Bookkeeping Services for Small Business in London and Across the UK

Bookkeeping Services for Small Business in London and Across the UK

Are you a London based small business? Are you in search of professional bookkeeping services? At Affinity Associates, we help small businesses and medium sized businesses (coming from different industries) to manage their bookkeeping, accounts, payroll and tax needs. With more than 40 years of industry experience, we are one of the most reputed accounting firms in London known for offering best bookkeeping services at truly affordable prices. We provide online and remote bookkeeping services that easily suits your business model and budget.

Being a small business owner, you want to play multiple roles in running your business, but bookkeeping and related administrative responsibilities can keep even the most enthusiastic business owner distracted from operating and building up their business for long periods of time. With introduction of Making tax digital by HMRC, it is now imperative that your books are prepared accurately on consistent basis. Accurate Bookkeeping is absolutely important for your business, but a resource can be hired for that, and you should focus on what you do the best – running your business and exploring new opportunities of growth.

When you hire a bookkeeper, you can free up at least 20% of your precious time, and invest that time in some other productive business activities. You can contact plenty of other clients and prospects and make a huge difference with that extra time. At Affinity Associates, our bookkeeping services for small businesses in London and across the UK are highly affordable and comes with no hidden charges. In fact, our bookkeeping services can help you save both – time and money, that you can spend in expanding your business rather than on non-productive paperwork.

Our Bookkeeping Services for Small Business

At Affinity Associates, our team of highly qualified and experienced bookkeepers and accountants can help you to organise your everyday finances as well as give you professional support, advice and guidance about where you can save money and how to monitor your cash flow. We dedicatedly work with your business just like your in-house resource.

With more than 40 years of experience, we have gained immense experience and expertise that allow us to offer highly professional bookkeeping services to small businesses in London and across the UK. Our team of dedicated bookkeepers in London will take care of every bookkeeping aspect for you so that you can have a peace of mind and focus on your core business activities.

We can Help You With:

  • Accounting & Bookkeeping
  • Credit Control
  • Sales Invoices
  • Payment Handling
  • Payroll Management
  • Cash Flow Management
  • VAT Returns
  • Management Reports
  • And More…

If you are interested in our tailor-made bookkeeping services for your small business, then contact us today to discuss your requirements. To schedule a free consultation, please contact us at Email: info@affinityassociates.com, dial: +44–020–8903–2077 or visit https://www.affinityassociates.com.

4 Signs Your Small Business Needs the Help of an Accounting Firm in London

4 Signs Your Small Business Needs the Help of an Accounting Firm in London

Being a small business owner, are you spending the most of your day running your business instead of expanding it? When it comes to managing the books, you have an option of hiring an in-house bookkeeper to track your financial records or consult an accounting firm like Affinity Associates that can save time, money and quite frankly, the headache that comes with bookkeeping.

Here are 4 Signs Your Business Needs the Help of an Accounting Firm:

You are Stressed About IRS Audit

When you are managing your books on your own, there are chances that you leave behind some unwanted errors or omissions that would obligate the IRS to investigate further. Doing the books on your own leaves the door open to careless errors or omissions that would obligate the IRS to investigate further. Hiring an accounting firm like Affinity Associates reduces the potential for IRS audits by ensuring that your financial records are accurate. In the event, if you are summoned for an audit, Affinity makes it easy to validate anything that the IRS may question.

Your in-house Bookkeeper has Let You Down:

Many small businesses in London opt to hire an in-house bookkeeper to manage the books. Sometimes, it seems like a smart strategy, but if your part-time in-house bookkeeper:

  1. Doesn’t keep up with altering tax regulations in the nation?
  2. Goes on vacation for 3 weeks? Or worse case,
  3. Leaves the job entirely?

When you are depending on a single person to manage your books, there are higher chances of facing unwanted consequences for your business. By consulting an accounting firm like Affinity Associates, you gain access to an entire team of professionals who are available whenever you need them to be.

You are Paying Excess of Money:

Along with the risk of entrusting your important financial documents to an individual, there are higher chances that you are paying more. Usually, a full-time bookkeeper cost in £38,000 per year and the cost of a part‐time bookkeeper is roughly half that amount. Whereas, on the other hand, the average Affinity Associates’ client pays quite less depending on which services they choose to utilize with us. That’s a fraction of the cost of having someone in-house who may or may not be meeting your business requirements in the first place.

You Can Take Real-Time Decisions:

Bookkeeping services by accounting firms like Affinity Associates leverage cloud technology – so you can access your data at any time, from anywhere and on any device. The more accurate and timely your books are – the better tuned you can be with your business. Availability of all the data 24*7 will help you take real‐time decisions based on the financial health of your business.

