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Our Services >
Compliance Services
Accounts
All businesses need annual accounts prepared, whether the business is a sole trade, a partnership, a company or an LLP. We understand that as this is a requirement for HMRC and in the case of companies and LLP’s, also for Companies House, that clients would like this compliance service carried out for the minimum cost.
We therefore aim to prepare technically correct accounts as efficiently as possible. This allows us to focus part of our resources on those things which add value. The most obvious example of this is the time we devote to regular tax planning – making sure our clients pay the minimum legal amount of tax. As a result we generally bundle together the accounts service, the tax compliance service, and the tax planning service within one fee structure.
We are also experienced at preparing accounts for charities, flat management companies (including Landlord & Tenant Act reports), and management accounts.
In all cases it is true to say that the better the bookkeeping, the more efficiently we can prepare the accounts. We will therefore provide guidance wherever we can.
Bookkeeping
We can relieve you and your business of a significant burden by taking care of all your bookkeeping and accounting needs. This ranges from making use of our in-house bookkeeping bureau to the preparation of your annual accounts. We will treat every business individually so that we can tailor our approach to your requirements.
Besides the core bookkeeping, we can also maintain your VAT records, prepare your payroll and take on ad hoc projects to free up valuable time for your staff. If you want to do the bookkeeping in house, we believe that our high level of IT literacy can help improve our efficiency and help our clients to set-up their accounting systems to be efficient and effective. We are Sage Accountants Club Members enabling us to supply the latest Sage software. (training)
We are also licensed to supply More bookkeeping software, which is an ideal package for small and medium sized businesses which often do not have staff with bookkeeping or accountancy experience.
Tax Returns
Personal Tax Returns are generally prepared by the designated member of the Tax Department in each office, but this work is dovetailed in to the tax planning to ensure that no more tax is being paid than is absolutely necessary. All Tax Returns go through our review process to help ensure the forms are correct and that appropriate advice is provided in connection with the planning for the following year.
Audit
If you are a limited company or an LLP then you are required to prepare accounts that must be filed with Companies House in a statutory format. We can help you by preparing your statutory accounts and filing them with Companies House for you. (GAAP, FRS’s etc)
If you are a limited company or an LLP and your annual turnover is in excess of £6.5 million then it is a legal requirement to have your annual statutory accounts audited. Even if your turnover is below £6.5 million then there could be occasions when you are still legally required to have an audit. You can also have an annual audit voluntarily.
We also deal with specialist audits such as for charities, professional firms’ client accounts and Landlord & Tenant Act reports.
Our approach to an audit assignment is not based purely on helping a business fulfil its statutory obligations. An audit gives us an ideal opportunity look inside a business to see what makes it tick. We can then use this knowledge to work with the Company's management team to help them get the most out of their business.
Business Planning
Every business must plan ahead in order to ensure success, but it is too easy to succumb to the daily pressures of work and delay or ignore strategic planning. The result of poor planning is often rushed and misinformed decisions, over/under capacity, inefficiency and missed opportunities.
Every business owner needs to invest time in developing a long-term plan, starting with what you want to achieve from your investment and what your reasons for being in business are, and then developing a plan to help achieve these objectives. The financial aspects are usually the backbone to any business plan and you need to ensure that this aspect has been adequately dealt with in your plan.
Consequently the short term plan should include budgets and cash flow forecasts. We can assist you in putting these together using our bespoke cash flow forecasting model which will be tailored for your business. Our budget and cash flow forecast package is a 12 month (month by month) financial pack consisting of:
- List of key assumptions
- Sales data and cash received calculations
- Cost of Sales data and suppliers payment calculations
- Trading account budget (from the above calculations)
- Detailed P&L account budget (overheads)
- Cash flow forecast
- Opening Balance sheet
- Closing forecast Balance Sheet
- VAT workings
- Reconciliation of profit to cash flow
Cost for the first production is £500 + VAT. That price includes:-
- Tailoring the budget and cash flow to your business
- Entering your initial figures before the meeting
- Meeting with you at our office to discuss and amend the initial figures as required (up to 2 hours)
- Sending you the completed version
- Minor amendments as required to produce the final version
Subsequent years would cost £400+VAT, assuming no major re-tailoring required
Contact us today for a strategic planning review and/or a budgets & cash flow forecast package.
Management Accounts
For those clients who would value assistance in putting together management accounts, whether that be on a monthly or quarterly basis, we can tailor that work to suit your individual circumstances.
For those who produce their own management accounts, but would like them reviewed, we have a bespoke review system – PRISM – which focuses on the key performance indicators and produces monthly analytical summaries including graphs, a funds flow statement, comparisons with budget / previous years and variance analyses and much more.
Income Tax and Corporation Tax Planning
For our owner-managed company clients we operate a regular tax planning service as part of our core service. Included in this is a personal tax computation projection for the year ahead, which is flexed as required throughout the tax year. This ensures that at any given time we are always able to advise on whether / how much additional income can be drawn from the company without incurring any personal higher rate tax and/or alternative strategies.
Minimising the combined corporate tax and personal tax is always the goal, and by projecting ahead, we are able to advise on any actions required before the end of the tax year.
We also have access to advanced tax strategies for those clients with potentially large tax liabilities.
Where clients with existing companies are considering a new business, or a new product or service, we have access to a clever tax reduction strategy which does not involve any “scheme” in the normal sense of the word. This is ideal for risk averse clients.
Capital Gains Tax Planning
The key to minimising CGT is planning as far in advance as possible. Some of the strategies will involve ensuring that one qualifies for all possible reliefs, and that may require correctly setting up for transactions years in advance. On occasions there are last minute adjustments one can make to a pending transaction that may save some tax.
Qualifying EIS investments may allow a deferral of CGT incurred in previous years. That deferral is particularly valuable if it moves a gain from being taxed at 40% to one being taxed at 18%. This is one method of reducing CGT by an action after the event.
We encourage our clients to discuss all financial matters with us as far in advance as possible so that we may help reduce the overall tax burden.
Inheritance Tax Planning
This is the most difficult tax saving to achieve mainly because the benefits of any savings accrue to the beneficiaries of your Estate and not to you! As a result, the incentive that exists to save on all other types of tax is not present, and there is often an inclination to put off the planning to another day.
As with most taxes there are some basic steps that one can take to organise one’s affairs to minimise IHT. That should always be the starting point. More complicated planning can be undertaken using structured investments which can be very tax efficient, and we work in partnership with a firm of Financial Planners who can assist you on this sort of planning.
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