So what’s the difference, who has which responsibilities, and what powers if any do they hold?

The Company Secretary

Let’s begin by clearing up one of the sources of confusion; a company secretary is also often one of the directors picking up a key responsibility.

They can also be external to the business if their skills are not found inside it or if those with the relevant skills inside the business simply don’t have time, because the key responsibilities of the company secretary include ensuring that the business can show compliance with all relevant legislation and with all terms laid out in its own Articles of Association.

This typically includes overseeing the accuracy of accounts and tax reports submitted to HMRC. The company secretary also acts as a liaison between directors and shareholders, ensuring shareholders have access to relevant information in a timely manner. It will usually fall to the company secretary to organise general meetings and ensure that key stakeholders are informed and coordinated.

All of this ultimately stems from the secretarial duties associated with the position; a company secretary will either undertake or oversee record-keeping regarding all business-critical communications.

The Company Director

Company directors will typically have a much more hands-on role in the business. An effective company secretary gathers, compiles, and distributes information; an effective director acts, shaping the direction of the business, making key decisions, and so on.

While the company secretary is responsible for ensuring compliance can be shown, the legal responsibility for actually doing so is in the hands of the directors. The final responsibility for information sent to Companies House being accurate also belongs here, which is why a director will often take the role of secretary as well.

Requirements for the Roles

As discussed above, anyone can take on the role of company secretary, including an accredited, trustworthy external organisation.

Company directors must be 16 years old or older, and may not be disqualified or otherwise prohibited from being company directors. They also cannot be un-discharged bankrupts.

If you’d like to discuss this further, or if you want support in forming your company, why not contact us and start the process?

The post What’s the Difference Between Company Director and Company Secretary? first appeared on ICS Accounting.

As an influencer, you might monetise your work through brand deals, sponsorships, host reads, streaming services, video platform revenue, subscription services or any combination of that list.

With so many revenue streams, such variety in jobs, and so many other possible questions, keeping your accounts accurate and compliant can be a full-time job of its own. Here are some key elements we recommend you watch for.

Do Account for Every Stream

There’s a persistent bit of tax misinformation out there which states that if an individual revenue stream is below a certain threshold it can safely be ignored. Needless to say, this is untrue!

All the same, whoever first spread this about was clearly very persuasive. Many people still believe this claim today, and it can create major issues for them once they start filing incomplete returns.

Know Your Expenses

If you upgrade your cameras, microphones, or lighting over a tax year, these would certainly be allowable expenses. The same would be true for ongoing subscriptions relevant to your work, new editing software, and a number of other items.

However, if you’ve bought something both for your professional work and your own use, and if you’ve spent enough that you might exceed expense limits, this becomes more complicated. We recommend consulting someone who can advise you on specifics before you make major purchases that might be affected, and don’t forget to keep a running tally through the year.

Be Ready to Register for VAT When You Need to

If your total turnover exceeds the VAT threshold in a single year, or you expect it to do so in the next 30 days, you must be VAT registered. As that turnover could include many different, tiny streams, keeping track of it is essential until you actually register.

At the time of writing that threshold is £90,000.

Understand How Business Structures Affect Your Bottom Line

As a sole trader, a partnership, or a limited company, the way you pay yourself, your tag obligations, your profitability and your personal liability can all vary. What company structure you use is a major decision factor as a result.

More importantly, these factors are influenced by your income, your expenditures, plans for expansion and even your tolerance for financial risk.

We strongly recommend discussing your situation with an experienced accountant who understands your field before making a decision. Why not get in touch to find out more?

The post Accountancy Tips for Creatives & Influencers first appeared on ICS Accounting.

Early on, you can track your finances with Excel or in Google Sheets. When you start paying employees, you can still fit that on your sheet. At some point, though, there will come a point where a spreadsheet doesn’t give you the fine detail you need, and you need to invest in better bookkeeping software.

As a firm of accountants supporting small businesses, we deal with businesses exiting this stage on a very regular basis. That’s why we feel qualified to say:

Don’t do this.

Why not?

There’s No Double-Check

Before accounting moved from paper ledgers to software, the term double-entry bookkeeping emerged. When you add incoming revenue or outgoing expenses, you’ll enter it twice, and this provides an opportunity to check that it was entered correctly the first time.

Some modern accounting software allows you to do things like import PDF invoices or scan receipts directly into the system. Even then, there’s a cross-check to ensure that the totals being recorded are right.

