Preparing for your Year End Accounts
Our tips to help you to prepare for your Year End Accounts
This article will provide you with an overview of the information that you should provide to your accountant so that they can prepare your Year End Accounts.
We appreciate that each client is different and that some will be more ‘hands on’ with their bookkeeping than others, but there are some basic things that you can do to help your accountant prepare your Year End Accounts.
- Keep a list of payments and receipts
- Analyse your payments and receipts
- File your invoices in a sensible system so that relevant invoices can be easily found
- Use a mutually agreed cloud bookkeeping product
- Provide year end valuations such as stock, debtors and creditors
If you’re feeling confident, you can also assist by;
- Preparing a bank reconciliation
- Preparing a profit and loss account
- Preparing a balance sheet
Don’t worry if you’re not able to complete all of these tasks. You should discuss your exact requirement with your accountant and, between you, decide how much you can prepare yourself versus what you will hand over to them. It’s also helpful to agree a time schedule for when you will provide your records to your accountant.
Records to provide for your Year End Accounts
Not every business will have access to the following records, but if you do, you should provide them to your accountant before they begin preparing your Year End Accounts;
- A back up of your accounts software for the year if your records are computerised
- Your cash book
- Petty cash records
- Sales and purchase day books
- Any ledgers that you keep
- Bank statements
- Purchase invoices
- Sales invoices
- Cheque book and paying in stubs
- Copies of VAT returns covering the year together with any workings
- Your payroll records for the year together with details of PAYE calculations for payments to HMRC
- Copies of any new loan or HP agreements taken out during the year
- Details of any business income or expenditure that didn’t go through your business bank account
Schedules to provide for your Year End Accounts
In addition, providing the following schedules will help to reduce the amount of time that your accountant will need to spend completing your Year End Accounts. Again, don’t worry if you’re unable to provide everything on this list, your accountant will be able to prepare them for you.
- A list of fixed additions with copy purchase invoices provided
- A year end stock list. This should be at the lower of cost or net realisable value
- Details of work in progress at the year end
- A list of debtors at the year end
- Sales ledger control account reconciliation
- Reconciliations for all bank and cash accounts
- A list of trade creditors at the year end and their age
- Purchase ledger control account reconciliation
- Details of PAYE owed at the year end
- Details of VAT owed at the year end
We hope that you’ve found this article helpful. If you require any assistance with preparing your Year End Accounts please get in touch. Our experienced team would be happy to help.