Contact Affinity Associates to Know More

If any of the above mentioned points imply on you, then you are definitely in need of professional accounting firms in London. To know more about how professional bookkeeping and accounting services can help your business grow and save more money, please contact us today for a free consultation at https://www.affinityassociates.com.

Why Outsourced Accounting Services are More Reliable for Small Business

Why Outsourced Accounting Services are More Reliable for Small Business

Whether you want to control your business on your own forever, or you are urgently looking for an investor, you need to have accurate financial statements. Your financial statements can help you get lower interest rates on loans, better forecast your cash flow, and make informed decisions for future growth.

As solid and transparent information is the key to any business decision, your financial statements need to go over and above the minimum obligations. This is why you need to think about Outsourced Accounting Services or hire an Accountant for your small business in London, as it gives you the most accurate picture of your finances.

Why You Need to Think About Outsourcing Your Accounting Tasks

1. It Could Eliminate Multitaskin: In many small businesses, it has been observed that the owners or managers do most of the accounting related tasks. Even when a CAP looks after the taxes or end-of-the-year reports, everyday bookkeeping tasks are handled by someone with many duties that go beyond accounting. Well, as we all know, multitasking sometimes create grim problems. Firstly: It is not compulsory that the people who handle the bookkeeping tasks in your small business may have the adequate accounting knowledge. And if they do not possess enough knowledge of accounting rules, they may report transactions in the wrong period or make other errors.

Secondly: When an individual or an employee in a small business has other business operations to look into, then there are chances that the bookkeeping and accounting tasks are left behind or ignored. Accounting reports that managers use to make decisions can quickly become out of date. Documents needed to take the business decision may not be ready when required.

Thirdly: When you don’t have a dedicated resource to take care of accounting or bookkeeping tasks, it is viewed as an undesirable chore and often left untouched. This also increases the likelihood of errors.

2. It Could Introduce Automation: Sometimes automation is necessary to overcome the human error. Even though you prepare your books carefully, there are chances of human error, and even a single missed or transposed figure can ruin all your hard work. On the other hand, outsourced accounting services by a professional company like “Affinity Associates” can directly integrate into your inventory, point-of-sale, payroll, and other bookkeeping systems. Every time you make a transaction, your accounting systems are updated automatically. This virtually eliminates the possibility of human error in data entry.

3. It Could Provide Expert Review: Virtual outsourced bookkeeping and accounting isn’t done totally by computers. There’s a CPA to review the entries and check the errors. There are plenty of aspects in accounting where minor errors are hard to spot without extensive accounting experience. If your CPA sees something that doesn’t look right, he or she can investigate further to see if an error was made and where it occurred. Ultimately, this offers you a peace of mind that your books are accurate.

If you are a small business, and if you find it difficult to manage your books or other accounting related tasks, then it is advisable to go for outsourced accounting services from a company like Affinity Associates. The team of accountants at Affinity Associates has a much broader range of expertise available that can help your business grow.

If you want to know more about the advantages of the outsourced accounting services, then Affinity Associates is here to assist you. Please contact us for a “Free Consultation on Outsourced Accounting and Bookkeeping Services” today at https://www.affinityassociates.com.

How Professional bookkeeping services could help your small business

How Professional bookkeeping services could help your small business

When it comes to business accounts, bookkeeping proves to be one of the most essential aspects. In fact, it is not just a core part of the accounts of any business, but is the vital part of the entire business. A professional bookkeeper is one of the key people that helps to maintain all the vital and also the non-vital financial transactions of your business. No doubt, numerous businesses across the UK ends up spending thousands of pounds each year in employing them OR seeking for the outsourced bookkeeping services.

It is undeniable that bookkeeping is a challenging task, requiring a significant amount of talent, knowledge and expertise. Yet, despite this, there are still quite a few numbers of small businesses in the UK who tend to choose to maintain their books by themselves, and most likely being winds up in a pretty bad situation. Opting for professional bookkeeping services in the UK could help overcome such case. A good bookkeeping service provider not only helps you to keep your bookkeeping records up-to-date, but also helps you to save money in the long run. Some of the key reasons on how professional bookkeeping services could help your small business are:

  1. They will help to take off the load from your heads by help dealing with most of your businesses’ accounting and finance matters. In the end, you are stress and worry free.
  2. Paying the taxes is one of the foremost part of the business, and so does being updated with the taxation laws and rules, that often keep on changing. Being a business owner, you might not have the time to be updated with the latest tax laws, and might not have the expertise to maintain all the records of the profit & losses that your business has faced. Bookkeeping services will keep all of these in check for you, and ensure that you pay the right amount of tax each year.
  3. Helps keep the track of your business expenses, so you are always updated with how much your business is spending and can keep a stop on unnecessary expenses.
  4. Keeping track of a lot of things including bill payments, pending invoices, payment received, pending dues, expenses, losses, and more. This eventually helps you to be free from all the accounting matters of your business, and can focus more on other aspects of your business.
  5. Helps you to save money as you need not have to employ a full-time bookkeeper at your premises, and at the same time need not have to worry about the quality of services. Most important, professional bookkeeping services in the UK will offer you quality, on time and within budget services, always.

