Don't believe an accountant that tells you that you need an accountant straight away! This is a matter of preference. There are good reasons for appointing an accountant straight away, but there will be times when it does not make sense to do so. It comes down to your preferences and objectives.

The key constraint is when is your first reporting obligation. Understand when this is (you can read a detailed treatment of this question in our Accounting Timing and Obligations post) and target appointing an accountant with enough time for them to handle this. Company formation and Payroll can be done in a matter of days. A full year of bookkeeping and accounts prep, allow a couple of months so that things are not rushed.

Subject to the above constraint, you choose when to appoint an accountant based on your requirements. The overall price that you pay does not change:

• You can sign up right away and you will be able to access us for advice, have your bookkeeping set-up and have us monitoring deadlines and thresholds and for this you would pay the corresponding monthly/quarterly fee; or

• You can sign up later in the year, to reduce initial cash outflows and then at the end of the year we would charge you for the missing months in your accounting period (so that you pay a full 12 months of fees for any accounting year).

There are pros and cons with both and which you choose will depend on your objectives. Havea read of our Sole Trader vs Limited Company post for a fuller discussion.

Tax used to be a real driving factor behind this decisions (LTD's were tax advantaged) however, successive Budgets have aligned the treatment.

If you are planning to extract all the profit from the business each year, then the most tax efficient structure varies based on the level of profit. You can see for yourself how this works by downloading our Tax Calculator.

If you are looking to grow your business, the liability protection and greater cash flow flexibility of a Limited Company tends to be of more importance. This is because a Limited Company'sprofits are taxed at 19% whereas a Sole Trader is taxed on profit as income tax (which for higher revenues results in a higher tax rate, however the money is now yours, taxed). So, a Limited company therefore has more cash it can use to fund growth (assuming your effective personal tax rate is higher).

The last main consideration is subjective: certain businesses prefer to deal with Limited Companies. Being a Limited Company (and a VAT registered one to an extent) signals that your business is more professional and more likely to be a long-term partner.

As a guide, below roughly £200k annual revenue, the split is 50:50, and after this point most

Bookkeeping is the process of categorising all of your business' transactions into accounting categories (called a Chart of Accounts). Accounting is the preparation of your various annual reports based on the breakdown of transactions for the financial year, which is the result of completed bookkeeping.

Bookkeeping is an add-on service to Accounting, i.e. bookkeeping is required for creating accounts but the bookkeeping can done by you or you in-house bookkeeper, or you can outsource it to us to do for you, something we are happy to do. We do not currently offer a bookkeeping-only service.

If you have outgrown the expertise of your existing accountant, you would like to access a higher service level, save time, or the costs for hourly accounting are spiralling out of control, then we can help.

There is a standardised industry protocol for switching accountants called Professional Clearance. You can sign up at any point, and when it comes to getting you onboard, if you have an existing accountant we will contact them to request a copy of the latest filings they hold for your account. This process is normally quick, depending on your previous accountant's response time, but it will not prevent us meeting any of your upcoming deadlines if there are any.

We are fully transparent on pricing. There are five compliance points/services you may need for running a UK business: Accounting, VAT, Bookkeeping, Payroll, Self Assessment.

Not all of these will be relevant for all businesses which is why you can select any or all of these services.

Accounting | required by all business; based on your revenue
‍
Bookkeeping | required by all business; based on number orders and active marketplaces and bank accounts to reconcile
‍
VAT | required by all VAT registered business; based on your VATable revenue (exclude out of scope sales); this fee covers the additional work required to handle bookkeeping which when VAT registered has to be broken down further to account for VAT. Learn when to register for VAT and how to register for VAT in our blogs.
‍
Payroll | required if you pay an individual a salary; auto-enrolment falls under this category; based on number of employees. Learn about the most tax efficient directors salary for 2024/25 and how payroll deductions or benefits in kind work in our blogs.
‍
Self Assessment | if you have do submit a personal tax return

The Bookkeeping and VAT fees are charged in arrears (good for your cash flow) once the activity in the VAT/bookkeeping period is known.

Accounting is charged monthly based on your estimated revenue and an adjustment is applied at year-end once your actual revenue is known to align your overall fee with 12 x the correct monthly fee.