Home / Terms and conditions

Terms and conditions

These terms cover the bookkeeping and reconciliation services described on this website, provided by Gundastream of 22 Beechcroft, Humshaugh, Hexham, NE46 4DN, United Kingdom. They were last updated on 23 October 2026. A written scope, once you accept it, sits alongside these terms. If a sentence in the scope conflicts with these terms, the scope wins for that engagement only.

1. Who these terms cover

“You” is the business, landlord or other person named in the scope. If you accept a scope for a limited company, the company is the client, not you personally, except where you have given a personal guarantee, which we do not ask for as a standard term. You confirm that you have authority to give us the documents and the access the work needs.

Using the website, or sending an enquiry, does not by itself create a paid engagement. A paid engagement starts when you accept a written scope by email. The sample look described on the site is free of charge unless a scope says otherwise, and it does not oblige either of us to continue.

2. What the service is

We maintain bookkeeping records and prepare reconciliations, in the ledger named in the scope, to the close date named in the scope. The monthly pack contains the items the scope lists. Where the scope is silent, the pack is the one described on the bookkeeping page of this website at the date you accepted.

Automation, bank feeds and coding suggestions are tools. A month is closed only when the reviewer has issued the pack. A feed that appears up to date inside software is not, by itself, delivery of the service.

3. What the service is not

We are not a firm of chartered accountants or certified accountants. We do not provide tax advice, legal advice, investment advice, insolvency advice, or audit. We do not prepare statutory accounts, corporation tax computations, personal tax computations, or confirmation statements.

We do not submit VAT returns, Making Tax Digital quarterly updates, Self Assessment returns, corporation tax returns, payroll Real Time Information, or Companies House filings. We do not operate a payroll and we do not operate the Construction Industry Scheme. We do not register you for VAT or for Making Tax Digital, and we do not apply for exemptions.

Figures in the pack are bookkeeping figures. They are not a statement of tax payable, distributable profit, or covenant compliance. You and your adviser decide what to file and what to claim. Descriptions of Making Tax Digital on this website are general information, current as at the date on that page, and are not advice about your position.

Nothing on the website is an offer capable of acceptance. Guide prices are illustrations. They are exclusive of VAT. If we are required to charge VAT, the invoice will show it and our VAT number.

4. Your responsibilities

You will:

• provide complete and legible source documents, statements and payroll reports by the cutoff in the scope, or tell us that an item will be late;
• answer exception-list questions, and accept that silence leaves the item open;
• keep your own copies of documents you still need, including in the ledger;
• maintain the ledger subscription and the bank feed, and tell us if you change bank, software or accountant;
• give instructions that affect a balance in writing, by email, from an address you have authorised;
• not send us online banking passwords, card PINs, or Government Gateway passwords;
• obtain any consent your own customers, staff or tenants need in order for a bookkeeper to see their data in your records.

We are entitled to rely on documents and answers you give us. We do not audit them and we do not look for fraud, though if we see something that suggests the records are being used to mislead a third party we will stop and ask you, and we may stop the engagement.

5. Fees and payment

The fee, what it includes, and when it is billed are set out in the scope. Unless the scope says otherwise, fees are billed monthly in arrears for the month just closed, and invoices are payable within 14 days by bank transfer to the account on the invoice.

Work outside the scope — a catch-up that was not included, an extra account, a rebuilt opening balance, a report for a lender — is quoted before we do it. If you instruct it by email after we have quoted, that instruction is acceptance of the extra fee.

If an invoice is 14 days overdue we may pause work on later months until it is paid. We will tell you before we pause. Pausing does not erase the fee for a month we have already delivered. We may charge interest on overdue sums at 4 percent a year above the Bank of England base rate, accruing daily, which we would rather not do and will warn you about first.

You may not withhold a fee because you disagree with a profit figure that reflects the documents. If you disagree with our application of a rule, tell us and we will revisit the coding. A coding change is not, by itself, a reason to withhold the whole invoice.

