Are you feeling exasperated and struggling to get your tax return submitted? The tax year end shouldn't feel fretful and so we are going to talk you through how we help our clients make tax returns a breeze!
The nuts and bolts of your tax year end with us
We work with a wide range of businesses including sole traders, partnerships, limited companies and charitable organisations. Different types of organisation require different year end compliance, and we have experts on hand for each type of business.
The way we work with you is to move you from the “shoe box” system, to a cloud accounting system. We partner with Xero and their integration partners, because after testing many online softwares out there, we believe it to be the most reliable and affordable option. This is true whether you are starting out in business, or you have scaled a million pound business with a growing team.
The nuts and bolts of us preparing your year end accounts for you, is that we need 3 things as a starting point- Sales paperwork
- Purchase paperwork
- Bank transactions
From here we can create and submit your return directly to your HMRC gateway account for you to pay the required remittance.
How exactly do I get my accounts ready for you?
In the past, the predominant way to get your sales, purchase and bank transaction paperwork was the “shoe box” method, with clients saving the paperwork and giving it to us at the end of the year. Thankfully, times have changed and now we have software that collects the information from you in real time, with less input needed.
If you’re not using software that links to your bank feed such as Xero, you’ll need to log in to your business bank account and export your bank statements - either a PDF or an Excel file is fine.
You’ll then need to collect your sales invoices - maybe you have a physical sales book, or word documents invoices, or maybe some invoice software. Preferably we receive these in a digital format, but we understand some businesses do still use physical paperwork.
The third element is the purchase invoices - you will likely have 2 types of invoices, 1) paper receipts and invoices and 2) email receipts. These need to be brought together - preferably sorted by month.
Many of our clients use Dext, an app that allows you to take a picture of your receipt and send it to us instantly, as well as forwarding email invoices into Dext too, saving time and energy. Dext makes a big difference to our clients who use it as they don’t need to track down their receipts at the end of the year.
Our top tips for saving time preparing your accounts for tax returns
Create easy habits - Make a weekly habit to keep on top of your records, sales, invoices and any other bookkeeping you do.
Think about your software - Use software that takes the effort out of running your business, we recommend Dext and Xero for 99% of our clients.
Consider outsourcing - Outsourcing your bookkeeping will help you concentrate on what’s important to you.