When you enter figures into a regular spreadsheet, it doesn’t necessarily cross-check them. Just as importantly, if your calculation formula has an error in it, the only way you’d know is if it causes an error message. More likely, your spreadsheet is just going to show you an inaccurate number, with no good indication that it’s inaccurate.

It’s Not Compliant

Perhaps it would be better to say, it’s easy to become noncompliant this way.

The threshold at which you must enrol into Making Tax Digital dropped this financial year, and it is likely that either in 27/28 or 28/29 it will drop again. Small businesses will be dealing with Making Tax Digital earlier and earlier in their growth.

Overall, we have to say this is a good thing. The Making Tax Digital initiative is encouraging better financial hygiene in small businesses and giving business owners, stakeholders, and decision makers a clearer sense of the monetary impact of their decisions.

That means you can move away from bad decisions more quickly and put more weight behind the tactics that are working.

Spreadsheet accounting will not cut it in a Making Tax Digital world. Your information must be accurate, up to date, and it must be submitted in specific formats. However proud you are of your spreadsheet wizardry – and we do respect an XLOOKUP executed correctly – the simple fact of the matter is that spreadsheets aren’t designed to do this.

It’s Time Consuming

One of the other benefits to modern accounting software is that a lot of data entry becomes automatic. Invoices can be automatically filed, payments noted automatically, payroll systems are integrated – so much manual work has been replaced, which both saves you time and minimises the chance of error in entry. This is a huge benefit.

It’s Never the Best Time to Switch

The whole myth of using spreadsheets early on is built around the idea that once you hit a certain point, it’s the right time to switch. In practice, transitioning from spreadsheet to modern software requires you to learn new habits, unlearn other habits, and transfer a significant amount of data from one system to another.

As your business grows, this is always a huge time investment you can see coming, and the temptation must always be there to take a look at that time investment and put it off. Businesses that start on Excel end up with a perverse incentive to stay with the old ways for much longer than they should do.

Far better to start off the right way and get into good habits from the start so you don’t have to unlearn them later.

We hope you’re reading this article with time to make the right decision from the start, but we know that some of you will already be well embarked on your spreadsheet and wondering how to transition.

If you’re dreading it, why not give us a call? Having the support of experienced accountants will make the process much more efficient.

The post Beyond the Spreadsheet first appeared on ICS Accounting.

The post IR35 FAQ first appeared on ICS Accounting.

Whether you’re going to be filing a self-assessment tax return or you’re managing finances for a company, some jobs definitely need doing. Others may be specific to your business structure or even to your business itself, so feel free to use this checklist as a baseline and add whatever seems appropriate.

Reconcile Your Accounts

We recommend regular reconciliation, but for that reason we also suggest that you put it on as many checklists as possible so that you’re always on top of it.

The kinds of financial problem that reconciliation highlights are the kind that do their damage over time, so the earlier you catch and correct them, the happier you’ll be.

Quarterly Performance Review

We always recommend regularly checking in on your financial situation. At the end of a quarter, do a little bit more; don’t just look at your current numbers, but compare them to the end of the previous quarter and to the year before. Do any trends stand out? Have your gross and net profit margins changed significantly? Are any costs particularly rising?

Whatever comes up (if anything) make a note of it to investigate later.

Mark and Chase Overdue Payments

Look at outstanding payments past due. How many of them are there? How big a proportion of your income do they represent? How many of the businesses owing money now owed money last quarterly review?

Wherever possible it’s worth automating payment reminders, but that comes with its own problems, so take the time to check manually.

Mark and Pay Overdue Invoices

The same issue comes with a flipside. Sometimes, especially for a small business, payments can slip through the cracks, especially if you had to defer them initially. Outstanding invoices have a habit of finally needing to be paid just when your cashflow is at its worst, so including this step on your quarterly checklist is designed to catch them before that happens.

Check Your Tax Deadlines

Make sure you know what payments may be coming up soon. These can include PAYE payments, National Insurance Contributions (NICs), VAT returns, corporation tax, or personal tax payments if you’re a director.

Knowing what your current tax liabilities are helps you to manage your liquidity and make better plans.

Check for Improvements

Are you satisfied with your profit margins? Could automation or improved process reduce major costs? If you have plans for expansion, are you positioned to follow through or does more need to be done?

These are all areas where you’ll often find opportunities to improve. After reviewing your quarterly performance, you should have the information you need to make plans.

