preparing full accounts instead of abbreviated accounts

Whoops - sorry Kevin & Andrew, my post was supposed to start Hi Andrew!

Up until last year "Full Accounts" would have meant, at the least, accounts complying with the Small Company accounting standard (FRSSE) however now, as far as I'm concerned, full accounts for a Micro Entity are Micro Entity accounts.

I take your point Kevin about non-accountants (and their pets) thinking that they can prepare compliant accounts but that's maybe looking at it from an accountant's perspective and the potential loss of earnings as more people DIY but that's the world we live in, basic accounts prep is no longer the mystery or rocket science it might have been a few years back.

To be honest, the more of my clients who are 99% competent in doing their own books the better and it won't be long now till they prepare and submit their own accounts, as they currently do their VAT returns, perhaps with me casting an eye over them before they push the button. This leaves me to do more valuable (mysterious) work for them and others or walk the dog.

Cheers Paul

Fantastic response Andrew, really refreshing to read. Thanks for taking the time to put it together.

To clarify:

• submitted abbreviated accounts to Company House
• micro-entity to HMRC

for the latter I prepared full year cash-flow, balance sheet and P&L reports from Clearbooks and then entered the required information into the HMRC online forms making sure the balances were consistent across CH and HMRC.

never used the joint filing service, not least because reporting deadlines were so different. When I was recently asked for "full accounts" for an SEIS validation submission, I scratched my head a bit hence my "innocent" query.

Should note, that as we have almost no capex, no taxable profit and there is not all that much accounting interpretation to be done. Bulk of our expenses (and all our income) had to be audited on a project by project basis by independent account for TSB under the grants we received. It never seemed worth to go to extra expense in the past for the "remainder". If we were in a position where we would have to report a profit, it would be a different matter.

There may may have been some minor mistakes and slip-ups - and note that I really can't get my head around how VAT is managed in Clearbooks, so always did this separately and got through a HMRC audit with no problems on that one (10-15 line items per quarter are not difficult to manage).

In any case, the above thread gave me more than enough clarity.

Hi Paul

Thanks for that. I personally haven't ever pointed anybody in the direction of the joint filing service because a) I've never known anybody have a good word to say about it and b) if I did so I'd probably be out of business. It's scary enough that every man and his dog thinks they're now qualified to file their own accounts just because they've got their hands on some cloud bookkeeping software - the DIY mistakes I've seen (as I'm sure you have too) are horrendous.

Back to the OP, I'm still intrigued to know who abbreviated accounts have always been submitted to? Given the date the micro-entity option was launched I wouldn't have thought this is what he was referring to.

Hi Andrew and Kevin,

Thanks Kevin, that's exactly right. You can find the abbreviated accounts in Settings > Period. Then click on the 'view PDF' link to bring up the abbreviated accounts document for the respective period.

However, to submit your full accounts, it's probably best to submit this through your accountant. This can be done by exporting a trial balance report and passing it on to the accountant to submit.

I hope this has been helpful, if you require any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us.

All the best,

Shaz

Hi Andrew

When you say you've always submitted abbreviated accounts, submitted to who exactly? Each year you would submit abbreviated to Companies House and a full set to HMRC along with a CT600 Tax Return.

Clear Books can indeed produce a set of abbreviated accounts but not a full set. Even then, I wouldn't consider the abbreviated's available within the system anywhere near ready for submission without the appropriate year-end adjustments being made.

Kevin @ Platform Accounting