Year end is the point at which twelve months of record keeping either pays off or presents a bill. The accounts themselves are largely mechanical. What varies enormously between businesses is how much reconstruction has to happen first, and that is where both the cost and the delay come from.
KKB Accounting provides year end accounts support built around your financial year-end, the records available and the deadline you are working towards. This is the handover list that makes that work quick, and the timetable that sits behind it.
The handover list
Most of what an accountant needs is information you already hold. The problem is usually that it is spread across a bank app, a card statement, an email account and a drawer. Gathering it in one place is the single most useful hour you can spend at year end.
The core set is the same for almost every small business, whether the records live in software or in a spreadsheet. If something on the list does not exist for your business, that is a useful answer too, and worth saying rather than leaving as a gap for somebody to chase.
- Bank statements covering the full accounting period, for every business account and card.
- Sales invoices raised, and a note of anything still unpaid at the year-end date.
- Purchase invoices and expense receipts, including anything paid personally on behalf of the business.
- Loan, finance and lease agreements, plus statements showing the balance at year end.
- Stock figure at the year-end date, if the business holds any.
- Details of any assets bought or sold during the year.
The dates that follow your year-end
Deadlines run from your own accounting reference date rather than from a national date, which is why two businesses in the same street can have completely different pressure points. It is worth writing yours down.
For a limited company, the accounts are generally due at Companies House nine months after the end of the accounting period. Corporation tax is payable nine months and one day after the period ends, and the company tax return itself is due twelve months after. The payment deadline arriving before the filing deadline surprises people every year: the tax is due before the return that calculates it must be filed.
For a sole trader or partnership, the relevant deadlines belong to self assessment and the tax year rather than to your own accounting date, which is a separate timetable worth keeping straight from the accounts themselves.
The practical consequence is the same either way. Leaving the work until close to the deadline removes any chance of the accounts being useful for planning, because by then the decisions they would have informed have already been made.
Why the state of the records changes the cost
The work in preparing accounts divides into two parts. There is the accounting itself, which is broadly fixed for a business of a given size. Then there is the reconstruction: matching payments to invoices, chasing missing paperwork, working out what a payment two Novembers ago was for, and separating personal spending from business spending after the fact.
The second part is entirely avoidable and it is where the variable cost sits. A business with reconciled records and a clean split between personal and business spending is far cheaper to work with than one arriving as a folder of paperwork and an online banking login.
KKB Accounting works as a paperless practice, which means the handover itself can be digital rather than a box of paper. That helps, but the underlying principle does not change: organised records cost less to turn into accounts than disorganised ones.
- Keep business and personal spending in separate accounts.
- Capture receipts as they happen, not in an annual archaeology session.
- Reconcile the bank regularly so the year-end position is already right.
- Note anything unusual at the time, while you still remember what it was.
Making the accounts worth more than compliance
Accounts filed purely to satisfy a deadline are a cost. The same accounts produced with a few months in hand are a management tool: they show gross margin, which customers and lines actually made money, how much is tied up in unpaid invoices, and whether drawings or salary levels are sustainable.
It is worth asking specific questions of them rather than filing them and moving on. Which part of the business improved? What is the trend in overheads? Is the tax position what you assumed it would be, and if not, when should you have found out?
That conversation is far more valuable early. Once the accounting period has closed, the accounts are a record. Before it closes, the same figures are a decision.
Related pages
Questions customers ask
When are limited company accounts due?
Generally nine months after the end of the accounting period for filing at Companies House, with corporation tax payable nine months and one day after the period ends and the company tax return due at twelve months. Confirm your own dates, because they run from your accounting reference date.
What if I am missing some receipts?
Say so early rather than leaving a gap. There is usually a reasonable route, such as bank or card evidence supported by a note of what the payment was for. What causes problems is unexplained transactions discovered months later when nobody can remember them.
Can I use business accounts for personal spending?
It is legal but it makes everything harder and more expensive, and for a limited company it raises questions about directors' loans. Keeping a separate business account is the single cheapest improvement most small businesses can make to their year end.
Gather the six items on the handover list, write down the dates that follow your own year end, and start the conversation with months in hand rather than weeks. That alone changes accounts from a compliance cost into something you can use.
KKB Accounting provides year end accounts support starting from your financial year-end, the records you have and the deadline ahead. The contact page is the place to begin.
