Showing Receipts and Invoices

Hi Neal

You only need to have a digital record of income and expenses so manually entering the information is fine. You can choose to attach PDFs or images to your digital records in Clear Books if you like, but that is not a requirement of MTD for Income Tax.

With regard to your accounting period, if you are starting MTD for Income Tax in the 2026-27 year, then you can set up your Clear Books accounting period to start from 6 April. Your bookkeeping period will then be inline with the MTD periods and tax year.

If your accounting period doesn't align with the tax year (please note 31 March to 4 April also counts as aligned with the tax year) then you will need to adjust the amounts you have submitted via your quarterly updates, when you come to do your tax return at the end of the tax year. Unfortunately HMRC have yet to publish any real guidance on this yet as mentioned here https://www.gov.uk/guidance/use-making-tax-digital-for-income-tax/adjust-your-self-employment-and-property-income#:~:text=If%20your%20accounting%20period%20ends%20on%20any%20other%20date. But you will be able to enter any manual adjustments required to align your digital record amounts to your accounting period, through the Clear Books MTD Tax Return.