To find out more, you can either  watch our video or read about it below.

You may need an accountant to help you with your legal requirements in terms of preparing and submitting accounts and tax returns. If you own a limited company, you must legally submit a set of accounts to Companies House each year, and a Corporation Tax return to HMRC.

If you’re a sole trader, you need to prepare a self-assessment tax return that includes the accounts for your business, and calculates the tax. These need to be submitted to HMRC each year. You may need an accountant to help you do those.

Is it a legal requirement?

You don’t legally need to use an accountant – it’s more about whether you’re able to do it yourself…..or want to.

I often use the analogy that it’s like painting and decorating. If I have a small room to paint at home, I might do it myself. I painted my girls’ bedrooms because they’re small rooms. I also kind of wanted to because they’re my little girls, and to be honest, it wasn’t too difficult. When it came to a big job, like the lounge, I paid someone to come and do it – I knew that was it was a lot of work and it was quite tricky. I also was aware that people would be seeing it everyday and would see if I made any mistakes!

If your business is simple, you might decide to do your accounts yourself. But, as your business grows you might decide you don’t want to do it yourself. You want to pay somebody – an expert – to do it.

There are all the advantages of paying an expert to do it. Firstly, it saves you time that you could use to do something else that either you enjoy or helps you grow the business.

Also, you do have that comfort it will be done right. An accountant, of course, knows all of the tax reliefs available that you might miss out on. An accountant will, therefore, help you reduce your tax bill.

It’s their job to do that – they do it all day, everyday.

That’s why I liken it to the painting and decorating. The painter and decorator will do my room quicker and a with better quality than I can do, leaving me free to do what I want to be doing in my spare time.

Why else should I use an accountant?

There are also many other reasons you might want an accountant. A good accountant will save you tax, but they could also help you grow.

Accountants work with lots of businesses and, therefore, have lots of experience and see lots of examples, both good and bad, in business. They can help you use the best examples to grow your business and make it more successful. And help you avoid the bad ones!

You might want an accountant to sit down with you to do an independent review on your business on a regular basis. It is easy to get caught up in your business and be doing the day-to-day work without actually standing back and taking a look.

Meeting your accountant regularly to look at the numbers in your business and see how you’re doing -comparing them to your budgets and to your goals, can be a really useful exercise.

Also, your accountant’s there for you to pick their brain and to help you on any of the financial aspects in your business.

So, there are some reasons why you might need an accountant but, more importantly, there are a lot of reasons you might want an accountant.

We hope you have found this useful. If you have any queries, please get in touch. We’d love to help.

If you would like to watch our video, follow this link.