Year-end preparation: get records ready for your accountant

Key takeaways

Year-end preparation for your accountant is mostly tidying, reconciling and gathering evidence, and most of it can be outsourced. The better the pack you hand over, the less your accountant charges for clean-up. Private company accounts are due at Companies House nine months after the year end; start preparing in the first month.

• Reconcile bank, debtors, creditors and VAT before handing over.
• Gather evidence for fixed assets, loans and accruals.
• Private company accounts are due nine months after year end.
• A clean pack cuts the accountant's clean-up hours.

What does your accountant need at year end?

A reconciled set of books and the evidence behind the balance sheet. That means bank and credit card reconciliations, debtor and creditor lists that match the ledger, a fixed asset list with additions and disposals, loan statements, stock figures if you hold stock, and a list of accruals and prepayments with workings.

• Which business processes should you outsource?
• Fixed asset register: keep it current all year

Which year-end tasks can be outsourced?

The preparation: finishing and reconciling the bookkeeping, matching supplier statements, listing and evidencing balances, chasing missing receipts and building the pack in your accountant's format. The accounts themselves, tax computations and any judgements about valuations stay with your accountant and directors.

• Record to report: which parts should you outsource?
• Stock reconciliation: make the system match the shelf

What are the key UK year-end deadlines?

For a private limited company, accounts are due at Companies House nine months after the accounting year end, Corporation Tax is usually payable nine months and one day after it, and the Company Tax Return is due 12 months after. Company records must be kept for at least six years. Missing the accounts deadline brings automatic penalties.

• The cost of missed deadlines for a small business
• Company secretarial admin: confirmation statements on time

When should year-end prep stay with the accountant?

When the books are badly behind or wrong and need professional reconstruction, or when the year involved complex events such as a group restructure. In those cases a managed team can still gather documents, but your accountant should lead.

• Doing your own bookkeeping: what it really costs
• Outsource, split, fix or keep: four process verdicts

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see: owners pay their accountant a clean-up fee every year without realising it. A prepared pack, reconciled and evidenced, usually turns a back-and-forth of several weeks into a short set of questions.

• See client work
• BPO Solutions for UK businesses

Year-end preparation checklist

Complete these before sending anything to your accountant.

• Bank and card accounts reconciled.
• Debtor and creditor lists match the ledger.
• VAT control account reconciled.
• Fixed asset additions and disposals evidenced.
• Accruals and prepayments listed with workings.
• Missing receipts chased and filed.

• Finance processes to outsource, and the ones to keep
• VAT return preparation: outsource the routine, own the return

Next step

Tell us your year end and what your accountant asked for last time. We will tell you what preparing the pack would involve and how long it should take.