Bank feeds reconciled, receipts captured, invoices chased and VAT-ready records kept current in FreeAgent — reviewed every month by a named accountant, and included in your fixed monthly fee.
Founder-bookkeeping at midnight is the most expensive cheap labour in a start-up. It's slow, it's the wrong use of the one person who can sell the product, and the version done in a hurry at year-end tends to cost more to correct than it would have cost to do properly all along.
Worse, out-of-date books hide the two numbers that decide whether a start-up survives: what you're actually making, and when the cash runs out. Bookkeeping isn't filing — it's the instrument panel.
Worth up to £330 a year and included in every package — set up for you, connected to your bank, and maintained by us rather than handed over as homework.
Transactions flow in automatically (a free Mettle account feeds FreeAgent natively) and get categorised and reconciled properly — not guessed at eleven months later.
Snap it on your phone and it's filed against the transaction. Digital records that satisfy Making Tax Digital as a by-product of normal life.
Invoices raised from the same place the books live, with automatic payment reminders and pay links — so the awkward follow-up happens without you having to make it.
Records kept so the VAT return is a review rather than an excavation, with your tax position visible all year instead of arriving as a surprise.
Not a portal queue. The same person each month, on WhatsApp, who has actually looked at your numbers before you ask about them.
We set up FreeAgent and connect your business account so transactions arrive on their own. Fifteen minutes, once.
Three seconds a receipt on your phone. That's genuinely the bulk of what stays on your side.
Transactions categorised, invoices matched, anything odd queried with you — so the numbers on screen are numbers you can act on.
Current accounts whenever a lender, an investor or your own decision needs them — plus the quarterly VAT return and the year-end accounts falling out of work already done.
Investor-readiness is mostly just bookkeeping you didn't defer. A start-up that's kept its records current can produce clean accounts and a defensible forecast in an afternoon; one that hasn't spends a fortnight reconstructing them and looks amateur doing it — see our runway and forecasting guide and our post on business plans that get funded.
The same records answer the everyday questions too: what a customer is really worth, which client is quietly becoming most of your revenue, and how many months of cash you have left. When you want that packaged into a monthly conversation rather than a screen you check, management accounts start at £375 + VAT per meeting cycle on top of your compliance band.
Yes — bookkeeping is part of every package rather than an add-on. Your records are kept current in FreeAgent through the year, which is what makes the year-end accounts, VAT returns and tax forecasts accurate rather than a reconstruction job in month 13.
It's included in your fixed monthly band, which starts at £49 + VAT a month for early-stage companies and moves through clear turnover bands as you grow. FreeAgent, worth up to £330 a year, is included at every level.
A bookkeeper records what happened. An advisor reads it: spotting a director's loan account drifting overdrawn, costs you haven't claimed, a customer taking 70 days to pay, or a tax bill building faster than the bank balance. You get both from the same named accountant.
It's included free and it's what we recommend for most start-ups, especially alongside a free Mettle account, which feeds it natively. We're also a Xero Gold Partner, so if your business is more complex — multi-currency, inventory, a bigger finance team — we'll set you up there instead.
Snap receipts on your phone as you spend, and send us anything unusual. The bank feed brings transactions in automatically and we reconcile, categorise and review from there — most founders spend minutes a week, not evenings a month.
Yes, and it's a common starting point. We'll tell you honestly what catching up involves before we start, quote any one-off clean-up work up front, and then keep it current so it never happens again.
