Maintaining accurate business records is a legal requirement and can result in fines, penalties and worse if not done correctly.

We can help you record all of the financial transactions of your business, including purchases, sales, receipts, and payments, accurately and up to date, ensuring your financial data is organised and easily accessible for financial reporting, tax reporting and decision-making.

We can do your bookkeeping daily, weekly, quarterly or just once a year if yours is a very small business.

We are able to prepare and submit Self-Assessment Tax Returns for a wide range of clients, including:

Self-employed

Employed - with Benefits in Kind or work-related expenses

Directors

Investors

Landlords

Allowing us to prepare your return can minimise errors and reduce the risk of HMRC audits.

Preparation of regular financial reports and analysis to help you make informed decisions about your business.

Useful reports include:

Financial Reports

• Profit and Loss Statement: Showing how your business’s Turnover, costs, and expenses contribute to its profitability or loss, helping you decide which business activities create value, and which might not.

• Balance Sheet: Provides a snapshot of your business’s assets, liabilities, and equity at a point in time.

• Cash Flow Statement: Tracks the inflows and outflows of cash, helping you manage your business’s liquidity and financial planning.

Operational Reports

• Sales Reports: Details your business’s sales performance, revenue by product or service, and sales trends over time.

• Inventory Reports: Monitors your business’s stock levels, turnover rates, and helps in effective inventory management.

• Production Reports: Show production volumes, costs, and efficiency metrics, which is particularly useful if yours is a manufacturing business.

Performance Reports

• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Summarises the critical metrics that track your business’s performance against its goals.

• Budget vs. Actuals: Compare your business’s actual performance against budgets and identify variances that inform areas for improvement.

Forecasting and Planning Reports

• Budget Reports: Outline expected revenues and expenses for the future, aiding planning and decision making.

• Forecasting Reports: Budget reports updated for actual performance to help predict future financial performance.

Specialised Reports – these can be bespoke for your business, but here are some examples:

• Customer Reports: Analysis of customer demographics, behaviours, and profitability, aiding targeted marketing strategies.

• Project Reports: Track the progress, costs, and timelines of ongoing projects to ensure they are on track and within budget.

• Compliance Reports: Ensure the business complies with regulatory requirements and standards.

Helping you prepare for the planned Making Tax Digital initiative from HMRC, aimed at digitalising the tax process to make it easier and more efficient for businesses

Currently, all VAT-registered businesses are required to comply with MTD by keeping digital records and using software to submit their VAT returns, but from April 2026 self-employed businesses and landlords with income over £50,000 be required to do keep digital records and make quarterly submissions also.  The threshold is then planned to reduce from £50,000 down to £30,000 from April 2027

Partnerships are expected to be included in MTD plans in the future as well.

Engaging a bookkeeper to support your regular bookkeeping needs throughout the will put your business in the best possible position when this initiative becomes mandatory, and Maeflower Bookkeeping Ltd’s use of accounting software, approved by HMRC, will mean that your business is ahead of the game.

Preparation and submission of accurate VAT returns, ensuring compliance with VAT regulations and the avoidance of penalties incurred for your business.

Track the inflows and outflows of cash in your business to ensure that it maintains sufficient liquidity to meet its obligations and avoid cash shortages and supports its financial stability

Working with you to establish realistic budgets and forecasts that provide valuable insights and data that can assist you in the management, understanding and decision-making in your business.

Accurately allocating the transactions from your bank statement/s to your business’s Profit and Loss Statement and/or Balance Sheet.

Regular bank reconciliations identify and correct any discrepancies, ensuring accurate financial records and preventing potential fraud.

A list of all of balances in your business’s accounts, into debit and credit values, with totals that mirror each other, which ensures the integrity of the financial statements that will be prepared from them.

The Trial Balance Report can be provided to your accountant, if you have one, for them to use to prepare your final accounts for the financial period, and/or used to support Self-Assessment Tax Returns for Sole Traders.

If you do already have an accountant, but not a bookkeeper, it is still useful to engage a bookkeeper in addition to your accountant. This is because a bookkeeper often works more closely with you and your business throughout the year, not just at the year end. As a result, they tend to understand your business and its needs more fully, and a well-placed to make recommendations, particularly for process improvements.

The work that the bookkeeper has done throughout the year will often make the year end financial statement and/or tax return preparations go more smoothly, especially if you are happy to allow them to liaise with your accountant directly, as less can be lost in translation this way, particularly when it comes to accounting terminology, and even more so if your bookkeeper originally qualified as an accountant, as I did, but simply enjoys the bookkeeping side of things more.

If your business relies on hard copies of receipts, invoices, and statements we can assist by capturing this digitally, and attaching it to the relevant entries within your accounting system/s.

Digital data capture has many benefits, including:

1. Accuracy: Reduces the risk of human error in data entry and calculations, ensuring more precise financial records.

2. Efficiency: Speeds up data entry processes and eliminates the need for manual paperwork, saving time and effort.

3. Accessibility: Makes financial data easily accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, supporting remote work and collaboration.

4. Real-Time Updates: Allows for real-time updates to financial records, enabling more timely and informed decision-making.

5. Cost Savings: Reduces costs associated with physical storage, printing, and manual processing.

6. Data Security: Enhances data security with digital backups and encryption, protecting sensitive financial information.

7. Integration: Facilitates integration with other digital tools and systems, such as payroll, invoicing, and inventory management.

8. Compliance: Helps ensure compliance with regulatory requirements by maintaining accurate and up-to-date records.

9. Scalability: Easily scales with business growth, accommodating increased data volumes without additional manual labour.

10. Analytics: Enables advanced data analytics and reporting, providing deeper insights into your business’s financial performance and trends.

11. Environmentally Friendly: Reduces the need for paper, contributing to environmental sustainability efforts.

12. Audit Trail: Creates an easily traceable audit trail, simplifying the process of auditing and verification for you, your accountant and HMRC.

Creating and issue invoices to your customers, ensuring timely billing, accurate records, and prompt follow-up of any overdue invoices.

Accurately record and manage invoices received from your suppliers.

This ensures you know when and how much to pay and avoids late payment fees and ensures your good supplier relationships continue.

Accurately record and manage your business’s expenses, ensuring accurately documentation, categorisation and authorisation.

If your business is payment-intensive, we can help manage your outgoing payments, including salaries, supplier payments, taxes and other expenses, keeping the business’s cash flow under control and maintaining credibility with your employees, suppliers and HMRC.

We are a fully remote, Xero-accredited practice.

Xero is cloud-based so you can access your accounts anytime, anywhere and even at the same time we are working on them for you.

Xero connects to most major banks and feeds update in real-time, so we can process transactions without requiring any direct access to your bank accounts.

Xero also connects with many other types of software, including for data capture; invoicing and receipts; bill payments; CRM and marketing; and Ecommerce, including Stripe, Shopify and GoCardless.

Although our favoured software,Xero is not the only accounting software we have experience in. We also have experience of QuickBooks, Sage and SAP, so we can adapt to whatever software your business might already be using. Or, we can assist you to migrate your financial records onto Xero from another software provider, or from hard-copy records if you haven’t yet made the move to accounting software for your business.

We also have experience of making Gift Aid claims on behalf of charities, so we can assist with the preparation of accurate and legitimate submissions to HMRC, allowing charities to maximise the benefit to the organisation of donations from UK taxpayers.