Bookkeeping
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Bookkeeping
The Companies Act & Tax Legislation
Bookkeeping for Companies, Sole Traders, Partnerships and LLPs
All businesses must keep records of their transactions. It is now an offence to fail to keep “adequate” records.
Bookkeeping is a job that most people think is simple but doing it well is more difficult and time-consuming than expected. Doing the job well brings rewards.
Good record-keeping will enable you to be confident about how your business is doing. In good times it means new opportunities can be taken and, in hard times, it means some difficulties can be foreseen and even avoided.
The Companies Act (for companies) and recent tax legislation (for sole traders) make it a criminal offence to fail to keep “adequate records”.
There are several options:
- Handwritten (manual) systems using notebooks, dairies and/or pre-printed cash books and/or loose-leaf systems.
- Spreadsheets – the electronic version of the manual records.
- Computerised systems – where the software does some of the work/analysis and can produce useful reports.
Some people want to do their own bookkeeping (out of interest and/or a desire to avoid paying others to do it for them).
Others do not want to do it – most usually because they do not have the time or know-how.
Because bookkeeping is time consuming, you may feel it is better to get Astons Accountants to concentrate on the figures,
while you go off and earn money or generate some new sales or new customers for your business.
How Can We Help?
The decision will be affected by the size of the business, the number (and types) of transactions, the need for management information and the desire to keep professional fees down.
In many instances, you can choose whether you account for income and expenses on invoices going out and coming in (the normal method) or on cash coming in and going out (called cash accounting) – different schemes are suitable to/for different types of business.
We can do all your bookkeeping for you, or we can leave it all to you, or we can train and guide you to do (some or all of) it and review things for you. We are happy to do as much as you want us to do, subject to the budget you have.
Having Astons Accountants do your record-keeping for you not only means it is done regularly and accurately, but also that any tax planning opportunities are spotted and exploited as early as possible.
