A balance is finished only when the difference has a name.

The ledger balance is agreed to the statement balance. Outstanding items are unpresented payments, deposits in transit, and bank lines we do not yet have a document for. A feed that “matches” inside the software is not the reconciliation. We still agree the closing figure to the statement, because feeds drop lines and duplicate them.

Transfers between your own accounts are ticked off on both sides. A transfer left as income on one account and unexplained on the other will inflate turnover. That is one of the first things we look for in a catch-up.

The card is its own account. The statement balance is a liability. Paying the card from the current account is a transfer, not a second copy of the expenses. Personal items are moved to the director or owner account with the date and the amount, so the profit and loss is not carrying someone’s supermarket shop.

Stripe, PayPal, shop-floor card machines and marketplaces usually pay a net amount: sales, minus fees, minus refunds, sometimes minus a reserve. If the bank receipt is coded as sales, turnover is understated and the fee never appears.

We gross it up. The sales account gets the gross sale. The fee account gets the fee. Refunds reduce sales or sit in their own account if you need to see them. The clearing account is reconciled to the provider’s balance, including any amount they have not yet paid out. That clearing balance is a real asset or liability, and it is named in the pack.

Where a supplier issues a statement, the purchase ledger balance is agreed to it. Differences are bills they have that we do not, payments we have made that they have not allocated, and credit notes. We do not “write off the difference” to purchases. Aged creditors in the pack are the list, not a single number.

If you invoice, the sales ledger is agreed to unpaid invoices. Receipts are allocated to invoices, not dumped on account and forgotten. Overpayments and payments on account are visible. We do not chase the customer. We do stop a receipt from sitting in a suspense account past the close without being on the exception list.

The VAT control account should move from the last return to the transactions of this period: output tax, input tax, and the payment or refund. We reconcile that movement. A return prepared from a figure that does not tie to this account is how boxes get typed twice and then drift for a year.

We prepare the working paper. We do not submit the return. Partial exemption, the capital goods scheme, and retail schemes are calculations for your adviser; we post the adjustment they give us and we keep it separate so it can be seen.

The liability in the ledger is agreed to the payroll reports and to the payments that left the bank. A payment to HMRC that covers more than PAYE — corporation tax, VAT, a Class 1A amount — is split. An unsplit payment is how payroll looks “paid” when corporation tax was the thing that actually left the account.

Money the company spends for a director, and money a director spends for the company, is posted to the loan account as it happens. We list the movement monthly. We do not decide whether a balance should be a dividend, a salary or a benefit. That decision is yours and your adviser’s, made with the balance in front of you rather than reconstructed in March.