Accountancy Services Overview

Whilst we are preparing your statutory financial statements we will also:

Reconcile your bank statements and cash records to make sure you have claimed every penny of expenses you are entitled to against your tax bill and declared all your sources of income.

Reconcile your sales ledger to confirm that you are not owed any money that you are not aware of. We review the ‘aged debtors’ to see if they are in accordance with your payment terms. If not, we will make recommendations about ways to help with collecting debts or suggest ways to obtain payments through other means (e.g. direct debit or factoring).

Check that you have not missed any sales invoices. This ensures that your sales are complete. This is important because HM Revenue & Customs look for incomplete sales and the penalties can be very severe. These checks also ensure that your customers have paid everything you are due to.

Reconcile your purchase ledger to make sure that you are not overpaying suppliers or paying them too soon, and to ensure the completeness of your purchase invoices.

Reconcile your VAT accounts to make sure you have claimed every penny of input VAT you are entitled to and not overpaid output VAT. As part of this reconciliation we will check to see if there is a VAT scheme, which may be beneficial to you. We will also make sure that you have properly declared your VAT and paid across the correct payments reducing your risk of penalties.

Make sure that with all your payments of PAYE and NIC the time limits are adhered to.

Check every balance sheet entry again to monitor whether all of your assets are real and correctly valued.

Reconcile loan accounts so that the business owners know exactly what money they owe or are owed.

Carry out an analytical review and a ratio analysis, which help to ensure that the figures make sense (including making sure that the expenses are correct in proportion to the income). This helps to minimise the risk of an enquiry from HM Revenue & Customs.

Complete a review of any stock or work in progress to clarify that none of your money is locked up unnecessarily.

Review your fixed asset register (including a check that the assets still exist, i.e. assets are still owned or if it has been disposed of or scrapped). This helps us to ensure your claim for capital allowances is maximised, which again will ensure that you pay the minimum legal amount of tax.

Review in-year payments and those for the following year (to get the numbers right and minimise the taxable profit). In other words, it is really important to ensure that expenditure claimed falls into the correct year (the tax rules for this are very complex). Again, we are looking to ensure that you claim everything you are legally entitled to.
Identify any business expenses that you did not know that you have paid.

Before finalising a set of accounts, go through detailed checklists to review the business accounts, which covers everything required by law, with a special emphasis on ensuring you have adhered to the strict guidelines and regulations for the completion of accounts.

Prepare your statutory financial statements so that you meet all of your statutory obligations with HM Revenue and Customs and Companies House regarding your financial information. This means you do not need to worry about penalties.

Remember: We will complete all of this within 20 weeks of your financial year end, subject to you providing all the information we require.

UK tax legislation is extremely complex and not every item of expenditure is allowable for tax purposes. It is a requirement to carry out detailed tax computations to enable us to correctly disclose your taxable income – which is not the same as the profits shown by your accounts – and claim those items of expenditure to which you are entitled to.
Once we have completed the detailed tax computations we will – where applicable – prepare and submit the business Self-Assessment return so that you meet all of your filing obligations with HM Revenue and Customs regarding your business tax returns. This means you do not need to worry about late filing penalties.

Note: If you are a sole trader you will need to submit a personal Self-Assessment return. We can do this for you as part of our Cloud Tax service and will give you a separate fixed price for this.

We want to help you get the most out of your accounting systems. So, we will prepare a report setting out any weaknesses, the consequences and our suggestions on how to improve them.

We will arrange a post year-end review meeting with you to discuss any issues we notice when preparing your accounts and advise you.

Your fixed price Cloud Accounting is fully inclusive of unlimited access to our entire team for advice on ad-hoc matters.

This means that you can call on us at any time knowing that you will never be charged for our time or advice. So I hope you will feel free to speak to me whenever you need to, without ever having to worry about the cost.

Of course, if the issues raised at any of these unlimited free consultations (or anywhere else) require research or analysis beyond the consultation, we will give you a fixed price quotation for that extra work before any additional work is started.

Only if you agree to and sign an “Extra Work Order” (or EWO) to confirm that you are happy to pay for the extra work – on the mutually acceptable terms set out in the EWO – will we do anything over and above the work specifically listed above. This means that you will NEVER get an unexpected bill.

Note: We will complete your statutory financial statements within 16 weeks of your financial year-end, subject to you providing all the information we require.

One of the biggest outgoings you will have in business is your tax bill. That is why we specialise in helping our clients plan their tax affairs so that you don’t give the tax man a penny more than your fair share of what you’ve earned.

Each year we will carry out detailed and comprehensive tax planning reviews BEFORE your accounting year end to ensure that you pay not a penny more than your fair share. These will include:
Detailed tax planning for your business so that you keep more of your hard-earned cash.
Detailed tax planning in respect of your employees, including tax efficient remuneration strategies. This will both save the business money and create a happier team.
Detailed personal tax planning, including the very best way to extract cash and profits from your business.
Detailed tax planning for your family.

… helping you to keep on the right side of the legislation.

Even innocent mistakes in your VAT or payroll records can lead to substantial interest and penalties following a visit from HM Revenue and Customs or Contributions Agency.

We will provide a detailed review of your VAT and payroll records, to ensure that you are complying with all the current legislation.

Every business owner hates bookkeeping and paperwork. Unfortunately it has to be done. And it has to be done in a prescribed format… otherwise the tax man will be on your back. And when done accurately it provides critical financial information, key performance indicators and aids decision making.

And because everyone hates bookkeeping – you’d much rather be out there making money from your business – most people end up doing it in the evening or at weekends. Yet, shouldn’t evenings and weekends be spent playing with the kids, spending time with your friends and loved ones, or out on the golf course?

So why not let us take away all that hassle so you can spend your time with the people you love, doing the things you love.
We will provide a detailed review of your VAT and payroll records, to ensure that you are complying with all the current legislation.

If you are a limited company or have employees you will need to have a PAYE scheme set up and operate payroll. Many of our clients choose to let us run the monthly payroll. Let us know if you’d like us to take away that hassle for you.

If you trade as a limited company the Companies Acts 1985 and 2006 include legislation on company secretarial requirements. It’s a hassle and the government keeps changing the rules. And your statutory books can be inspected at any time. We can take all this hassle away from you and deal with all of the company secretarial work.

Every UK limited company must have a registered office address. It must be a physical location in the UK at which official documents can be served.

Although your registered office can be the address you trade from, many business owners choose to use the address of their accountant (since the accountant usually deals with company services, such as the completion of the Annual Return).