Accounting that keeps your business clean, clear and under control.

You get a fixed monthly figure in writing after a 30-minute discovery call. There is no headline price because the same list of services — bookkeeping, VAT, payroll, accounts, tax returns — swings by a factor of three or four depending on transaction volume, VAT scheme, payroll headcount, number of entities and the condition of the records coming across. A published figure would be the tidiest possible version of the job, quietly revised once someone opened the file. What is fixed is the fee once agreed, and there is no hourly charge for asking questions.

For most businesses, yes, and increasingly it is the law rather than a preference. Making Tax Digital already requires VAT-registered businesses to keep digital records and file through compatible software, and it extends to sole traders and landlords from April 2026 by income level. Beyond compliance, the reason to move is timing: desktop software and spreadsheets mean the accountant sees the year after it has ended, when nothing can be changed. FreeAgent is included in every package. If your current cloud setup works and the records are clean, we will simply work in it.

Depending on how you are set up: bookkeeping, VAT returns, payroll and pensions, year-end statutory accounts, the Corporation Tax return or Self Assessment, and Companies House filings including the confirmation statement. Your proposal lists the scope line by line, with a second column for what sits outside it. Outside is typically catch-up work on unfiled years, HMRC enquiries, restructures, valuations, audits and regulated financial or legal advice — priced when they arise so you are not paying every month for something you may need once.

Compliance answers what HMRC and Companies House need to know; advisory answers what you need to decide. The line matters because they are priced separately and deliberately so. Bundling advisory into everyone's fee means charging businesses for reporting a good number of them do not need yet. If your business is straightforward and profitable, compliance handled properly may genuinely be all you require, and we will say so. Once there are staff, stock or borrowing, the picture changes — see advisory services for what that adds.

Routine questions get an answer usually within one working day, and urgent items — a deadline this week, an HMRC letter with a date — jump the queue if you say so. Cyclical work runs to agreed dates: a VAT return cut-off, a payroll cut-off, an agreed timetable for the year end. The honest constraint is that turnaround depends on when the records arrive. Accounts cannot be prepared from a bookkeeping file that is missing a quarter, and the most common reason a year end runs late is not capacity at our end but paperwork still at yours.

Safer than the alternatives most small businesses actually use, which are a laptop with no backup and a filing cabinet. The main platforms encrypt data in transit and at rest, back it up continuously and are audited to standards no small firm could match internally. The real risk is not the platform, it is access: reused passwords, no two-factor authentication, and staff logins that stay live after someone leaves. Turn on two-factor everywhere, use unique passwords and review who has access twice a year. See our privacy policy for how we handle your data.

Say so at the first call. Late filings, missed VAT returns and HMRC arrears are common, fixable and priced separately from the monthly fee because catch-up is a project rather than a routine. We establish exactly what is outstanding first — which years, which returns, what HMRC has already charged — then work oldest first so penalties and interest stop compounding. Meanwhile the handover itself proceeds: professional clearance requested from your current accountant, HMRC agent authorisation put in place, and software set up. You do not need to make the awkward call yourself.