OK, if you hadn’t realised it yet you need to get your end of year accounts filed by the 31st January 2018. It’s fast approaching, by the time that the happy holiday season has approached and you’ve picked yourself up and got underway for the start of the new year the deadline will be right here.
To avoid a late filing, or you not being at all prepared, here are my top 5 tips for completing your accounts now, so that you can send them off to your accountant before Christmas… seriously I mean BEFORE CHRISTMAS!!
- Download all of your account transactions from the 6th April 2016 – 5th April 2017 and separate out the expenditure into each of the categories (TIP: This is why it’s so important to have one property account, or separate accounts per property)
- Write comments next to each transaction explaining what each £ of income and expenditure is for (It helps your accountant understand whether an expense is an allowable expense and whether your income is actually property related income)
- Make sure you include your travel expenses to and from your property in your allowable expenses – most don’t, but every little helps with the fall of the new tax changes!
- Phone your mortgage lender and ask for a statement of interest, you will need to submit this with your excel document to your accountant – allow a few days for this to arrive so do this step now!
- Keep all of your invoices handy – anything you claim as an allowable expense make sure you have proof of it, just in case.
Now I’m going to turn this project over to you. If you are the sort of person who likes to clear a day and get this all done at once… then do it! If you like to break it down into sections, schedule 25 mins a day and keep going until you get it done.
You’ve got time to do it before Christmas, but don’t delay start now!
