i just have everything on an excel spreadsheet. Makes it easy to do various calculations. I will ask my brother if he knows of anything, he is my accountant so may know of something good
Yes I used excel too, basically 2 sheets, spends and income, it was only a small time business and I did show HMRC what I was doing and they said that was fine as long as receipts/invoices were identified and retained for 6 years.
I use to use Sage Line 50 when I was trading - still do for my private stuff just to keep it in order. Not sure it's still available, it was old when I got it !
Not only that, it was costing me well over £600 per year for TAS Books and wages for 10, for tech support. If you didn't have that they wouldn't resolve problems with buggy software.
I used Sage Line 50 when I ran a limited company because it produced a VAT return and balance sheet. It became sloooooooow and all my reports wouldn't migrate to the latest version so I binned it.
Now I'm a sole trader again I use a spreadsheet (Lotus 1-2-3) set out to follow the tax return form. That way I just copy the column totals into my tax return at the year-end.
when I started off, thought it would be simpler to go through an accountant, what a disaster, complete waste of time. I basically did all his work for him, then gave him a dossier with it all in, he did some basic arithmetic, and charged me a left testical for the pleasure.
Older and wiser, just did it with an excel sheet, kept the number in the right colums, and it was easy enough. Mind you I wasn't dealing with materials etc, buying nor selling, only engineering services, so basically only tiome to deal with. Easy enough at the end of the day. The thing is to keep it simple, all these accountants really do is surround everything with smoke and mirrors to give the idea that it's all really complex etc. The reality for the majority of small businesses is that there's nothing that complex, once you get the hang of it all most of it's repetition anyway. The real trick is to know what you can / can't claim for... but even that's not really complicated just time consuming wading through all the "administrative BS" till you get a clear answer..
Sage one for us , with 3 partners and several different enterprises an online system that ties expenses to invoices, and reconciles the bank account is essential. I would only use online systems as it allows access from any ware, and means everyone can see exactly whats going ware, and most importantly whats going in and out the Bank accounts.
Ive been cooking my own books for a couple of years or so , my Father (partner) did it for years so I just copied his book keeping , it works fine but im lazy when it comes down to adding it all up , computer must be easier !
I use VT cashbook (the free one) and have done for 6 or 7 years.
simple to set up, does profit/loss and balance sheets, and VAT if you need it.
only limit with the free one is no invoice issuing - this can be worked around with a bit of creative thought.
Just type in the expense receipts / invoices and the money coming in and out - assign them to the right category, and it does all the work.
I found it much easier and quicker than Sage, MS Money or GNUcash - for a cash-based business, which mine was
I use excel also, I have one main spreadsheet with multiple worksheets - orders / sales / consumables / hardware and a last worksheet called financials that calculates my profit etc using the other spreadsheets and easy for my tax return.