Wowcher/groupon book keeping course

phill99

For my own reference I keep a spreadsheet of my income and expenditure. It helps me to track when an invoice has been paid or where to locate a receipt if I have a query on something. All receipts are then put in folders in month order. All copies of invoices that I send out are also kept in folders in month order. My accountant gets these every three months (along with bank statements) to do my VAT return and while doing it does my booking keeping for those three months.


I used to send copies of my spreadsheets to my accountant but she said it was of no value to her and not to send her.


In terms of cost, I get charged £240 per 3 months to do the tax return and then £350 once a year to do my annual tax return. Money well spent.


All you need to do is keep records for your own consumption and keep your receipts and copies of your invoices in date order. That's all your accountant will need, along with bank statements.


For reference I turn over about £180k per annum, raise about 15 invoices a month and have a bout 2300 receipts each year.

Jm90

Pennywise wrote: »

It doesn't have to be one extreme or the other. In 99% of cases, it's somewhere between, as agreed between the client and accountant.

Very, very few clients will give their accountant a perfectly balanced and correct set of book-keeping (in fact not every, in fact very few book-keepers give the accountant a 100% correct/accurate set of books either). At the other extreme, very, very few clients just hand their accountant a shoe box or carrier bag of unsorted/unopened paperwork.

The middle ground is huge. Some people cobble together spreadsheets to keep themselves up to date with information they want to see, but they're seldom much use for the end of year accountant. Other people will cobble together spreadsheets just to do the vat return, i.e. list of sales, and/or list of vatable purchase invoices. So they do their own VAT return, but the accountant needs to add in all the non VATable stuff and balance the bank etc.

Some people will use accounting software, but only for parts of the book-keeping, such as sales invoicing and the sales ledger.

Sometimes it's actually less time consuming for the accountant to do it all themselves from the shoebox or carrier bag, rather than try to work out what the client has done if their book-keeping is poor or their spreadsheet is full or errors or doesn't have all the relevant information (i.e. invoice date AND payment date). (or if they've used a poor book-keeper!).

You really need a decent conversation with your accountant to agree what each of you will do. I'm more than happy for a client to hand in a cobbled together spreadsheet or carrier bag of screwed up paperwork, if that's what they want to do. But, I want to have it agreed up front as to timescales and costings etc. You need your accountant to explain your options to you, to advise on suggested software to use, to tell you how to organise/file your paperwork etc. If you can't have that kind of sensible dialogue with them, you need a different accountant.

Hi there,

Thank you for taking the time to reply, yes you are correct the business is VAT registered.

Ideally, looking at how confusing it all is ( well for me anyway) i would ideally like to just hand it all over, obviously be able to keep track of it for our own reference too but for the accountant to sort what he needs too.

At the moment i feel the problem is communication, and getting things clear on what we expect from each other as you have said it should all be agreed beforehand.

I haven't yet spoken to the accountant as he is originally my father in laws accountant/friend so my husband has been talking to him about things but nothing seems to ever get sorted or no straight answers.

The business account should be set up this week so i want everything sorted and kept on top of.

again thank you

Jm90

Pennywise wrote: »

It doesn't have to be one extreme or the other. In 99% of cases, it's somewhere between, as agreed between the client and accountant.

Very, very few clients will give their accountant a perfectly balanced and correct set of book-keeping (in fact not every, in fact very few book-keepers give the accountant a 100% correct/accurate set of books either). At the other extreme, very, very few clients just hand their accountant a shoe box or carrier bag of unsorted/unopened paperwork.

The middle ground is huge. Some people cobble together spreadsheets to keep themselves up to date with information they want to see, but they're seldom much use for the end of year accountant. Other people will cobble together spreadsheets just to do the vat return, i.e. list of sales, and/or list of vatable purchase invoices. So they do their own VAT return, but the accountant needs to add in all the non VATable stuff and balance the bank etc.

Some people will use accounting software, but only for parts of the book-keeping, such as sales invoicing and the sales ledger.

Sometimes it's actually less time consuming for the accountant to do it all themselves from the shoebox or carrier bag, rather than try to work out what the client has done if their book-keeping is poor or their spreadsheet is full or errors or doesn't have all the relevant information (i.e. invoice date AND payment date). (or if they've used a poor book-keeper!).

You really need a decent conversation with your accountant to agree what each of you will do. I'm more than happy for a client to hand in a cobbled together spreadsheet or carrier bag of screwed up paperwork, if that's what they want to do. But, I want to have it agreed up front as to timescales and costings etc. You need your accountant to explain your options to you, to advise on suggested software to use, to tell you how to organise/file your paperwork etc. If you can't have that kind of sensible dialogue with them, you need a different accountant.

