Chartered Accountancy

This is the ‘bread and butter’ of any chartered accountancy practice – the preparation of the annual accounts. The account is a document that reports the financial health of your business for the year, in particular the annual profits. We believe this document is key as it “tells a story” of your business, and we take pleasure in meeting our clients at the year-end to explain this story and help them plan for the coming year. This is what we refer to as “bringing the numbers to life”.

Our starting point for preparing the accounts is to use the records that you provide. Our approach depends on whether the client prepares their own bookkeeping on cloud software (like QuickBooks or Xero) or if they use one of our template Excel spreadsheets (and of course we give advice on how to use it!).

However, many clients also provide their records in other formats, ranging from a Trial Balance using a computerised bookkeeping Package (like Sage or a Cloud package like QuickBooks or Xero), a traditional ledger book, or even a bag of loose receipts!

We clearly don’t encourage the latter – however, using these records, we then prepare annual accounts in the required format – whether that be for sole traders, partnerships or limited companies. Once we have had our year-end meeting, these are brought to draft format for the client’s approval, and then we submit the final version to HMRC along with tax computations, and also to Companies House for limited company accounts.

Certain companies, including limited liability partnerships and charities, are required by law to have their financial statements audited if certain criteria are met. Many small and medium sized companies will be able to claim exemption from this requirement so long as it has at least two of the following:

– an annual turnover of no more than £10.2 million

– assets worth no more than £5.1 million

– 50 or fewer employees on average

Given most companies meet the criteria, we would add an ‘Audit exemption statement’ on the balance sheet. It should be noted, however, that companies may also require an audit for other reasons, including if it is in the public interest or if it is required by the shareholders or other stakeholders.

For businesses requiring this, we are able to provide a full, audit service.