What is included
Two different things get sold under one word. It is worth being clear about which one you are buying.
Xero set up or migration
A new file built properly, or your existing data moved across from Sage, QuickBooks, FreeAgent or a spreadsheet, with opening balances agreed rather than approximated.
A chart of accounts that means something
Categories that match how you actually think about the business, so the profit and loss answers your questions rather than the software's default ones.
Bank feeds and reconciliation
Live feeds from your bank accounts, credit cards and payment providers, reconciled regularly rather than in a panic at the quarter end.
Sales and purchase ledgers maintained
Invoices raised or imported, supplier bills entered and matched, credit notes applied, and both ledgers agreed so you know who owes you and who you owe.
Receipt capture
Hubdoc or Dext set up so photographs of receipts become coded transactions with the document attached, which is what Making Tax Digital record keeping expects.
VAT coding checked as you go
The treatment applied when the transaction is entered, not corrected three months later when the return is being prepared.
Month end reconciliations
Bank, VAT control, PAYE control, director's loan and any suspense account agreed each month, so the year end is a review rather than a reconstruction.
Training for you and your team
If you want to keep the bookkeeping in-house, we would rather train the person doing it than charge you to fix it afterwards.
Apps that connect to Xero
Stock, job costing, payments, e-commerce and rota systems. We will tell you honestly which ones are worth the subscription for a business your size and which are not.
Who this is for
The right answer depends on how much of the work you want to keep, and on how reliable it needs to be.
Owners who do their own books in Xero
You enter the transactions, we answer the questions, check the quarter and pick up anything drifting. This is what Core includes, and for many companies it is enough.
Businesses with a bookkeeper who needs support
Someone in-house does the daily work, and we act as the technical backstop for the awkward entries, the reconciliations and the month end.
Owners who want it taken away entirely
You send us the paperwork, or the paperwork arrives automatically, and the ledgers are simply kept. This is the Enhance bolt-on and it is priced on volume.
Businesses moving off spreadsheets or desktop software
Usually prompted by Making Tax Digital, a lender asking for figures, or the realisation that nobody knows the cash position without an hour of work.
We do not work in every software package. We use Xero as standard because doing one thing extremely well beats doing five things adequately. If you are committed to something else, we will say whether we can work with it rather than pretending.
How it works
Taking on bookkeeping is more involved than taking on a year end, because we are stepping into a process that runs continuously.
- 01
We look at what exists
A review of the current file or records: what is reconciled, what is not, what is sitting in suspense, and how far back the problems go.
- 02
Clean up, priced separately
If there is a backlog, we quote for clearing it as a one off before the ongoing work starts. Running a monthly service on top of an unreconciled file does not work.
- 03
The file is set up properly
Chart of accounts, bank feeds, VAT settings, tracking categories, user access and receipt capture. Done once, carefully, because everything after this inherits it.
- 04
The routine starts
An agreed rhythm: what arrives from you and when, what we do with it, and what you get back. Usually weekly or monthly depending on volume.
- 05
Month end close
Reconciliations completed, control accounts agreed, and a short summary of anything that needs a decision from you.
- 06
Everything downstream gets easier
VAT returns come out of a clean file, management accounts become possible, and the year end takes a fortnight instead of two months.
