In the accountancy world, every business needs to prepare their complete accounts for HMRC once a year. Limited Companies also need to prepare set of accounts for Companies House as well. The year end accounts provide invaluable information about your business .You can see if the margin on your sales prices is set appropriately and how the latest performance compares to last year. Movements in sales and expenses are laid bare, allowing you to make better decisions in the future. Anomalies are highlighted and can then be investigated. Having year end accounts brings you closer to your business and will help drive success. Banks will also prefer to see a set of accounts for self-employed applicants looking to raise finance or apply for a mortgage.
For a partnership, the year end accounts will also state the balance on each partner’s current account. For owner-managed limited companies, the limited company accounts will include details of the directors’ salaries and the dividends paid to shareholders, which will need to tally with their self-assessment tax return.
Year End
accounts often form the basis of your Self-Assessment tax return and provide a valuable insight into your business.
Limited companies, partnerships and sole traders are free to pick whatever year end they like.
Many business owners will pick a calendar year or the tax year (either 31st March or 5th April). Picking the tax year will make your tax liability based on the latest finalised accounts and therefore as current as possible. Consequently, some business owners prefer to have a tax year end, because they have a better feel for what their tax liability might be. Opting for the 31st March or 5th April will also avoid any complicated overlap relief calculations for sole traders or partners.
Alternatively, you might choose a year end that suits your business – a quiet time of the year when you can have the time get everything together: count up stock and summarise your unbilled work, etc.
If you have other business interests, think about making the year ends all the same. This means the deadlines are easier to remember because they will be similar but does also mean they all come at once!
You should look to prepare sole traders accounts and partnership accounts well ahead of the tax return deadline of 31st January for online submission. Companies typically have nine months from their year end to complete their accounts, but it’s always best to check on Companies House’s website what the company accounts filing deadline is.
Give yourself as much time to prepare the accounts as possible. Rushing can lead to errors and there may be receipts or bank statements you need to find. It also allows you to consider if you’ve claimed everything you’re entitled to and whether there are any tax planning opportunities available.
We can prepare your accounts from whatever records you have – whether they be computerised, spreadsheets, a cashbook or a bag of receipts. And we can advise you on how to strengthen your record keeping procedures, which in turn will help you run your business more effectively.
Whether you are a sole trader, partnership, or limited company, letting us prepare your year end accounts will relieve you of what can be an extremely stressful and time-consuming exercise.
Our accountants offer competitive pricing with flexible appointment times and are dedicated to offering a professional, friendly service.Our goal is to make the process simple and easy for you.
- Our team does the bookkeeping to ensure its raring and ready to go
- We then crunch all the necessary figures
- Turn these figures into a full set of accounts
- Follow with a very thorough checking (and no, there’s no such thing as being ‘too thorough’ in our eyes)
- Produce the tax return
- Send it over to you to check and sign off
- Submit the required reports to HMRC and Companies House for you
- And we help make sure you dodge any of those pesky penalties.
- Taxes can be daunting to think about. So, we make the process easy.
What needs to be filed with HMRC
Company tax return (CT600)
Statutory accounts (your annual accounts)
Personal tax return (SA100)
To do this you need to prepare your full annual accounts which will show your profit or loss for the period as well as a balance sheet that shows the net value of your business at the end of the year. You’ll also need to prepare a computation of your taxable profit – which may be an entirely different figure to the profit shown in your accounts! (we know, confusing isn’t it?!) Then you need to prepare all the forms that go along with those and submit them to HMRC online.
HMRC require your Company Tax Return within 12 months after the end of the accounting period – (although you have to pay your corporation tax 9 months and 1 day after your company year end, so in real terms you need to get your company tax return within 9 months of the year end.
What needs to be filed with Companies House?
Statutory accounts (either full, abbreviated or micro)
Knowing which version to file can be a challenge in itself!
Statutory accounts must include:
a ‘balance sheet’, which shows the value of everything the company owns, owes and is owed on the last day of the financial year
a ‘profit and loss account’, which shows the company’s sales, running costs and the profit or loss it has made over the financial year
notes about the accounts
a director’s report (unless you’re a ‘micro-entity’)
Companies House require your annual accounts within 9 months of your year end. If you don’t file your accounts with HMRC or Companies House, you will be penalised. These late-submission penalties keep increasing the longer you leave them, so you don’t wait to get caught!
We do our best to help you meet the deadlines, so there’s no need to stress. We are the experts of hassle-free accounting who care about helping you out. Our goal is to take as much of the stress of dealing with your end of year accounts away.
You can feel reassured and focus on what you’re good at, like running your business successfully.