You may well be asking why you, as a small business, should be paying someone to do your books (ie, using an external bookkeeper) when perhaps you could do them yourself. There are a number of reasons; Presenting your accountant with a box of receipts and bank statements at your year end (the “paper bag” job) is very costly in terms of your accountant’s time. You might forget to record a legitimate business expense resulting in you actually paying more tax than necessary. For example, do you know the approved mileage rates and what you can and can not put through your business in the way of computer equipment etc? Having timely and accurate management accounts enables you to make key business decisions and run the business more effectively. Not meeting those all-important HMRC deadlines will lead to penalties and interest charges but it is also far more likely to encourage a full and potentially lengthy HMRC investigation.
