Payroll and pensions run
Weekly, fortnightly, four-weekly or monthly. RTI filed on or before payday, auto-enrolment handled, P60s and P11Ds done.
Small businesses
Two thresholds change the job. Both are easier to cross deliberately.
The first employee and the first VAT return are where a small business either gets organised or starts firefighting. We make sure you arrive at both of them on purpose.
What you get
- Payroll and pensions run for you
- The VAT threshold watched all year
- Monthly figures you can act on
- A hire costed before you advertise
- Every filing tracked in one place
- One fixed monthly fee
The numbers that decide it
Four figures worth knowing by heart
Four numbers govern a business with staff. The first two arrive whether you planned for them or not.
£90,000VAT registration, on rolling 12-month turnover
15%Employer's National Insurance above £5,000
£10,500Employment allowance, if your payroll qualifies
On or beforePayday — when the RTI submission is due
2026/27 figures. See key tax dates and the calculators for the full picture.
Your year
The one calendar that never stops
Payroll is the only part of the year with no quiet season. Everything else can be batched; this one runs whether or not anybody is in.
Every paydayFull Payment Submission to HMRC, on or before the day people are paid.
22nd monthlyPAYE and National Insurance paid over to HMRC.
Every VAT quarterReturn and payment, one month and seven days after the period ends.
31 MayP60s to everyone employed at 5 April.
6 JulyP11D for expenses and benefits, with the Class 1A NI due on 22 July.
Your year endAccounts, corporation tax and the confirmation statement, all measured from it.
Source: gov.uk PAYE, VAT and Corporation Tax deadline guidance, checked July 2026.
The job changes when you take on people
And it changes again at the VAT threshold
A one-person business has one set of problems. The moment somebody else depends on being paid on the 25th, you have a payroll, a pension scheme, employment law and a fixed cost that does not care how the month went.
The VAT threshold does something similar. Crossing £90,000 of rolling turnover means nine filings a year instead of one, and a decision about whether the price goes up by a fifth or your margin comes down by a fifth. Neither answer is obviously right and both are better made in advance.
Those two thresholds — first employee, first VAT return — are where most small businesses either get organised or start firefighting. Almost everything we do for a business this size is about being on the right side of that.
Where it goes wrong
Five, in roughly the order they happen
- Crossing the VAT threshold without noticing
- The £90,000 test is on any rolling twelve months, not your financial year, and registration is due within 30 days. Cross it unknowingly and you owe VAT on sales you never charged it on.
- The first hire costed on salary alone
- Employer's National Insurance, the pension, holiday, sick cover, equipment and the recruitment itself are all real. Salary is the number owners compare on and it is not the number.
- Holiday pay for irregular hours
- Getting it wrong across a team of ten is an expensive mistake that usually surfaces when somebody leaves and adds up what they were owed.
- Pricing set once and never revisited
- Wage costs, materials and overheads have all moved. A day rate or a price list from three years ago is a slow margin problem that only shows up in the annual accounts, by which point it has been true all year.
- Nobody looking at the debtors
- The list of who owes you is the fastest cash in most small businesses and the report nobody opens. It only works if the books are current enough for the list to be right.
What a hire really costs
Before anyone does a day's work
One employee on £30,000
A business that already employs people, so the employment allowance is already used up against the existing payroll. 2026/27 rates.
- Gross salary
- £30,000
- Employer’s National Insurance — 15% above the £5,000 threshold
- £3,750
- Employer pension contribution — minimum on qualifying earnings
- ~£700
- Equipment, phone, software, workspace
- varies
- Recruitment, and the first weeks before they are productive
- varies
- Cash cost before anything else
- £34,450+
About 15% on top of the salary before you count a laptop or a single unproductive week. Where the employment allowance is still available it can wipe out up to £10,500 of the National Insurance across the whole payroll — but never for a company whose only employee is its sole director.
Worked through at 2026/27 rates from our own calculators, which follow gov.uk guidance checked in July 2026. An example, not advice — your figures will differ.
What we do about it
A finance function, at your size
VAT, before you cross it
The rolling twelve months watched, the scheme chosen deliberately, and the returns reconciled rather than estimated.
