Accounting support that actually supports your business.

It normally covers bookkeeping, VAT returns where you are registered, payroll for up to two employees, statutory year-end accounts filed at Companies House, the Corporation Tax return, the confirmation statement and the directors' self assessment. FreeAgent is included, worth up to £330 a year. Outside the fee and quoted separately: catching up unfiled years, share reorganisations, company valuations, HMRC enquiries and regulated financial or legal advice. We do not carry out statutory audits. Your proposal sets both columns out line by line before you sign, which is the point at which to argue about scope — not eighteen months later when an unexpected invoice arrives.

You get a fixed monthly figure in writing after a 30-minute discovery call. The drivers are transaction volume, VAT registration and scheme, payroll headcount, how many entities there are, and the condition of the records coming across. That last one is why no serious firm can publish a meaningful price: two companies at identical turnover can be a straightforward month or a forensic exercise. What is fixed is the fee once agreed, and there is no hourly charge for asking questions. If a published monthly number is what matters most to you, online-only firms provide exactly that, and for a simple company it can be a perfectly reasonable choice.

For most owner-directors, a modest salary set around the National Insurance thresholds with the balance as dividends. Salary is deductible for the company and protects your State Pension record; dividends carry no National Insurance but come out of profit that has already borne Corporation Tax. The right split depends on your other income, whether the Employment Allowance is available and how much profit you actually need to draw. The trap is dividends paid without distributable reserves — cash in the bank is not the same as retained profit, because some of it belongs to HMRC. Run the numbers on the salary and dividend calculator, then let us check it against your accounts.

It goes to your director's loan account, and it has teeth. If the account is overdrawn at the year end and not repaid within nine months and a day, the company pays a section 455 charge on the outstanding balance — refundable, but only once the loan is cleared, which can be years of working capital sitting with HMRC. An interest-free balance over £10,000 is also a benefit in kind reportable on a P11D. It is fixable, and the fix is usually a properly documented dividend or bonus before the deadline rather than after. Tell us early; the options narrow considerably once the year has closed.

Yes. Every limited company package includes the confirmation statement and the routine statutory filings, and we track the dates rather than leaving you to remember them. Annual accounts are due at Companies House nine months after your year end, Corporation Tax is payable nine months and a day after it, and the CT600 is due twelve months after. Late accounts bring automatic penalties that double if you are late two years running, and the overdue status sits on your public record where lenders and customers can see it. That last consequence is usually the expensive one. Full detail is on the company secretarial page.

You can switch at any point, and most people do not wait. Just after a year end is tidiest because there is less part-year data to migrate, but a mid-year move is routine: we request professional clearance and your records, take over the HMRC agent authorisation, and pick up VAT and payroll cycles without a gap. The one time to move quickly regardless of the calendar is when filings are already overdue or an accountant has gone quiet, because the penalties keep accruing while you decide. Check your existing engagement letter for notice terms and make sure work you have paid for has been delivered.

Deal with it now — the penalties escalate on a timetable and the cheapest day to act is always today. For Companies House, late accounts start at £150 for a private company and rise with the delay, doubling if you were also late the previous year. For HMRC, a late CT600 brings its own penalties, and interest runs on unpaid Corporation Tax from the due date regardless. Appeals succeed only where there is a genuine reasonable excuse, and "the accountant did not tell me" is generally not one. We will establish exactly what is outstanding, file in the order that stops the bleeding, and tell you honestly what is and is not appealable.

It means no hourly charge for asking a question, with a fair usage policy behind it, and a reply usually within one working day. In practice it covers the calls that matter: can I afford this hire, should I buy the van before the year end, what does this HMRC letter mean, is this dividend safe. What it does not cover is a piece of work with real cost attached — a restructure, an enquiry, a valuation — which gets quoted before it starts. If your questions are really a request for daily bookkeeping, we will say so and price that properly rather than ration replies until you stop asking.