Draw a Line Under the Quarter

Ultimately, what’s done is done. If your review of Q1 tells you that you could have done more, remember that and use it to fuel Q2, but any extra time spent beating yourself up over errors is wasted time. If your review tells you it was a great quarter for your business, try and build on that in Q2, but don’t dwell on your success and get complacent.

A quarterly review helps you understand your financial position. It gives you a better perspective on successes, failures, profit and loss. But Q1 is done now; it’s time to focus on Q2.

If you feel like your next quarter will benefit from deeper financial insights, get in touch and we’ll be happy to help.

The post End of Q1 Financial Checklist first appeared on ICS Accounting.

It’s possible that as you read this you’ll think of some oddity not covered here. As always if you believe yours may be an edge case, we recommend you contact us to have a discussion about your specific circumstances.

What’s the Minimum Number of Employees for a Pension?

While this question comes up a lot, the answer is: one. Your first eligible employee must be enrolled into a pension scheme, and the scheme should ideally have been set up before they start working for you.

However, if that first employee earns £6239 or less per annum, whether or not you pay employer contributions into the pension is optional.

What Makes an Employee Eligible?

Employees are eligible and must be enrolled into your pension scheme if any of the following are true:

• They are between 22 and 66 (current state pension age)
• They earn more than £10,000 per annum
• Neither of the above are true but they have requested to be put into a pension scheme

What Obligations Do You Have to Employees Outside the Scheme?

It’s your responsibility to monitor whether that eligibility changes. This is as simple as tracking age and annual earnings.

Non-eligible employees who are about to become eligible must be informed in writing of when they will become eligible and what will happen when they do.

Lastly, you’ll need to carry out a declaration of compliance to be submitted to the Pensions Regulator. For more on this, see the Regulator’s own guide here.

What Do I Tell Eligible Employees?

Eligible employees must be told in writing what being on your pension scheme means for them. For the most part, your pension provider will handle this for you.

How Much Are Employers’ Contributions to a Pension Scheme?

The legal minimum employers’ contribution to the pension scheme is currently 3% of an employee’s qualifying earnings between £6240 and £50,270 per annum. These figures are reviewed annually, so be prepared for them to change periodically.

Qualifying earnings include salary, commission earned, and bonuses and overtime paid, as well as statutory pay for maternity, paternity, adoption, or sick leave.

Many businesses in the UK offer pension matching, where they pay 5% of salary (the figure the employee pays) as a tool to help retain employees, although this is relatively uncommon in small businesses.

When Are Payments Due?

Pension contributions must be paid by the 22^nd after the month following the paycheque. The amount due should be calculated when payroll is run, so you’ll always know what to pay well before it’s due.

What Do I Need to Know About Pension Tax Relief?

Tax relief is earned on the tax that would have been owed for their pensions. This relief is based on the highest rate of income tax paid, but the pension annual allowance provides a cap on this relieve. This cap is £60,000, or if your salaried income is less than that, the cap is set at 100% of your income.

To answer any other questions or to enrol in our outsourced payroll service, get in touch.

The post Small Business Pension FAQs first appeared on ICS Accounting.

We call this the bloke-down-the-pub effect, but for business owners dealing with corporation tax it’s more likely to be a mentor or a former colleague who was talking in very general terms.

It’s always vital to ensure that you are paying all the tax you are liable for, and it’s important to know what tax you shouldn’t be paying.

So here’s a guide to corporation tax for SME owners, covering some of the most common points of confusion. This guide is written in 2026; if you’re reading it in the 2027/28 financial year or later, we recommend you double-check with us in case things have changed.

Do You Need to Register for Corporation Tax?

When a limited company is formed, it is automatically registered for corporation tax. (Sole traders and partnerships are not liable for corporation tax).

Limited companies set up in recent years almost certainly have all relevant services connected to their business tax account. However, if you’re not sure this has been done, talk to your accountants or follow this government guidance.

What is Corporation Tax Payable On?

Taxable profits for the purpose of corporation tax includes:

• Trading profits from doing business
• Chargeable gains from selling business assets at profit
• Returns on any investments

The amount of tax owed is calculated after the payment of salaries and other deductible business expenses, but before the withdrawal of dividends.

Capital allowances can be claimed on the purchase of machinery, other equipment, or business vehicles bought for your business. You can also claim for the ongoing costs of running your business.

However, you cannot claim for anything for which you or your employees use personally; these must be treated as a benefit.

