Keeping Books

[Peter Loew]

Although I set my LTD up in March, I have been keeping amateurish records of all my company outgoings using basic Word doc tables.

How do people here keep their company records up to date? Are there Excel templates I can download from somewhere, or other tools that can generate reports for my accountant?

How thorough do our company records have to be?

P

[MrRobin]

I just print out the pages fro the relevant month from my internet banking portal and send along with receipts for anything that has come out that month... I assume my accountant keeps spreadsheets etc for me!

[thunderlizard]

Doesn't your accountant have one? Mine does. It means I just shove all the receipts, bank statements etc. in a big box, then empty the box and fill in th spreadsheet every quarter.

[Bright Spark]

my accountant does all this for me, what's the point of using an
accountant if you end up doing all the work yourself!

This also leaves me more time to focus on learning and improving
my core skills to get the next contract.

[Peter Loew]

OK, so I take it the only records you guys keep are of any incurred expenses.

But I prefer to keep full records of any outgoings including dividends, salary and expenses, because if my accountant were to get run over by a bus, I would be stuffed. Don't you think it's responsible to keep such records yourself too?

[Xenophon]

Don't you think it's responsible to keep such records yourself too?

Yes it is.

I use SJD who provide an excellent Excel template for bookkeeping. It is available for anyone to download free from their site.

[Lewis]

Don't you think it's responsible to keep such records yourself too?

I thought it was a legal requirement!

[Peter Loew]

Yes it is.

I use SJD who provide an excellent Excel template for bookkeeping. It is available for anyone to download free from their site.

Thanks, that's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

[Cooperinliverp00l]

My accountant gave me three speadsheets

Millage - detailing date, From and To address, number of miles and cost of journey.

Payments - detailing date, amount and what it was then the columns are split into logical groups e.g motor, VAT, HMRC, myself for salary

Sales - detailing date, invoice number and amount.

THis is all they need to do the books. Takes me about 10 mins a week to update so that suits me.

[ladymuck]

Blimey! I do the whole lot myself using Sage Instant Accounts, including payroll and dividends. I produce accounts to TB and then just scan in my bank statements and mail a pdf of those and my TB over to SJD for them to sort out my corp tax and final accounts. It takes about an hour a month. I can't believe how little responsibility you guys take over your finances! Truly shocking!