Self-Assessment Saving

Saving time and money on your self-assessment sometimes goes hand in hand. It can be a frustrating exercise, especially if you don’t know what you are doing. However, there are easy guides to help you balance books whilst keeping in your accountants good ones.

Earlier the better

Being the early bird can definitely get you the worm, or in this case a high position in your accountants favour.

Calling ahead and asking your accountant what is required to complete their self-assessment are looked at much more brightly than those who deliver theirs with missing information on the last day of January. You can even find yourself offered discounts for being so prompt and making things easier, which is much better than leaving everything until the last possible minute adding more stress to an already overloaded accountant come year end. You can also use a middleman in bookkeeping services to aid the workload for all parties.

If possible, assemble all required paperwork together by yourself and reduce the accountants need to chase for paperwork that is missing. You can even provide a neat and tidy folder to collect all information together with an analyzed cash book. This saves the accountant a lot of time as well as saves on your accountant hourly rate fees. Showing this level of reliability and understanding of their time can save you more in the future.

Being early is much, much better than being late. Many accountant fees get higher for self-assessment towards the end of January and some even issue late fees on top of late filing fees imposed by HMRC. It pays to be prepared in many ways.

Remember the simplest things

One thing an accountant will not appreciate is abuse and bad language. Now admittedly it is a stressful part of the year for business owners to assemble and comply with everything, but an accountant has that from everywhere during this period.

Being pushy with your accountant to get the job done does not make either case any easier and you may end up getting into a heated argument that achieves nothing other than your file being moved to the bottom of their busy pile. Be polite, they have a lot of businesses to look over during this period. If you want priority, be polite or file early.

Among the more prominent areas to remember is to sign it off as accurate. Many accountants will not submit unless you don’t sign off on the paperwork issued, which can result in late fees from HMRC. An accountant has much better things to be doing than constantly chasing you to get it signed off, so best to do it as soon as possible and avoid the problems it can bring.

All above are certain to make you savings in the short term and build a reliable partnership between both your accountant and yourself. If record keeping is not your thing, you can hire reliable bookkeeping Manchester to ensure your records are well equipped to avoid end of year disaster.