Established 2011 · Hexbridge
Books that are up to date on the ninth of the month, every month.
We keep the ledgers, run the payroll and file the returns for around sixty small firms — builders, two dental practices, a printer, several shops and a good number of one-person limited companies. Nothing we do is a surprise, and nothing arrives late.
The practice, in figures
- Clients
- 61
- Payrolls run each month
- 38
- Employees paid
- 412
- VAT returns a quarter
- 44
- Returns filed late since 2011
- 0
What the monthly fee buys
The work, month by month
Days 1–5 · Collection
Bank feeds reconcile automatically; receipts arrive by app or in the envelope we collect on a Tuesday. We chase what is missing before we start, not after.
Days 5–9 · Posting and reconciling
Purchase and sales ledgers posted, bank and card accounts reconciled to the penny, supplier statements checked against what we hold.
Day 9 · Management figures
Profit and loss, balance sheet, aged debtors and aged creditors, with a short note on anything that has moved more than it should have.
Rolling · Payroll and filing
Payroll runs to your own pay dates with the submission made on or before the day staff are paid. VAT goes out five working days before the deadline, never on it.
The point of the ninth
A set of figures produced six weeks after the month ended is history. Produced on the ninth, it is still something you can act on — chase the two invoices that are drifting, move the VAT money before it is spent, decide whether you can afford the van. That is the whole argument for paying a bookkeeper rather than doing it yourself in January.
Two of us
Who does your work
Anna Slatemarket
Bookkeeping, VAT and year-end preparation. Fifteen years in practice, nine of them here. Handles the construction clients and anything involving the domestic reverse charge, which is most of them.
Tom Pike
Payroll, pensions and CIS. Runs all thirty-eight payrolls himself, which is why the person who answers your payroll question is the person who ran it.
Not a call centre
Two people, two direct lines, one office above the framing shop on Cordwainer Street. If you ring at half past nine on a Tuesday, one of us picks up.
What we are not
We are not auditors, we do not give investment or tax-planning advice, and we will say so the moment a question needs an accountant instead. We work alongside three local firms and will introduce you.
Software
What we will work with
Xero, QuickBooks Online and FreeAgent, all of which meet the Making Tax Digital requirements for VAT. If you are on spreadsheets we will keep you on spreadsheets for as long as that is honestly working, and use bridging software to file — moving a set of books mid-year costs more than it saves.
The licence stays in your name and the data stays yours. If you leave us, you take the file and the history with you on the day you ask, without a fee and without a conversation about it.