We are experienced and qualified English and Russian speaking executive law firm & accountants firm based in Birmingham.
FAQs
Can I change my company's year end?
Yes. You can shorten it as often as you like, but you can only extend it once every 5 years and never beyond 18 months. Changing it also changes your filing deadline, sometimes to an earlier date than you expect, so check before you do it.
Do my accounts need an audit?
Not if the company is small. A company is exempt from audit when it meets 2 of these 3: turnover under £15m, balance sheet under £7.5m, fewer than 50 employees. Most owner-managed businesses fall well inside that, so no audit.
Will my profit be visible to the public?
For micro and small companies, no. Companies House gets a filleted version with the balance sheet and notes, and the profit and loss stays off the public register. HMRC gets the full accounts.
What happens if I've already missed the deadline?
File as soon as you can, because the penalty goes up at 1, 3 and 6 months. If the accounts are already late when you come to us, we'll prioritise them to stop the band moving up.
Can you take over from my current accountant mid year?
Yes. We write to them for professional clearance and your records, which normally takes a week or two, and carry on from wherever they stopped. You don't have to wait for a year end to switch.
Annual Accounts
Vtrahe prepares and files year end annual accounts for limited companies, LLPs, partnerships and sole traders in Birmingham and across the UK. For companies and LLPs, filing with Companies House each year is a legal requirement. Companies House filing, corporation tax computation and the CT600 return are all handled together, by the same accountant, with the deadlines tracked on our side.
The service covers:
- Statutory accounts in the correct format for your company size (FRS 105 or FRS 102).
- Year end adjustments, including depreciation, accruals and the director’s loan account.
- Corporation tax computation and CT600 submission to HMRC.
- Filing with Companies House and written confirmation once accepted.
- Sole trader and partnership accounts prepared for the Self Assessment or SA800 return.
Work is done in English or Russian, whichever you prefer, and fees are agreed before we start.
Why Annual Accounts Actually Matter
Your annual accounts aren’t a box ticking exercise. They’re the clearest picture of how your business performed over the past year, where the money came in, where it went and what’s left. HMRC uses them to work out your corporation tax. Banks look at them before approving lending. Shareholders and directors use them to decide what happens next. If the numbers are sloppy, everything built on top of them is shaky.
We prepare accounts that give you a proper breakdown of business performance, not a spreadsheet dump but a report that tells you which parts of the business are pulling their weight and which aren’t.
Accounts done properly do 2 things at once. They keep you compliant with Companies House and HMRC, and they give you something useful to work with. We look beyond the figures to flag what needs attention, margins that have slipped, costs that have crept up, opportunities you might not have spotted. That kind of detail strengthens your position whether you’re negotiating with a bank, pitching to an investor or just trying to work out where the profit went last quarter.
Deadlines And What Late Filing Costs
Private companies and LLPs have 9 months from the end of the accounting period to file with Companies House. So a 31 March year end means a 31 December deadline. First accounts after incorporation work differently: 21 months from the incorporation date, or 3 months from the accounting reference date, whichever is longer.
Corporation tax runs on its own clock. The tax is due 9 months and 1 day after the year end, and the CT600 return goes to HMRC within 12 months. Most people find the tax payment falls due before the return has been filed, which catches out a lot of first year directors.
Miss the Companies House deadline and the penalty is automatic. No warning letter, no grace period.
File late 2 years running and the penalty doubles. Keep not filing and Companies House can strike the company off, at which point any assets pass to the Crown. The full rules are on the gov.uk late filing penalties page.
Plenty of businesses try handling their own accounts to cut costs. Some pull it off. Most end up with errors that cost more to fix than the accountant would have charged, rejected filings, miscalculated tax, penalties from late submissions. We prepare your accounts accurately, get them ready for signing and handle the submission so you’re not second guessing whether it was done right.
A qualified accountant at Vtrahe prepares your accounts from start to finish and the same person deals with you throughout. Micro entity accounts are done under FRS 105 and small company accounts under FRS 102, which is what Companies House and HMRC expect to see, and because the format is right the first time we very rarely have a filing rejected.
Before anything goes to you for signature we go through the numbers ourselves. Most years there is nothing to say, but if the gross margin has slipped, or the director’s loan account has gone overdrawn, or one cost has grown a lot faster than the sales that should be paying for it, we will tell you about it at that point and explain what it means, because that is a lot easier to deal with in September than when HMRC or the bank raise it a year later.
We also keep the diary. You get a note when it is time to send your records, the draft accounts come back to you with a few weeks in hand rather than a few days, and once Companies House and HMRC have accepted them you get that in writing from us.
