Computer/tablet &

accounting software

You own a smartphone or a tablet.

You always have good internet access or a phone signal.

You are happy to enter data onto your phone or tablet.

You rarely need to issue paper invoices: your customers don’t want or expect receipts.

Your expenses are pretty simple and you don’t expect to have many queries

You don't give customers credit.

You do not have many transactions in a tax year.

You mainly receive your income in cash and payout your expenses in cash.

You keep a separate business bank account.

You like to do your bookkeeping every day.

You have access to a computer.

You have internet access. Internet and phone signals may be restricted.

You would rather use a big screen/don’t like/don’t use a phone for data entry.

You are familiar with spreadsheets/you are not good with software/technology.

You need a simple system to replace your manual bookkeeping system.

You pay for goods using cash or bank card or credit card.

Your income comes in by cash, cheque or online banking.

You do quotes for customers or your customers like receiving invoices.

You allow basic credit to customers.

You have a business bank account or you use one bank account for business and private transactions.

You have a computer.

You would rather use a big screen/don’t like to use a phone for data entry.

You are OK with software.

You are willing to learn new systems.

You pay for goods using cash or bank card or credit card.

Your income comes in by cash, cheque or online.

You do quotes for customers or your customers like receiving invoices.

You need credit control.

You have a business bank account or you use one bank account for business and private transactions.

You keep receipts for payments, total up mileage per MOT certificate, maybe use a diary and total up everything at the end of the tax year using bank statements.

You keep a paper cash book.

You enter details on your tax return once a year.

You maintain a receipt book or keep a pile of issued invoices to record sales.

You keep receipts in a box and enter them in batches during or at the end of the tax year.

You manually check over your bank statements to check you have captured all the relevant income and expenses.

You keep a paper cash book or use a spreadsheet to summarise your income and expenses.

You enter details on your tax return once a year.

You do all your bookkeeping using your software.

You generate an invoice for your sales from your software and you like to keep receipts on paper and then enter them in batches into the software.

You might sometimes use a spreadsheet for summaries.

You enter details on your tax return once a year.

You have real-time recording of income/sales.

You record all your income and expense on your phone and store the data in the cloud.

Your App sends your bank receipts and payments to your summary for HMRC. You have to check each transaction to set up the system, you will need to manually enter your cash sales and purchases.

Your App sends your figures to HMRC every quarter, You still have to make the usual accounting adjustments at the year-end in the final year-end report.

It is best to avoid using a personal bank account for business. This will make your bank feed more complicated.

You use a spreadsheet instead of a paper book to:

• List your sales/invoices
• List and analyse your expenses.

Your spreadsheet will now have to link to HMRC to allow quarterly reporting. Software will become available to do this as the software market grows.

Depending on the results of its test pilots, HMRC may allow you to manually enter your quarterly figures.

You still have to make the usual accounting adjustments at the year-end.

Your software will need to be updated to allow MTD filings.

If your software does not have a bank feed then you can update to add that.

You still have to make the usual accounting adjustments at the year-end.

It is best to avoid using a personal bank account for business. This will make an automatic bank feed more complicated.

Verdict

Good for very small technically minded businesses with reliable internet who like entering data on phones/tablets daily.

Good for any size of business if you prefer a simple system where you can see all your transactions on a big screen and you don't have to do bookkeeping daily.

Good for any size of business if you prefer a system where you can see all your transactions on a big screen and you don't have to do bookkeeping daily, provided that you are happy to learn new software.