[skianne]

Hi everyone - I'm thinking of registering my smallholding as a company but I really have been remiss on my accounting etc over the last few years...I want to try and start inputting income (HA!) and outgoings and expenses etc so i can then do proper accounts.  HOWEVER, I'm afraid i am not very business savvy at all so some of the spreadsheets on the web seem quite scary and not really what I was looking for.  Can anyone help with any advice at all?  I will try not to ask to many stupid questions....

[Womble]

Hi Skianne,

I have some spreadsheet templates I could send you, but what sort of business is this going to be?  Does it just have to manage expenses, or will you be raising invoices, charging or reclaiming VAT, etc etc?

If it's that kind of thing, I'd strongly recommend a web based accountancy package. We currently use Free Agent for both the farm and another small business, and it's great. It's mainly geared towards freelancer accounts, but it works just fine for the farm too. I've also heard good things about Xero.

Overall, the yearly fee we pay for Free Agent gets paid back many times over in time and grey hairs saved, compared with the spreadsheets we used to use.

HTH!

[skianne]

Hi!  Thanks so much for the reply! 
So it will be a meat production/sale/teaching  business with a website and blog I'm hoping...maybe some branded goods if it works...Definitely won't be looking to be VAT reg - I doubt it will earn that much..So I think probably expenses for all the areas ie - feed, vet, hay, machinery etc and then any income plus i guess raising invoices at some point?  So do you think the ones you mention might work for that?  Are they fairly user friendly to a total novice?!!!  I'll have a look online at your recommendations and see...I'd like to keep proper accounts so I think maybe an accountancy package might be the way to go but the ones I looked at seemed to be too 'businessy' if that makes any sense?  Just too complicated for a very small business..
Thanks so much for your advice!

[doganjo]

Just a plain workbook should do - one sheet for income and another for expenditure.  You can have others if you want to use perhaps as a notebook - for stock etc

Head it up date; details; reference number; amount and you can have analysis columns

Do the same for both income and expenditure

Then use the formula tool to total the columns.

If you need more than this there are a number of cheap online accounts packages like quickbooks and xero

[Womble]

I think maybe an accountancy package might be the way to go but the ones I looked at seemed to be too 'businessy' if that makes any sense?  Just too complicated for a very small business..

I'd definitely give Free Agent a look then. It uses deliberately everyday language. For example, 'creditors' are called 'bills', which is nice and easy to understand. It will integrate with most online business bank accounts, and pull in transactions automatically. Then, say you'd raised an invoice for £120, and a payment of £120 comes in, you just have to confirm it's 'guess' that the two transactions are related. No double entry, no balancing books and no messing about.

There's also a month's free trial, so you can give it a go without risk.
   

P.S. Many smallholdings do register for VAT, despite being under the threshold. That's because food products are zero rated whilst things like buckets and vet bills do attract VAT. The upshot of that is that your customers don't have to pay any more for their meat, but you get to reduce your running costs by reclaiming your 'input' VAT (this is all automated within FA in our case, so doesn't take any time at all to do).  Your own case might be different if you're selling teaching services or other goods, but it's worth doing some projections to see what makes most sense for you.

[skianne]

That's really interesting to know thank you so much - and defitily contrary to what I had though so it's worth looking into indeed.  I've found a free workshop in Bristol where you can go and access help if you are thinking of starting a business but not sureif it is the right thing,  so i'll go to that and see what they say also.
Had a look last night at the overview for Free agent and it does look brilliant - and I love the idea of the plain language! I think I will have a go at logging my details for a months trial as you suggest and see if I can work it out!
Such valuable and helpful advice - I'm very very grateful! 

[skianne]

And thank you too Doganjo! I think i might try a pre done package first - only because I am so techno - useless but your idea is very helpful and definitely one to come back to if I can work out how to work a spreadsheet!  thanks so much for the reply - very grateful!

[skianne]

Thank you so so much Scarlet . Dragon. That sounds exactly what I need to boost my confidence! Looks great. I’ll let you know how I get on! Thanks so much again.

