Pulling together your records ahead of year-end can feel like a daunting task, but a little preparation goes a long way. The more complete and organised your information is when it reaches us, the quicker we can turn around your accounts. Here's a straightforward guide to what we'll need.

Your records and software

If you keep digital records, make sure everything is entered up to your year-end date and grant us access (or share your login securely via our portal). If you keep records in Excel or Google Sheets for income and expenses, petty cash, or mileage please export and share these with us too.

Sales and revenue

Take a look through your outstanding sales invoices and flag anything raised before year-end for work that hasn't actually been delivered yet. These may need to be treated differently and can't simply be counted as this year's income.

If you have any jobs still in progress at year-end, it helps if you can note down the job name, roughly how complete it is, and the total cost incurred so far for each one.

Stock and cash

If you hold s tock, please provide us with a stock figure at your year-end date and record it at cost (what you paid for it, not what you'll sell it for). If any stock is damaged, obsolete, or unlikely to sell at full price, let us know what you'd realistically expect to sell it for instead.

Don't forget to count any cash and cheques held in the business as at your last trading day, including anything received but not yet banked.

Debtors and creditors

Please provide a list of what you owe suppliers and what customers owe you at year-end.(Most software can generate these as an Aged Creditors and Aged Debtors report.)It's worth a quick review before sending them over, so you can flag any customer balances you think may never be paid and we can talk through writing these off.

If you hold any customer deposits - for future bookings, or as security - a simple list with the customer name, amount, and reason for holding it is all we need.

Assets and equipment

Please send us invoices for any large equipment, vehicles, furniture, or computers bought during the year, along with details of any hire purchase or finance agreements. These are treated differently to everyday expenses, so having the paperwork to hand helps us get the treatment right.

Financial statements

Please provide your year-end statements for all business bank accounts, loans, credit cards, and hire purchase agreements. If everything is already recorded accurately in your accounting software, the year-end statement alone is usually enough - otherwise, we'll need statements covering the whole period.

Payroll and VAT

If you run payroll, we'll need your wage records for the full period, including P11s, P60s, and P32s. If you're VAT-registered, please give us access to your HMRC online account or provide copies of each VAT return submitted during the period to allow us reconcile everything correctly.

If we prepare your payroll, we will have access to all of this information already.

Mileage

If your vehicle isn't recorded on the business balance sheet, a mileage log is all we need.

We're here t o help

If you're not sure what applies to you, or would like a hand pulling any of this together, please get in touch with the team. We're always happy to talk you through exactly what's needed and help make the process as smooth as possible.

_{This is published for the information of clients. It provides only an overview ofthe regulations in force at the date of publication, and no action shouldbetaken without consulting the detailed legislation or seeking professionaladvice. Therefore, no responsibility for loss occasioned by any person actingor refraining from action as a result of the material contained in thispublication can be accepted by the authors or the firm.}

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