How smoothly did your end of year reporting go?
Most business owners are busy running their businesses and have a trusty accountant and tax adviser to support them so that their end of year accounts process and preparation of statutory and management accounts run smoothly.
Sadly, there is more to a smooth end of year for your business than just having the right adviser.
What are your responsibilities as a Limited Company:
At the end of a Limited Company’s financial year you are legally required to file your full statutory accounts and your company tax return. In order to do this your accountant will need the following:
- Bank statements for your business accounts (if you are not using cloud bookkeeping software)
- Invoices and receipts
- Receipts and details of equipment purchased during the year
If you are using cloud based accounting software such as SAGE or Xero you will also need to reconcile your accounts and make sure that you have allocated your expenditure to the right categories.
Once this is all done it is all smooth sailing, providing you allocate expenses to the correct nominal code or category.
Jarem’s advice on staying on top of your business accounts
Based on our experience with businesses we encourage them to follow a couple of rules to help:
- Allocate time each week or month to categorise your expenses or reconcile your accounts.
- Get on board with an online accounting software package to help share real time data with your accountant.
- Use the app linked with your accounting software
- Have regular review meetings with your accountant every quarter or at least twice a year to minimise any surprises and monitor your potential tax bill
In order to reduce the stress and time that is needed to do this at the end of your financial year we recommend that you get into a routine of reconciling accounts on a weekly or monthly basis so you are not presented with a huge task of categorising over 150 expenses.
We have been trialling regular meetings with a number of clients with great success.
“I allocate a monthly reconciliation time for my books with a coffee and a treat (it makes it seem less arduous) and go through and categorise each expense and email Graham if I have any queries. Before that I would see the end of year emails and know that I had a mountain of paperwork to sort out and I would put my head in the sand!”
admits Natalie founder of Brick Marketing
“This year was less stressful, my books were reconciled, any issues were discussed throughout the year and I have had time to plan for my tax liability for 6 months. I knew what I needed to do, I just never found the time to do it – until now. Thanks Jarem”
Make life easier for you, your cashflow and business by asking your accountant and tax adviser…
- Transfer your accounts to an accounting software package
- Regular review meetings to assess your tax liability forecast
- Ask for help with categorising expenses and make sure you have the right category names
If you are not getting this service from your accountant or tax adviser get in touch with us who can talk to you about the service we offer as standard and how we can move you across to our systems seamlessly.
Find out more about the service we provide Businesses HERE