Other tax reliefs include marginal relief (of which more below), profits received for patented inventions, spending on R&D, reliefs for creative industries, and several others. Depending on your business you may or may not qualify for some of these more obscure reliefs, but the full list is beyond the scope of this blog; if you think you may be covered we recommend discussing specifics with your tax accountant.

When Does Marginal Relief Apply?

The main rate of corporation tax is 25%, but this is only when your taxable profit is £250,000 or higher.

The small profit rate for corporation tax is 19%, but this is only when your taxable profit is £49,999 or lower.

In between £50,000 and £250,000, marginal relief applies.

Please note here: If your limited company is one of a group of associated companies, the calculation for marginal relief is different than it would be for a single limited company. This is a result of legislation against a single business being broken into smaller sections that might all qualify for small profit rates or marginal relief.

The simplest way to look at marginal relief is that that 6% increase in tax is applied on a sliding scale between the two. However, calculating the level of marginal relief itself is a complex process; rather than something that’s easily calculated by rule of thumb, there is an official government marginal relief calculator.

What is Credit Interest?

If your corporation tax is paid early, HMRC will pay interest on the payment. This is called credit interest, and it is always set to be 1% lower than the current Bank of England base rate.

Credit interest is paid between the date you pay and the payment deadline, with the earliest date to be paid being 6 months and 13 days after the beginning of your accounting period.

Interest is allocated on the day of the payment deadline. It is treated as taxable income.

If you overpay your corporation tax early, interest is only paid on the due sum, and small sums would usually be carried forward to be offset against future tax liabilities rather than being repaid.

Of course, any payments made in this manner take money from your account, where you might otherwise use it in the business.

As you can imagine, while there are circumstances where there’s particular value to paying corporation tax early, whether or not it’s a better option than something else is very dependent on your circumstances. We would always advise decisions of this sort be taken only after expert advice.

One thing, however, we do recommend against. Payments should not be made late!

The post Corporation Tax and SMEs first appeared on ICS Accounting.

Quite honestly, a balance sheet is a powerful tool for making business decisions. While they can take some time to learn to read, the way they present information is extremely useful.

Why Do You Need a Balance Sheet?

As a limited company, of course, you need a balance sheet as part of your tax records. But balance sheets are also a key part of your management accounts. Management accounts weren’t designed for tax records; over decades, the techniques for management accounts have developed to help to plan for the future.

Your balance sheet is a snapshot; it gives you a clear, detailed picture of your assets, liabilities, and your net book value at the moment the balance sheet is created.

Only the smallest sole traders can really keep all of this information in their heads, but experience has taught us that as a business grows, some owners continue to believe their mental picture is accurate enough to be useful over time. (Even then, we recommend you keep your Profit and Loss (P&L) sheet up to date.)

With these accounts, you can more easily and effectively identify where individual projects, products, or customers are becoming a problem. Starting while still a small business gives you practice reading these reports for the point where the business has grown enough that there’s no other way to track your performance.

Many lenders also require a balance sheet as part of a loan submission. Your balance sheet will show what existing obligations you have, and it also confirms the extent of your assets. This information allows lenders to feel confident when offering loans.

Using Your Balance Sheet

A balance sheet is split into two sides (the name comes from the process of balancing the two).

You record your assets on one side. This includes the value of all property and equipment owned by the business and the total liquid assets. Calculating equipment value can often be the most complicated part of the process.

On the other side, current liabilities should be added – this is anything payable within a year – wages, loans, pending supplier payments, and taxes – alongside your equity (retained earnings and common stock).

You should find that the two values are identical. If they aren’t, check all starting figures and calculations carefully to identify any error in your working. If there’s no error in your working, you have a serious problem on your hands. Most likely, the issue will be with your cash flow.

If you find you have a serious issue, we encourage you to get in touch – we may be able to help you identify the problem and start figuring out a solution.

The post Using Your Balance Sheet first appeared on ICS Accounting.

Tax regulations in the UK are not designed to be so complicated that only professionals can handle them, but as they evolve constantly, it’s still important to keep up to date with the latest changes so you can understand the implications of any that affect you.

At the heart of a correctly filed tax report are accurate records and double-checked calculations. The third ingredient, however, is time – the time needed to keep your records up to date, to identify any unexpected tax liabilities and to make sure you’re aware of all tax opportunities. The less experience you have, the more time you’ll need to take.

That’s why many sole traders still want their accountants to do their self-assessment.