6. Starting, pausing and ending

Either of us may end the standing engagement by email, with 30 days’ notice, taking effect at the next close date after the notice expires unless we agree an earlier handover. You may ask us to finish the month already in progress; that month is billed. We may end immediately if you ask us to post something we believe would misstate the records, if invoices are more than 30 days overdue after a pause warning, or if continuing would require us to give tax advice we have said we do not give.

On ending, we remove our user from the ledger within 10 business days of the handover, we return or delete documents we hold outside the ledger in line with the privacy policy, and we send the latest pack to you. We do not provide a second, rival set of books in another product unless that transfer is quoted and paid for.

7. Records and intellectual property

Your source documents and the transactions in your ledger belong to you. You grant us a licence to use them solely to perform the engagement. Our internal checklists, coding-rule templates and the way the pack is structured remain our methods. You may keep and share the packs we have issued to you and to your accountant. You may not resell them as a product.

We will not use your figures in marketing, and we will not name you as a client, unless you agree in writing. The photographs on this website are illustrative. They are not photographs of your records, your staff, or a statement that a particular person works at the studio.

8. Confidentiality

We keep your records and your instructions confidential. We may disclose them to the people named in the privacy policy, to your authorised accountant, and where the law requires. You keep confidential any non-public detail of our pricing and methods that is not already on this website. These duties survive the end of the engagement.

9. Data protection

Each of us will comply with UK data protection law as it applies to us. The privacy policy on this website describes our handling of personal data and is part of the information we give you. It is not a contract term that overrides the law. Where we process personal data of your customers, staff or tenants only on your instructions, we will act on those instructions, keep the data secure, and not use it for our own purposes.

10. Liability

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that the law does not allow us to limit or exclude.

Subject to that, our total liability to you arising out of an engagement in any twelve-month period — whether in contract, tort including negligence, or otherwise — is limited to the fees you actually paid us for that engagement in that same twelve-month period.

We are not liable for penalties, interest or additional tax that arise because source documents were missing, late, illegible or wrong, because an instruction was given orally and not confirmed, or because you or your adviser filed from records you had been told were unreconciled. We are not liable for a decision you or your adviser take about tax, dividends, pay or drawings. We are not liable for loss of profit, loss of business, loss of goodwill, or for indirect or consequential loss, whether or not we knew it was possible.

We are not liable for a failure caused by the ledger provider, the bank feed, email delivery, or a change in law or in HMRC’s systems, provided we tell you within a reasonable time after we know the failure is affecting your file and we take reasonable steps to work around it with the documents you can still provide.

11. Other terms

These terms and the accepted scope are the whole agreement for the engagement. They replace earlier conversations about the same work. A change to these standard terms is effective for new scopes accepted after the date of the change. A live engagement keeps the terms in force when it was accepted, unless we both agree a change by email.

If a court finds one sentence unenforceable, the rest stays in force. You may not assign the engagement. We may use a subcontractor for clerical capture only if the reviewer remains responsible and the privacy policy is honoured; we do not subcontract the sign-off of the pack.

Notices under these terms are by email and are treated as received on the next business day, unless a delivery failure is reported. Our address for notices is [email protected]. Yours is the address in the scope, until you tell us another.

Nothing in these terms creates a partnership, a joint venture, or an employment relationship. Nobody except you and us may enforce these terms under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.

12. Law and disputes

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction, except that we may also seek a payment claim in the courts of the part of the UK where you trade. If you are a consumer rather than a business — which this service is not designed for — you may have mandatory rights that these terms cannot remove, including rights about where you can bring a claim.

If you are unhappy, email [email protected] with the month and the figure you dispute. We will reply within 10 business days with either a correction or an explanation. That process does not delay a deadline you have with HMRC, and it does not remove your right to take advice.

13. Contact

Gundastream, 22 Beechcroft, Humshaugh, Hexham, NE46 4DN, United Kingdom. [email protected]. +44 7911 045367.