An accountant’s job is to help you comply with business law and reporting obligations, save you time in doing so, and in general to provide advice and guidance for managing your business, with a focus on the financials.

A good accountant will get your bookkeeping and reporting done right, submitted on time, every time. They should have processes in place to ensure that deadlines are not missed, make it easy for you to provide the required information, and keep you informed about why and how your obligation are being met. All of this should be done in a manner that protects your time and saves you stress, so that you can focus your time and energy on your business.

The answer tends to depend on what you are optimising for. Some select us based on our extensive experience handling ecommerce businesses for the peace of mind. Some select us in order to save them time based on not needing to explain how their business/platform/dropshipping/etc. works, our efficient processes for handling ecommerce or the fact we get your Sales data for you. And some choose us because they have been paying higher fees to a non-specialised accountant who is charging hourly but being inefficient in the delivery.

It tends to come down to a combination of having confidence that your accounts are being done right, time savings, and value for money.

Bookkeeping is the process of classifying all of your business’ transactions into their appropriate accounting categories and reconciling these transactions to evidence (tidy record keeping), such as Sales reports from your ecommerce stores or invoices and receipts for your expenses.

It is a requirement for preparing VAT and annual returns. Note, when you are VAT registered there are additional requirements for you bookkeeping which most accounts will capture as either a VAT charge or an increased bookkeeping fee (our approach is the former).

We are specialised and efficient at handling bookkeeping for ecommerce, but it is not a requirement for us to handle it. You can handle it yourself or use an in-house bookkeeper, in which case we are happy to work from your completed bookkeeping, subject to passing our basic quality test (because we cannot knowingly prepare returns based on incorrect bookkeeping).