Monthly management figures
Margin, cash and who owes you what, current enough to act on. See management accounts.
A hire costed properly
What it really costs and what the business has to bill to carry it, before you advertise rather than after.
Pricing looked at
Margin by product, service or job, so a price rise is a decision with a number attached.
Every filing tracked
Accounts, corporation tax, VAT, payroll and the confirmation statement, all in one place with your deadlines on it.
Questions
What people ask us
How much does it cost for a small business?
You get a fixed monthly figure in writing after a 30-minute discovery call. It is priced on transaction volume, VAT registration and scheme, payroll headcount, the number of entities and the state of the records — not on your industry or your turnover in isolation. A £400,000 consultancy with twelve invoices a month is less work than a £150,000 shop with daily takings and stock. The fee is fixed once agreed, includes FreeAgent worth up to £330 a year, and carries no hourly charge for questions.
At what point does a small business need more than year-end accounts?
When you start making decisions that cannot wait for the annual accounts — hiring, pricing, borrowing, taking on premises or stock. Year-end accounts arrive months after the period they describe and are built for HMRC and Companies House, not for you. Once there are people to pay and cash to time, you want monthly or quarterly management accounts and a rolling cash forecast. If you are a one-person business with predictable income and no staff, reporting monthly is a cost without a payoff.
Do we get one accountant, or whoever picks up the phone?
A named accountant who knows the business, with a team behind them so the work does not stop when one person is on holiday. Production runs in small pods where a senior reviews what a producer prepares, which is how errors get caught before they reach you rather than after they reach HMRC. You are not explaining your business from scratch every time you ring. See the team.
What is included, and where does the fee stop?
The recurring compliance work: bookkeeping, VAT, payroll at the agreed headcount, year-end accounts, the tax return and Companies House filings, all listed line by line in your proposal. Outside it: catch-up work on unfiled years, HMRC enquiries, restructures, valuations, audits, and regulated financial or legal advice. Those are quoted when they arise so you are not paying monthly for something you may need once in five years. Advisory work — management accounts, forecasting, planning and coaching — is deliberately separate too, because plenty of businesses genuinely do not need it yet and should not be bundled into paying for it.
Can you handle VAT and payroll as we grow?
Yes, and the growth points are the bits worth planning for. VAT registration is compulsory once taxable turnover passes £90,000 on a rolling twelve-month basis, or when you expect to pass it within thirty days — the rolling test is what catches people, because it is not your accounting year. Payroll brings RTI submissions every pay run, auto-enrolment assessment, and pension duties that carry their own penalties. Both are cheaper to set up before you need them than to backdate afterwards, and registering for VAT late can mean paying HMRC tax you never charged your customers.
Will you tell us if we have outgrown the package?
Yes. The usual signs are a finance job that has quietly become someone's second full-time role, a bank balance nobody trusts as a guide to what is spendable, or decisions being made on last year's figures. At that point the answer is either a Virtual Finance Team level or your own bookkeeper with us handling month-end and compliance on top. For most businesses under about £2m of turnover, outsourcing is cheaper for the same output; above that it becomes a genuine judgement call and we will say so.
How do we switch without disrupting VAT and payroll?
We time the handover around your cycles rather than the calendar. Practically: professional clearance and records requested from your current accountant, HMRC agent authorisation put in place, software and bank feeds set up, then a switch-over date chosen so no VAT return or pay run falls in the gap. Year-to-date payroll figures come across so nothing is double-counted or lost. Most handovers complete within a couple of weeks, and the hold-up is nearly always the outgoing firm's reply. You do not have to have the awkward conversation — the clearance letter is ours to send.
What if we have several companies, or a group?
That is fine, and it changes the pricing and the tax position rather than the service. Each entity needs its own accounts, return and filings, so the fee reflects the number of entities, not one blended figure. On tax, the point people miss is associated companies: the £50,000 and £250,000 Corporation Tax thresholds are divided between them, so two companies each making £40,000 do not both get the small profits rate. Intercompany balances, recharges and any group VAT registration all need deliberate treatment. Bring the whole structure to the discovery call, not just the trading company.
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