Hi

Just want to pick your brains please, i run a small limited company with a turnover of 165k. i run my books as follows on a spread sheet. :-

one side has date,stock,labour,motor,tools,misc,vat the cash amounts are entered in gross and then the vat element on its own. On the other side of the sheet is date,invoice name,amount,vat. If that makes sense and i do one for each month but here is the question I have being told to now add my bank accounts and the credit card to it so now I am getting all lost.

Can any of you put me in the right direction of how the month sheet should look like and a summary sheet for the year that would be clear to read and help the accountant at the end of year

Kind Regards

Gary
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Gary
I suggest you show your spreadsheet to your accountant and get him/her to suggest modifications as necessary.

The bottom line is, we want to know how much you sold in the year and where that money went (ie did it get banked to business account? personal bank? cash? still outstanding at year end?). We want to know what you spent, and what category of expenditure it was (stationery, purchases, electric, motor etc) and HOW you spent it (from bank? credit card? cash? still owe supplier at year end?). We then want to add up income into the bank, expenditure out of the bank, and want that to match the bank balance on your bank statement! For each bank account you use.

Simple, no? :)

May I suggest using some cheap/free accounting software? Much easier as all the double entry (the "I spent ?0 on postage from petty cash") is done automatically.
Spreadsheets are ok if done right, but a nightmare if not and may end up costing you more in the long run if your accountant can't decipher it in the way s/he needs to.
Also, you say you're recording VAT - if you aren't VAT reg youy don't need to. If you are, then some software will work it out automatically and greatly reduce the margin of error. :)

Good luck :)
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I'd agree with Jenni that the best thing you can do is abandon the spreadsheet and use some free or cheap accounting software. Microsoft offer a free pacakge (but it runs very slowly) while Solar Accounts offer a very good package for ?5. We use this package for a certain section of our clients and for the money it is excellent.

David.
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Solar Accounts gets the thumbs up from me too :)
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will check solar out, I used to use sage accounts but it never seemed to tally at all but then again prob just me
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Unless you really 'get' Sage, then it's best for bookkeepers and accountants and not other users. Something designed for non-accountants like Solar or Kashflow is ideal for the business user who wants to do their own bookkeeping. Also look at VT Cashbook, I've not used it myself but use other VT software and love it. VT cashbook is free.
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free stuff like that idea lol.
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Also look at VT Cashbook, I've not used it myself but use other VT software and love it. VT cashbook is free.

VT is good, it is free and simple.
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Hi Gary

The beautiful Jenni is right. But if your spreadsheets were working well for you before, perhaps all you need to do is a column at the end to explain where the money came from/went to.

For example, if you paid for labour from your bank account, state "bank a/c", but if you paid for stock from a credit card state "c/card". Perhaps the difficulties arise when you draw cash to pay for something. I would recommend that there be no "cash" option. If it didn't come from the credit card, then it came from the bank account.

But ultimately, there are numerous ways of listing records and the accountant has to understand each different way that a client presents the information. So yes, do ask them if what you're doing is OK.

Accounting packages are OK, but only if you are confident with them. Again, your accountant can help show you how it works - it will them headache (and time) of working out how your records are operated and might save money on the long run!!
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