One of the most anticipated and most dreaded days of any
business person is the year end time of preparing
company accounts and filing of the returns annually. For businesses,
this is an important time, the cost imposition and time away from conducting
their business.
Preparing Company Accounts involves meeting legal
requirements which include Filing annual accounts with Companies house, filing
annual accounts to HMRC, filing corporation tax
return and paying Corporation tax in a timely manner. The corporation
tax return will become the benchmark for company’s tax calculations each year. When preparing
company accounts the following statements must be present: Balance
Sheet, A profit and loss account and Notes, the format of each statement is set
out in The Companies Act.
Preparing
Company Accounts can be complex and cumbersome process this is the
reason majority of businesses ensure they engage management accountants for
monthly or quarterly accounts, making the year end accounts preparation a bit
easier. Without such regular and interim accounting information, a business
could run into problems and the issues would not be noted till it gets out of
control.
Preparing year end company accounts also gives an opportunity
to draw a line under the year’s performance and make necessary changes for the
forthcoming financial year.
Engaging good credible accountants for preparing
company accounts and year end returns need not be an overhead as such
but the advice should in it-self pay for the fees, represented by tax savings
and other recommended cost savings.
As part of its regulatory accounts, each company has to
report the accounts (costs, revenues, assets and liabilities) for the different
activities it carries out in delivering services. This is known as accounting
separation. Alongside its regulatory accounts and accounting separation
information, we require each company to set out in a yearly statement how it
has managed its risks and complied with relevant statutory and regulatory
obligations (a ‘risk and compliance statement’). Each company also demonstrates
how it has performed in the year by publishing a range of key indicators for
its customers.