[Maysie]

P.S. Many smallholdings do register for VAT, despite being under the threshold. That's because food products are zero rated whilst things like buckets and vet bills do attract VAT. The upshot of that is that your customers don't have to pay any more for their meat, but you get to reduce your running costs by reclaiming your 'input' VAT

This is exactly what we did for those reasons.  Most of our expenditure to date has attracted VAT, which has duly been reclaimed, and it is likely to remain a one way street in VAT terms as we are unlikely to ever sell much that attracts VAT to be added to our sales. 

I use SAGE 'Instant Accounts' for my business and a spreadsheet for our 'farm' business.  SAGE is ok, but a bit hard work to be honest.  If you make a mistake it can be hard and time consuming to unpick.  The spreadsheet I use is also a bit temperamental so can introduce errors easily if you add a row in the wrong place or something similar.  I will take a look at Free Agent myself and see what I think.   

[waddy]

HI, 
Another vote for FreeAgent here. My husband is an engineering contractor and I get the package through our accountant for no extra cost. It is easy to use and means everything is ready when the tax returns are due. I shall be using it when we take the plunge and do the smallholding as a business. The intention is to sell more than just eggs and a few chickens and although making a living is unlikely we do need to claim VAT on lots of things including a digger. You can claim for a number of previous years when you were setting things up also.

Helen

[Womble]

Since this has come up again, it's worth saying that Free Agent has just been bought out by Royal Bank of Scotland. Obviously it is still available for, and still works with non-RBS accounts. However, if you do your business banking with RBS, they will now bundle Free Agent for free, in return for having access to your free agent data (presumably so they can sell you things?).

[Penninehillbilly]

Like Maysie, we use sage for husbands business, but day to day i work with MS Excel, putting it into Sage quarterly for VAT,
so i use MS Excel for the farm, which is VAT registered, VAT can soon add up to quite an expenditure/saving, different columns for non vat feed etc, easy to add another column for something different, and colour coded where needed, and highlighted where something needs double checking.
I like Excel 

[doganjo]

Since this has come up again, it's worth saying that Free Agent has just been bought out by Royal Bank of Scotland. Obviously it is still available for, and still works with non-RBS accounts. However, if you do your business banking with RBS, they will now bundle Free Agent for free, in return for having access to your free agent data (presumably so they can sell you things?).

It's on their website but well hidden - https://www.business.rbs.co.uk/business/services/free-agent.html

[pgkevet]

Like Maysie, we use sage for husbands business, but day to day i work with MS Excel, putting it into Sage quarterly for VAT,
so i use MS Excel for the farm, which is VAT registered, VAT can soon add up to quite an expenditure/saving, different columns for non vat feed etc, easy to add another column for something different, and colour coded where needed, and highlighted where something needs double checking.
I like Excel 

I used excel for my Practice .. turnover was £1.5mill when i retired. These days Open Office is free instead and works the same. I had all the fancy stuff one could interrogate on the practice management sstem but frankly it wasn;t necessary for the bookwork going to accountants. HMCustoms accepted my simplified way of doing stuff... they got their output vat as a wedge off the bankings (since everything was +vat) and the spreadsheet recorded all my inputs. they gave up asking me what scheme I used after the third time I simply said 'Mine' and they could see I wasn't cheating :-)
The simple joy of excel was one could easily add cross references, copy and pastes for common payees and sums and flag any entry errors automatically. I ued bank statements and cheque stubs for the inputs and all accountant had to do was tick his way down my lists to check them.
Now the staff payroll was a difefrent matter.. OH did that and needed sage for the 15 employees.
pgk

[twizzel]

We have just this week started moving the farm accounts over to Xero in preparation for Making Tax Digital in April 2019. Getting my head round it is going to take time but so far Xero seems pretty intuitive and fairly straight forward to use, with the help of our accountant. It's worth noting that any VAT registered business will need to move onto software by April 2019 with online bank feeds etc- MS Excel is not suitable.