The Happy Accountant

From Monday 1 December 2008, the VAT rate will drop to 15% and remain at this level until 31 December 2009, when it will revert back to 17.5%
The new VAT fraction is 3/23.

If you give your customers credit (and most businesses do), it’s important to get your invoicing and customer payments systems in order.  The obvious benefit is to aid cash flow and it is the first step to good credit control and fewer bad debts.
Some while ago, I posted about some basic details that need to be [...]

Once a payroll is in operation, HMRC lay down certain requirements as to what records and information needs to be kept.  These include:

employees names, addresses (and their dates of birth)
gross pay, NICs, PAYE, other deductions, net pay (keeping a copy of their payslip would normally satisfy this requirement, assuming the payslip contained all the correct [...]

Logically, the basics of payroll are straightforward but unfortunately, there are various rules and thresholds which can make actually operating a payroll less so.
In calculating an employee’s pay, normally, you begin with their gross pay and then work out the deductions.  After taking away all the deductions, the net pay figure is what is left owing to [...]

It is generally possible to register as an employer by telephone or email (if special circumstances apply, you may have to register via and HMRC office).  Either way, you will need the following information to hand:

general information about yourself and your company (including your national insurance number and UTR number - unique taxpayer reference number)
information [...]

As soon as you take anyone on where any of the following conditions apply, you need to register with HMRC as an employee.

the employee already has another job
the employee receives a pension (state or occupational)
the employee will earn at or over the PAYE (tax) threshold
the employee will earn at or over the lower earnings threshold [...]

Balance per cash book
less any bank payments
plus any bank receipts
Corrected cashbook:
less any cheques paid in but not cleared
plus any cheques drawn (paid out) but not cleared
Balance per bank statement:
Note that this is only one way of laying out a bank statement.  With the advent of accounting software, a written bank reconciliation such as this is [...]

The company’s cash book may require the following adjustments:

direct debit payments and standing orders directly to or from the bank account may not have been entered into the cash book
bank interest and charges may not have been entered into the cash book.

Items which may have been included in the cash book but which may not [...]

The point of carrying out a bank reconciliation is to check that nothing has been missed from the business’s records and also to ensure that there have been no bank errors.
A business’s cash book will rarely agree to the bank statement and it can be easy to miss transactions, such as direct debit payments if a [...]

A bank reconciliation is simply a checking exercise to ensure that the business can “agree” their records to the balance on their bank statement.
It is normally done each time a bank statement is received.  (It is possible, but highly inadvisable to leave it until the year end)