Self employment
Are you self-employed and profitable? Did you know that you can often save tax by trading as a limited company and taking share dividends instead of directly paying yourself? Talk to Discountants about optimising your income.
We find that the self-employed are the most cost conscious of our clients and we hope Discountants emphasis on reasonable fees is a big attraction. We guarantee never to be undercut or underquoted by other professional accountants and, true to our name, we offer a host of other discounts for new clients.
Chaos theory
Well, its scientific meaning is one thing but as applied to self-employment it refers to the chaos in that carrier bag you use for all your receipts and bits of paper!
Most accountants...
I think two things are going on here. One is an paperwork issue, the other is a people issue. I believe that we should look at the people issue before the accounts issue. Most accountants will look at the accounts issue first encouraging you to be more organised, which will help reduce your bill. Hold on though, it's not the job of an accountant to change you as a person (thank goodness!), he only has to get you through your year end. My view is to go with the flow as I'm never going to change the carrier bag paperwork mentality of the nations self-employed on my own!
What we do at Discountants...
...is add a tiny bit of structure to the bag! We actually have two bags. One is your 'day' bag every bit of paper with money on it goes in, simple as that! No files, no sorting, no categories, no ledgers, nothing. As the day bag starts to fill, you need somewhere to empty it... that's why we have the second bag which we call the 'year' bag. However, as you are transferring between the two bags, you log each item into our Discountants Online (DO) software on your computer.
This is a childishly simple window which just asks what kind of piece of paper it is, who is involved and how much. It then emails us what you've entered.
At the end of the year...
...you end up with all your account data already sent to us by (encrypted) email and the finished year bag contains the whole years paperwork! How simple is that?!
Any remaining cynics out there might argue that even though this is simple, it is just another system. The problem with all systems is being disciplined enough to use them. The cynics would be exactly right of course!
However, remember that as you transfer your bits of paper from the day bag into the year bag, your DO software emails us the details. (This happens in highly encrypted form of course). The DO software in our office therefore knows if you haven't done any lately! The result is that DO starts to send you emails with increasing regularity if you don't do any paperwork! Eventually even DO gives up but then it emails us in the office and we ring you! Thus, what you get with Discountants (if you want it!) is a professional nagging service... and we find most of our self-employed clients actually appreciate it!
Accountant services for the self-employed.
In most cases, the preparation of self employed accounts and tax return is usually quite straightforward for us and fees at Discountants will be correspondingly modest. Costs for agency workers, part timers and temps will usually be very small, often under £100. However, successful full-timers and players with a 'finger in every pie' will benefit from the Discountants full accountancy service as offered to our clients with partnerships and limited companies.
For your self-employment
- year end accounts
- VAT
- PAYE
- nominal and other ledger work
- routine book keeping at your premises or ours
- cash flow analysis and forecasting
- stock
- capital items
- work-in-progress
- financial planning, business plans, project accounting and growth modelling
- software consultancy, implementation and bespoke systems.
- statutory registers and filing
- web design and search engine optimisation
For you...
- cars and other benefits
- personal assets
- mortgages and pensions (through our affiliated Independent Financial Advisor)
- property and other investment portfolios
