set of accounts prepared. Different year end dates will need to be changed to the 31st March or 5th April in the next year or two. This will avoid complications when Making Tax Digital (MTD) for income tax starts in 2024.

If you have limited company you can find your year end date online here. Just search for your company and it will say in the Accounts section. The company’s year end date is automatically set to the end of the month the company was registered, plus 12 months. However, this date can be changed by extending or shortening an accounting period. A company can extend its accounting period up to 18 months, once every 5 years. It can shorten its accounting period as often as necessary.

You may need to allow us 1 month to prepare your accounts and tax returns. So provide us with your records or the ‘go-ahead’ at least 1 month before the deadline.

Company accounts are usually due 9 months after the year end date. So if your year end date is 30th June 2022, your accounts need to be submitted to Companies House by 31st March 2023. First year company accounts are due 21 months from the date of incorporation. So if the company was incorporated on 12th June 2022, the first set of accounts will be due by 12th March 2024.

Corporation tax payments are due 9 months and 1 day after the end of a corporation tax period. Corporation tax periods are usually the same as the accounting period. However, they are limited to 12 months, so if you have a long accounting period (first year or extended period), you will have two corporation tax periods.

Corporation tax returns are due 12 months after the corporation tax period (see above).

Sole trader accounts for periods ending in a tax year (which ends on 5th April), need to be included on a personal tax return for that tax year which is due by the following 31st January. For example, a sole trader with a year end date of 31st December 2021, will need to include those accounts on their tax return for the year ended 5th April 2022, which needs to be submitted to HMRC by 31st January 2023.

Before your year end, we will email you with tax saving tips, and a list of things you may need to measure at the year end e.g. a stock valuation.

After the year end and every 4 weeks until we receive your records/’go-ahead’, we will email with a list of what we need to do your accounts.

We usually need (if applicable):

• User access to your online accounting software, categorised and reconciled to bank statements to your year end 
• or spreadsheets with categorised income and expenditure for the year to your year end 
• Bank statements for the whole year to and including your year end
• Value of sales/costs incurred but not invoiced as at your year end
• Value of sales/costs invoiced but not incurred as at your year end
• Value of stock held (at the amount it cost the business) as at your year end
• VAT returns and any workings covering the whole year to your year end
• 6-character Companies House Authentication Code (for the first time only). Request it.
• 10 or 13-digit Corporation Tax Reference (for the first time only). Request it.

Sole traders and partnerships will just receive one set of accounts and a tax computation. If we do the tax at the same time, you will also receive a tax return and tax calculation.

Companies will receive the following:

• Full accounts – only for you and HMRC
• Filleted accounts – the minimum required to be filed on public record (Companies House)
• Corporation tax return(s) – required by HMRC for each 12 month period.
• Tax computation – showing how corporation tax was calculated
• Representations – a letter asking you to confirm a number of assumptions made

You will also receive a Summary & Review and/or a Queries document. These will explain the accounts etc and provide further commentary and any questions we have.

We use electronic signatures for accounts and the accompanying documents. When you receive draft accounts, you’ll need to email us with any questions or to let us know that you’re happy with all of the documents and that you’re ready to e-sign them. Then we will upload the documents that require an e-signature to a service called PandaDoc. You will receive an email from PandaDoc for each document that you need to e-sign. For company accounts, that’s usually 4 documents but it could be more. You’ll then receive a confirmation email for each document e-signed by everyone, with a link to download the completed document.

If you are happy with the draft accounts, please just email us to confirm that. Formal approval is at the next stage with an e-signature.