Accountancy service for very small business

plisko

I've been running a small business for a little while by selling apps on the Apple App Store. I make the apps myself in my spare time with no costs, I upload them to Apple, and then every month Apple make a payment to the bank account I provided, from which they have already taken out their cut and VAT. The business is very small, making an average of about £500 per month. This is all going into a business bank account where it is kept isolated.

I figured this must be the most simple business imaginable, with no costs and one direct source of revenue, so I went and set up a business myself through Company House and that was all good. However, once it was first time to do a tax return this year the terminology and the whole process confused the hell out of me, and I ended up getting an accountant at the last minute to do it, who then had lots of questions I didn't know the answer to and the whole thing was a bit of a mess, but we got there. And this is before we get to the question of how I take the money back out of the business to pay myself dividends or a salary or whatever.

So I'm looking for a more sustainable solution in the future, an accounting service who could just handle this year in and year out, and track what's happening throughout the year so I don't have to trawl through stuff. As the company is tiny, making around £6k per year, which I hope will grow but probably not by much, I obviously don't want to spend much on an accountant. I figure the simplicity of my business couldn't be more than an hour's work for them each year though?

Could anyone make any recommendations on where to get started, for someone who has no idea what they're doing? Thanks

Savvy_Sue

Do you know any other app developers? If you do, I'd ask who they use - DS1 makes games and uses a remote service recommended by other game devs. They all have similar issues - including working out how not to pay tax in the USA!

Pennywise

plisko wrote: »

I figure the simplicity of my business couldn't be more than an hour's work for them each year though?/QUOTE]

It'd take longer than that just to do complete the background paperwork (i.e. checklists etc) that qualified/regulated accountants have to complete. Even for the simplest/smallest of limited company business, you're looking at 3/4/5 hours of work, inc the admin/checklists, actually doing the work, phone calls/emails with the client to clear queries/discuss, get the paperwork approved by the client, and then submit it all to Co House and HMRC, whilst maintaining a paper/audit trail throughout the process.

When you're running a limited company, the cost of an accountant is part of the overall costs that needed to have been considered when you decided to use a limited company rather than be a simple sole trader.

For such a low turnover/profit, I'd suggest that a limited company isn't appropriate. What motivated you to set up a limited company in the first place?

plisko

The reason for setting up a company is that Apple will only display the legal entity responsible for the app as the developer on the app store, be that the name of a person or of a business. Statistics show that apps with a business name rather than a person's name get downloaded more, plus it gives an avenue of linking the apps with a consistent brand name with my blog, website etc, which is harder to do otherwise.

I do agree that it was maybe not the best decision in hindsight, I didn't realise how much bureaucracy would be involved.

phill99

There are numerous 'one man band' accountants who would be suitable for doing your accounts. One of my customers is ATT and runs her own practice from home working for small companies and she charges between £20 and £25/hour.


That may well be the kind of thing you require. However, don't think it will only require an hour a year. Probably 3 - 6 hours work for annual returns etc.