What does your accountant need from you, and by when?
Two deadlines are enough to remember: receipts by the tenth of the following month, and payroll material five working days before payday. The rest follows from those.
Every month
These arrive every month, at the same point. Once they are routine, the financial statements are not a scramble but a finishing pass.
- Sales invoices, purchase invoices and receipts early in the following month, by the tenth at the latest. February's receipts by 10 March.
- Bank statements from every account, including the one that now carries a single recurring charge.
- An explanation for anything that does not explain itself. An unusual cost, a new contract, a payment made by the owner. One sentence saves two emails.
For payroll, five working days before payday
Payroll material has a schedule of its own, and it is tighter than the receipt schedule, because the incomes register filing follows the payment date, not the day we get to it.
- Hours and pay details in whatever form they arise on your side.
- Changes on the same schedule: a new tax card, a new account number, attachment orders and union deductions. A correction made afterwards is slower and more expensive than information given in advance.
- Starting and ending employment as soon as it is known, not the evening before payday.
Why the tenth
VAT and the other periodic filings run from the bookkeeping, and the bookkeeping runs from the material. The tenth is the point at which a month still has room to be finished properly.
If material arrives once a year, the four-month deadline for the financial statements turns tight, and that is the deadline that does not move.
What we do in the meantime
We ask for what is missing as a list, not one email at a time. You have a named accountant whose number you know, so a question gets answered rather than queued.
How we work sets out the whole round: what happens when you start, what happens each month, and what happens at the end of the period.
Let us set a schedule that fits your month
If payday is the 15th, or your invoicing lands at the end of the month, the schedule should follow that rather than a general rule. Tell us how your month runs and we will fit it.
Frequently asked
- What happens if material arrives late?
- The bookkeeping finishes later, and in a busy period it can move to the next round. With payroll it is harder: the incomes register filing has a deadline of its own, and it does not move because the information arrived late.
- Can I send a receipt as a photo?
- Yes, as long as the whole receipt is visible and the amount is legible. It is still faster to send it straight into Fennoa, where it reaches your accountant immediately instead of sitting in an inbox.
- What has to be written on a receipt?
- What was bought and for which business purpose, particularly when the receipt does not make that obvious. "Lunch, client X" is enough; the restaurant's name alone is not.
Tell us what you need, and we will work out what it actually takes.
A free conversation, about 30 minutes: we go through document volumes, the number of people on the payroll and the services you need, and tell you the exact price. We do not charge for preparing a quote, and the conversation commits you to nothing.