However, the above are just tip of the iceberg, if you wish to know more on how professional bookkeeping services could help your business, feel free to contact us at info@affinityassociates.com

Bookkeeping and Accounting – Know the Differences

Bookkeeping and Accounting – Know the Differences

Often, small business owners interchange the important term ‘bookkeeping’ with ‘accounting’ or ‘accounting’ with ‘bookkeeping.’ They should not do that as both these accountancy terms are different.

Bookkeeping and accounting have separate financial functions, and both of them are integral parts of small businesses. It is important to understand these terms because streamlined financial records and organized finances are key to the success of a small business. Understanding these terms also helps when it comes to engaging the right services, i.e., bookkeeping services for small business and accountancy services for small business.

What is bookkeeping?

Bookkeeping is an accounting process of recording all daily financial transactions, both cash and credit, of the business. The one who carries out bookkeeping is called a bookkeeper.

Bookkeepers need to record all the sales, receipts, purchases, and payments transactions of the business in the correct daybook, customer (sales) ledger, supplier (purchase) ledger, or general ledger. You need to keep in mind that a ledger is a principal book. It is the key to the finances of your business; hence, it needs to be accurate.

Bookkeeping can be simple initially, but as the size of your business and the number of transactions increase it can quickly become difficult to manage. In such a case, engaging quality bookkeeping services for small business in the UK from a reputable firm like Affinity Associates can be helpful.

Methods of bookkeeping

The two prevalent bookkeeping methods are single-entry bookkeeping and double-entry bookkeeping. Of these two methods, most businesses use the double-entry system. In this system, “every entry to an account needs a corresponding and opposite entry to a different account.” For example, recording an expense of £20 would need two entries:

  1. A debit entry of £10 to an “Expense” account
  2. A credit entry of £10 to a “Cash” or “Credit” account

Bookkeeping can be carried out on a piece of paper or a spreadsheet, like Microsoft Excel. Today, however, much of the bookkeeping is done using specialised accountancy software applications.

Whether carrying out bookkeeping on a paper, spreadsheet, or an accountancy software, it is a time-consuming task. Furthermore, whether being an expert or not, an in-house bookkeeper (or you if you are doing the bookkeeping yourself), can make errors. For that reason, it is beneficial to engage bookkeeping services for small business, where professional bookkeepers will quickly complete the task, under the direction of an experienced accountant, which by the way, minimises the errors.

What is accounting?

Accounting or accountancy is a broad terminology. It deals with summarising, analysing, and reporting financial information of the business. Accountancy or accounting provides information on the current resources available to the business, how those resources are financed, and the results the business achieves through the use of those resources.

The function of accountancy is to prepare statements of the financial affairs of the business. It also includes the analysis of the figures recorded by the bookkeeper in order to ascertain the financial health of the business. Furthermore, the function of accountancy also extends to the preparation of various business taxes and other financial materials.

The one who carries out the accounting or accountancy is called an accountant. Employing full-time, in-house accountants can be very expensive. Therefore, whenever the need arises, engaging certified accountants for small business in London from a firm like Affinity Associates, can be beneficial.

Who qualifies as an accountant?

In the UK, there are no license requirements for anyone to call themselves an accountant. Nevertheless, it is wise to deal only with trained and qualified accountants. Such a qualified accountant is referred to as a CA (Chartered Accountant) or ACCA (Chartered Certified Accountant). In order to achieve a qualification, an individual needs to pass a series of examinations and undergo a period of appropriate work experience.

Accounting can be difficult, depending on the size and nature of the business. Therefore, as mentioned before, engaging accountants for small business can prove to be sensible for a business owner.

So now you know what bookkeeping and accounting are. You can, of course, carry out both bookkeeping and accounting in-house, but they often prove to be uneconomical, especially for small businesses. Therefore, it will be in your best interest to engage both bookkeepers and accountants for small business.

At Affinity Associates, we offer both bookkeeping services for small business and accountancy services for small business in London and across the UK. Contact us today to discover how we can help you keep your books accurate and up-to-date and how we can help you manage the finances of your business. Get in touch with us through the following link https://www.affinityassociates.com/contact-us/.