Sales
Customer invoices, credit notes, and daily or weekly takings summaries where you do not invoice. Cash, card and online takings are grossed up so fees are not netted off inside sales. The fee has its own nominal.
Home Bookkeeping
Automated bookkeeping
Posted properly, then left in a state someone else can read.
The bookkeeping is the record of what happened: who was invoiced, what was bought, what the bank did, and which VAT treatment was used. Automation keeps that record moving. It does not invent a story for a line that has no document.
What we post
The ordinary contents of a UK ledger
Purchases
Supplier bills and expense receipts, coded to the chart we agreed. A missing bill is an open item. It is not coded to “general expenses” to make the bank match.
Bank and card
Every line on every account in the scope. Transfers between your own accounts are transfers, not income and not a cost. Personal spending on a business card is posted to the director or owner account, not to a cost nominal.
Payroll journals
We post the journal your payroll bureau gives us: gross pay, employer costs, PAYE, National Insurance, pension and net wages. We reconcile that journal to the report. We do not calculate the payroll.
Owners
Dividends are recorded only when you confirm a dividend was declared. Drawings, funds introduced and director loan movements are coded to the balance sheet and listed in the monthly note so the year-end balance is not a surprise.
VAT treatments
Standard 20 percent, reduced 5 percent, zero-rated, exempt, and outside the scope, applied as you and your adviser have confirmed. We do not choose a rate because it “looks like” last time if the supply has changed.
The chart
Fewer nominals, written rules
A long chart of accounts feels thorough and then nobody uses it the same way twice. We start from the nominals your accountant already needs for the accounts, and we add one only when a balance has to be seen on its own — a particular director, a CIS labour account, a marketplace fee account.
Each recurring supplier gets a one-line rule: nominal, VAT treatment, and whether the cost is a bill to be matched or a bank payment with a receipt. When the rule is wrong, we change the rule, we do not silently recode history.
What the monthly pack contains
- A trial balance at the close date, with the period’s profit and loss and the balance sheet totals.
- A bank and card reconciliation for every account in scope, with outstanding items named.
- Aged debtors and aged creditors where a sales or purchase ledger is kept.
- A VAT control account reconciliation to the transactions in the period, not a figure typed to match a return.
- The payroll control and, where relevant, the director or owner current account movement.
- An exception list: what we still need, what we refused to guess, and which prior items cleared.
- A short narrative, usually under a page, of anything that would mislead someone reading the profit figure alone.
Reconciliations are described in full on the reconciliation page. The pack is the place they land.
What you send
- Sales invoices, or a takings summary split between cash, card and other, with VAT treatment if you are registered.
- Supplier invoices and till or expense receipts. A photo is enough if the supplier, date, net, VAT and total can be read.
- Statements we cannot pull ourselves: loan statements, hire purchase, merchant payout reports, letting-agent statements.
- Payroll reports for the month, if you have employees or directors on the payroll.
- A yes or no on the questions left open last month. Unanswered items stay on the exception list. They are not cleared by silence.
The ledger you already pay for
We maintain the books inside the cloud accounting package you use. Common UK packages are capable of this work. We will not insist on a migration for its own sake. We will refuse a tool that cannot keep a digital record of income and expenses, attach the source to the transaction, or produce a trial balance.
You remain the subscriber. We are a user on the file. When the engagement ends, the file stays yours, including the transactions we posted. Our working notes are covered in the terms.
If nothing is set up yet, the first month includes the opening chart, the VAT settings your adviser confirms, and the opening balances from the last signed accounts or return. We do not invent an opening trial balance.
Bookkeeping questions
Can you start halfway through a financial year?
Yes, if we can agree opening balances at the start of the first month we take. Those balances come from the last period your accountant signed, or from a VAT return and bank statements if that is all that exists. We will tell you when the opening position is too weak to pretend the year-to-date profit is reliable.
Do you chase our customers for payment?
No. We keep the sales ledger and the aged debtors list accurate. Credit control calls are your commercial relationship. We will show who is overdue and we will not write a balance off unless you instruct it in writing.
What if a receipt is lost?
The bank line still has to be explained. We will code it to the owner or to a holding account and put it on the exception list. We will not create a VAT invoice that does not exist, and we will not claim input tax without the evidence your adviser says is required.
Is receipt capture “automatic”?
Capture can be a photograph or a forwarded email, and software can suggest a supplier and a total. A person checks the suggestion against the document before it is posted. A wrong total that matches a bank line by coincidence is still wrong.
Want the matching standard as well?
Bookkeeping without reconciliation is a list of postings. The close is the agreement to the statements.