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Year-end accounts for limited companies: what to prepare before your accountant asks

Year-end accounts always feel urgent at the end, but most of the work is gathering, not calculating. For a limited company, the accounts, the corporation tax return, and the Companies House filing all draw on the same records. When those records are incomplete, the filing gets delayed, estimates creep in, and questions from your accountant arrive in a rush. A short preparation routine, started a few weeks before the year end, avoids almost all of it. This guide covers what to prepare, in what order, and the five checks that catch the commonest problems before they become filing delays. Start with the bank and the balance sheet The first step is reconciliation. Every bank account, credit card, and loan account should be reconciled to the year-end date, with no unexplained items left sitting in the reconciliation. Unexplained items are the single biggest cause of year-end delay, because each one has to be investigated before the accounts can be finalised. Work through the balance sheet i...
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Self Assessment paper deadline 31 October: what to file, and what to do if you have missed it

The 31 October paper deadline for Self Assessment is one of the easiest UK tax dates to miss, because most of the attention goes to the online deadline in January. If you file on paper, your return for the 2025-26 tax year must reach HMRC by 31 October 2026. If it arrives late, penalties start running even if the tax itself is paid on time, and the paper option is no longer open once the date passes. This guide covers who still files on paper, what the return needs, what happens if you miss the date, and the practical steps to take this week. Who files a paper return Most people now file online, but paper returns still matter. Some taxpayers prefer paper, some have no reliable online access, and some are required to file on paper because their circumstances do not fit the online service. If HMRC has sent you a notice to file, file, even if you think your income was small. Not filing because the amount looks small is one of the commonest causes of an avoidable penalty. What the paper re...
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Supplier statements: the 15-minute check that stops duplicate payments

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Most duplicate payments are not fraud. They are the same invoice arriving twice, once by email and once through a supplier portal, or a paper copy landing on a desk after the emailed version was already entered. The supplier gets paid twice, the error surfaces months later at year end, and recovering the money takes far longer than preventing it would have done. A monthly supplier statement reconciliation stops most of this. It is a short, regular habit: take the statement the supplier sends, tick it against your own purchase ledger, and query anything that does not match. For most suppliers this takes about fifteen minutes. Start with one entry point for invoices Duplicates begin at the point of entry. If invoices can arrive by email, through a portal, by post, and by a photo in a messaging app, the same invoice will eventually be entered twice by two different people, or by the same person on two different days. Pick one channel and make it the rule. Every supplier invoice goes i...
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Payroll mistakes that cost small employers more than the payroll itself

Payroll looks simple until something goes wrong. A missed deadline, a wrong tax code, or a pension contribution calculated on the wrong earnings band can turn a routine pay run into a penalty, a corrected submission, and an awkward conversation with an employee. Most of these mistakes are not caused by complicated rules. They are caused by rushing the pay run, copying last month's figures, or treating payroll as an admin task rather than a compliance task. Using the wrong tax code, and leaving it wrong Tax codes change, and employees do not always tell you. A P45 from a previous job, a coding notice from HMRC, or a second job that changes the personal allowance can all mean the code on file is out of date. Running payroll on a stale code over-deducts or under-deducts tax month after month, and the correction lands in one lump sum that nobody expected. The fix is a habit, not a system. Check for new coding notices before every pay run, not once a quarter. If an employee hands you a ...
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Budgeting for your VAT bill: a quarterly cash-flow routine for VAT-registered businesses

Budgeting for your VAT bill: a quarterly cash-flow routine for VAT-registered businesses If your VAT bill keeps arriving as a nasty surprise, the problem is rarely the VAT itself. It is that the money sat in your trading account for three months, looking like profit, and then HMRC asked for it back all at once. A simple monthly routine fixes that, and it takes about 20 minutes a month once it is set up. Treat collected VAT as money you are holding, not earning When a customer pays you, the VAT element of that invoice belongs to HMRC until you submit your return. The businesses that struggle are the ones that treat the full invoice value as available cash. A supplier payment, a slow-paying customer, or a quiet month can then leave the VAT pot empty at quarter end. The fix is boring and effective: move the VAT aside as soon as money lands. Open a separate savings account for tax, and transfer the VAT element of each customer receipt into it. If a separate account feels like overkill, kee...
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Making Tax Digital for Income Tax: a quarterly routine that takes 20 minutes

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Making Tax Digital for Income Tax changes the rhythm of the tax year. From April 2026, sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000 keep digital records and send HMRC a quarterly update, plus a final declaration. The good news: once the routine is set up, each quarter can genuinely take about 20 minutes. The bad news: that only happens if your bookkeeping is current, which is where most people stumble. What the quarterly update actually is Each update is a summary of your income and expenses for the quarter, pulled from your digital records and sent through MTD-compatible software. It is not a tax payment and it is not a final figure. Think of it as HMRC getting a running view of your year, and you getting one too. The final tax bill is still calculated after year end and paid by 31 January as before. Step one: get the records digital before April Spreadsheets alone do not count unless they connect to HMRC through approved bridging software. If you are still on a...
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Making Tax Digital for Income Tax: the quarterly update routine, explained

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  From April 2026, Making Tax Digital for Income Tax changes how hundreds of thousands of sole traders and landlords report to HMRC. The annual self-assessment ritual is not disappearing, but it is being joined by something new: quarterly updates of income and expenses, submitted through compatible software. If your qualifying income is above 50,000, you are in the first wave. Here is what the routine actually looks like, and how to make it painless. Who is in scope, and when MTD for Income Tax applies to individuals with qualifying income above 50,000 from self-employment, property, or both combined. From 6 April 2026, that group must keep digital records and send quarterly updates to HMRC. Those with qualifying income above 30,000 follow from April 2027. Partnerships come later, and the government has confirmed the timetable in stages, so check where your income sits before assuming you are exempt. Qualifying income means gross income before expenses, not profit. A landlord wi...
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