new to wave and accounting - worth it over hiring an accountant for company&tax returns?
alexr
Member Posts: 6
I'm own a small Ltd business in the UK and need to file the first company accounts and corporation tax returns. I'm new to accounting. An accountant just quoted me for £650 to do that. The company has made only purchases of goods in the first year, without any other trading, most being in my name which need to be transferred over as company assets, and there are a few tens of invoices to go through for that.
My question is simple (but I fear the answer starts with "depends"): How long would all of that take me as beginner to do myself with Wave? Is it worth £650? That price would be a stretch right now.
in Using Wave
0
Comments
Hey @alexr welcome aboard! As much as you may not want to hear it, I can't help but preface this with "it depends", although that's purely because I don't know enough about your business.
That said, it sounds like it would be pretty quick. You'd want to import your relevant business transactions which would take a few minutes, and you'd want to set up your Chart of Accounts to add any custom accounts which you need for your business (also only a couple clicks), and create some invoices which is also quite slick.
For what it's worth, you can always create as many business profiles within a Wave account as you like. So, you could set up the first business as a test business of sorts, getting comfortable with the workflows and features etc. Then, once you're ready you can create a new business by clicking the toggle menu above "Dashboard" > Create new business. I agree that their price is pretty steep, and there's minimal risk (the only cost really being your time, which I respect is valuable) in setting up a test profile to play around with it (it's free anyway, so why not, right?).
I know that's still a pretty speculative answer, but I'm sure that as long as you devote a couple hours of your time to setting it up, exploring Wave, and following the different prompts/callouts in-app, you'll be in a great spot with your books. If you have more specific questions as you go, let us know!
Theo Paphitis (one of the dragons) mentions in his book, call HMRC, call companies house..... Ask them how to do it! Don't waste money on an accountant, and I completely agree.
You can actually book meetings with HMRC for tax help, it's what they are there for. If they want you to pay it, they'll damn well tell you how they want it done
Hi Alex
If you are still considering engaging an accountant to prepare your Ltd company accounts, in the correct formats for HMRC and Companies House, completing the HMRC company tax return, attending to the annual confirmation statement and processing your company payroll (these are all things that an accountant does for you - or indeed you can cherry pick which bits you wish to have done by them) then please drop me an email with some contact info and availability and we can sort out a mutually convenient time to have a chat from which I can formulate a realistic quote for you.
Regards
I'm not 100% sure if you are asking whether to do your accounts yourself and try to submit them, get an accountant to do both or you do your accounts and get someone to convert them to something Companies House will accept.
If you are not doing your own accounts then what are you doing, if it is using excel then stop immediately and use a proper system (excel is great but not fit for purpose here). Should be doing it anyway even if not top of priorities for a start up trying to catch up later is normally a bit of a nightmare. With that few transactions it should take very little effort. This will also help reduce future accounting fees*
If you have no accounting knowledge then you may want some help getting set up, you could try the pro-network here or find a freelancer in any number of places. Maybe less assuring than bricks and mortar high street accountant but still can get decent job done much cheaper. You can always ask them for proof of qualification anyway, I guess one of the issues on set up is you may not actually know if they did a good job or not until later.
I assume you are exempt from audit right now. If the business grows sufficiently then you won't be. This is partly where the above * is from, if an accountant is going to be doing prep for you as well as audit then obviously they will charge you more. If things go well at some point you WILL be hiring an accountant, you don't have a choice, may as well get stuff in order to minimise later bills even though they may be less of a struggle then.
Lastly, 650 may be a little steep for this but not that much if they are doing set up as well. You don't need a named firm or even a qualified accountant to do this, it isn't an audit so even if you want a physical person rather than a guy on a website then I expect you could get done a lot cheaper.
Good luck.