Should You Ask an Accountant for Your Self-Assessment?

If you don’t have time to do your self-assessment with the diligence it deserves, or if you’re not confident in your understanding of all relevant tax regulations, you might want to have an accountant handle your self-assessment tax returns. In fact, this is one of the government’s own suggestions!

Sources of Tax

The fact of the matter is that the majority of incorrect self-assessments are the result of tax sources that the filer may not have been aware needed to be part of the assessment.

It’s not just about the income received directly from your business. If you also have income from renting property or you’ve sold items qualifying for capital gains tax during the year, these also need to be represented. Even interest on your savings should be taken into account!

A sometimes-controversial factor is the High Income Child Benefit Charge. If you or your partner receive child benefit and your individual income is above £60,000, you qualify for this charge. This can also be true if someone else receives child benefit for a child who lives with you, provided they contribute at least an equal amount toward their upkeep.

This charge is levied to reduce the government’s additional spending for the keep and care of children in cases where at least one of their parents or guardians is capable of shouldering the full amount. The controversy comes from the way it is levied, meaning that if you were near the threshold and your income increases above it (but not by much), you may feel unduly affected.

Claimable Expense Types

As a self-employed individual, a number of different categories can be expensed.

This blog is not the place to go into each one in detail, but if you weren’t aware of any of the following being eligible for expenses, you may be missing out on these and others:

• Staff costs (if any)
• Office costs including phone bills, stationery, etc.
• Financial costs (insurance, bank charges, etc.)
• Costs associated with stock or raw materials
• Business travel costs
• Marketing expenses, including digital marketing
• Any training courses taken for the purpose of growing your business

As you can see, going into the specifics of what can be expensed under which circumstances would take much longer than this article – instead, we recommend you consult an accountant!

The post Should I Use an Accountant for My Self-Assessment? first appeared on ICS Accounting.

There are times, though, when a business can be performing profitably according to the books, but your bank balance is still low at any given time and you can struggle to make payment deadlines.

So how do you change that?

Improve Your Payment Cycle

Outside of shops, almost every business finds themselves doing some work on credit. Whether it’s 30-day terms (or even 90-day) as standard or your contract technically requires payment in advance, but a regular payment slips when the work still needs to be done, often a certain amount of your profitability is still waiting to be received.

By instituting tighter payment controls and by pushing your dunning cycle more efficiently, you can ensure your cashflow gets better and more in line with your profitability.

At ICS Accounting, we’ve heard many small business owners talk about the point where they realised some late-paying customers needed cutting out, even though they represented a significant amount of the company’s work. The hidden cost of delayed payment can sometimes more than wipe out your profit margins.

Of course, many customers who pay a little late sometimes are still valuable steps in building your own business. Cutting one off is something you need to be careful about doing – but it underlines the importance of knowing the true value of every customer.

Frequent Financial Review

How do you know the true value of your big customers? Make sure you review the books regularly, and at any time a lack of cashflow affects your business (when your payments are delayed, or when you miss out on opportunities because instead you have you make a payment), make sure you know whose payments were outstanding at that time.

This can be even more effective than just tracking which businesses pay late and how late they pay, but we recommend doing both. Confirming patterns in late payment and having the data to back them up gives you better decision making power than just having a vague feeling that Customer X pays late every so often.

While this does mean more time studying your financial information than you might spend otherwise, that has its own benefits. The longer it’s been since you looked at your management accounts, the less clear your picture of your situation is.

Build in a Buffer

The best way to keep your cashflow strong is to remember that as well as predictable payments (tax bills, VAT payments, etc.), there are one-off or unexpected payments that need to be made. By ring-fencing some of your paid profit as an emergency buffer you have more flexibility in these situations.

Know Your Tax Liabilities

This is one of those categories that should go without saying but doesn’t. We’ve quite often spoken to small business owners who weren’t clear on what tax legislation changes might do to their bill, or who didn’t fully understand what tax and National Insurance payments add to a new employee’s paycheque in costs, or who had a rough idea in mind of what tax they’d owe based on the previous year but had a much more successful year.

You really do need to be ready for your HMRC payment; while they will usually work with you on payment plans if you need to, these come with a significant additional cost (not to mention messing up your cashflow for the following year). If you can’t keep up to date with tax calculations, relevant regulatory changes, and the rest, why not get in touch? We’re always happy to help.

The post Managing Cash Flow as a Small Business first appeared on ICS Accounting.