Thank you, I agree, this needs to be sorted asap

Jm90

phill99 wrote: »

For my own reference I keep a spreadsheet of my income and expenditure. It helps me to track when an invoice has been paid or where to locate a receipt if I have a query on something. All receipts are then put in folders in month order. All copies of invoices that I send out are also kept in folders in month order. My accountant gets these every three months (along with bank statements) to do my VAT return and while doing it does my booking keeping for those three months.


I used to send copies of my spreadsheets to my accountant but she said it was of no value to her and not to send her.


In terms of cost, I get charged £240 per 3 months to do the tax return and then £350 once a year to do my annual tax return. Money well spent.


All you need to do is keep records for your own consumption and keep your receipts and copies of your invoices in date order. That's all your accountant will need, along with bank statements.


For reference I turn over about £180k per annum, raise about 15 invoices a month and have a bout 2300 receipts each year.

Hi Phil, Thanks again for getting back to me, its much appreciated...

See, you say you give it him every three months, which i thought was how it was meant to be done, but I'm sure we have been told its yearly? I will need to clarify this tomorrow.

wow okay, thank you for giving me some figures to go off, It costs a fair bit, as you say money well spent for what they have to do and take the stress away - I'm so stressed, should it even be this difficult to get started. argh!
s'pose my main thing is getting in touch with the accountant tomorrow and get some answers I don't even want to use him at the moment, I just want to concentrate on what the business is actually about rather than constantly thinking about this and worrying.

In your trade do you take deposits first? does this confuse things for the accountant or make no difference?, we thought this was the best way as if a customer decided not to pay for what ever reason at least the materials are covered.

bris

For the first year do it the old and easiest way, buy a "Simplex D book"


Its idiot proof, once you see the set up just convert it to a spread sheet for the next year.

00ec25

Jm90 wrote: »

In your trade do you take deposits first? does this confuse things for the accountant or make no difference?, we thought this was the best way as if a customer decided not to pay for what ever reason at least the materials are covered.

this is a great example of where you need to make sure your accountant understands your business. Any decent accountant will always do that, and in the old days you were taught "do your KOIBO" before anything else (knowledge of the business, its industry and its operations)

so as long as the accountant knows you take deposits then he will know how to treat them as that is basic stuff and pretty normal behaviour to take deposits against materials purchases

but please make sure that your sales invoices are transparent where they relate to a deposit and just as importantly if they relate to the balance due after deposit. I had a colleague who struggled mightily because the client produced a sales invoice for the entire contract sum but took only a deposit and then issued another invoice for the entire contract sum again but took only the balance payment. Making sure their VAT return was correct was a nightmare until we "educated" the client to "behave"

Jm90

Oh wow. I can see how that would look confusing.

So maybe 2 separate invoices
Deposit
Full payment.

Or one invoice with the deposit amount
Then the full amount with the deposit deducted.

Thank you for replying 🙂

phill99

Jm90 wrote: »

Oh wow. I can see how that would look confusing.

So maybe 2 separate invoices
Deposit
Full payment.

Or one invoice with the deposit amount
Then the full amount with the deposit deducted.

Thank you for replying 🙂

It doesn't matter.


As long as the sums on the invoices reconcile with payments into your bank account, then that's all the accountant will be interested in.


I have ongoing jobs where I may raise 10 invoices all for differing amounts and at varying dates.

Kayalana99

If I was you, I would choose an accountant and go and speak to him in person. Explain to him you are unsure, and ask if he minds creating a spreadsheet for you to fill in so that you can send it over to him.

If you find a nice sole trader accountant, I'm sure he'll be happy to do this for you.

1) Because he'll most likey charge you a set-up fee (although I feel in this case worth paying.

2) Because when they get the spreadsheet through, they will have set it up and they should not have to spend as much time on it as say, your spreadsheet you set up which may have mistakes or not laid out easy for him - and in turn *may* even save you money as it saves him time too.

Excell is fairly straight forward, you can learn the algorithms to do it properly, or with a already set up spread sheet it should just be a case of filling in numbers.

Jm90

Thank you. I have a price now off the accountant by husband was already dealing with, well an estimate as he says he wont know the actual figures until he does the first VAT return.
I also have a meeting tomorrow morning with a local accountant to discuss what we would like/price and so on.
This takes a huge weight off, thank you all for taking the time to help me, very grateful.

I will have a play around on excell and hope i can get the hang of it