What should my accountant be telling me during the year
Most owners only hear from their accountant when something is due. Here is the short list of things we think you should be told between one year end and the next, and what it costs you when nobody says them.
What should my accountant be telling me during the year is a fair question to ask, and most owners only ask it after something has gone wrong. The corporation tax bill lands bigger than expected. A member of staff is hired and the wage turns out to be the smallest part of the cost. Turnover creeps past the VAT threshold and nobody mentioned it until the return was late.
Our view is simple. If the only contact you have with your accountant is a request for records in month ten and a set of accounts in month eighteen, you are paying for filing and calling it advice. Those are two different jobs.
Below is what we think a growing limited company should actually hear during the year, roughly in the order the questions come up, and what the silence tends to cost when it does not.
The tax figure, months before it is due
The first thing you should hear during the year is what the corporation tax bill is shaping up to be. Not a guess. A figure based on where the records stand now, updated as the year goes on.
This matters for an ordinary reason. Corporation tax for a company with a 31 March year end is payable nine months and a day after the year end, and the return is due twelve months after it. That gap is the whole opportunity. Decisions that change the figure, pension contributions, the timing of equipment, how much salary the director takes, have to be made before the year end, not when the bill arrives.
An accountant who only sees your records after the year has closed can tell you the number. They cannot change it. That is the difference between being told and being advised.
If your books are current, the figure is a monthly conversation rather than an annual shock. We give clients a running number for what is coming so the money is set aside as it is earned. You can see how the sums work in our guide on how to work out your corporation tax bill before it lands.
What the next hire actually costs
The second conversation is the hire. Owners usually ask whether they can afford someone at, say, a particular salary. The salary is never the cost.
Once employer National Insurance, the pension contribution, holiday cover, and the time before the new person is productive are included, the real monthly outgoing is noticeably higher than the wage on the offer letter. Then there is the cash timing: payroll goes out every month whether the client pays on time or not.
We model this before the offer goes out. One agency client had the full cost of a new salary set against the retainers already signed, with a cash plan around payroll, before they made the offer. The hire became a decision rather than a hope.
You should be able to ring your accountant, say a name and a number, and get the real figure back within the week. If the answer is “we will look at it at the year end”, the hire has already happened by then and you are finding out whether it worked by looking backwards. More detail on the arithmetic is in what hiring your next employee actually costs.
If the only contact you have with your accountant is a request for records in month ten and a set of accounts in month eighteen, you are paying for filing and calling it advice.
Which work is actually making money
Turnover going up is not the same as the business getting better, and plenty of owners find that out the hard way. The third thing you should hear during the year is which jobs, sites, clients or services carry the margin.
A construction company came to us just after its first year, turning over under £100,000, with an accountant who filed and said nothing. We took over the bookkeeping, VAT, payroll and CIS, kept the records current every month, and built job costing so every project showed its margin before the next one was quoted. That business is now past £500,000, and the owner runs it from his own numbers rather than waiting to be told.
The job costing is what did it. Once he could see which projects made money and which ones only looked busy, the quoting changed and so did the kind of work he chased.
The same question applies elsewhere. A garage owner with three sites should have figures per site. A salon should know what each chair returns. If your accounts only arrive as one total for the whole company, you have no way of answering the question that actually governs growth.
The thresholds and deadlines coming toward you
Some things should be flagged before they arrive rather than reported after. VAT registration is the obvious one. The test is rolling, so a business can cross the threshold in any twelve month period, and the registration deadline follows quickly. Nobody should discover this from a penalty letter.
The same goes for payroll and pension duties when the team grows, CIS obligations when a trade starts using subcontractors, and the director’s personal tax, which we work out in the autumn so January holds no surprises.
There is a reason to be tidier about all of this than you were three years ago. HMRC published a consultation in March 2026 on reporting transactions between close companies and their participators, covering money moving between a company and the people who own it. Whatever comes of it, the direction is clear: the detail of director loans, expenses, and payments to owners will be looked at more closely, not less. You can read the consultation on GOV.UK.
Our view is that an owner should never be the one keeping track of which rule bites next. That is the job you are paying for. Our guide on when does a growing business have to register for VAT covers the threshold question in full.
An honest opinion when the numbers say something
The last one is the hardest to put on an engagement letter. When the figures show something, you should be told what someone thinks about it.
Margins slipping on a particular type of work. Debtor days stretching. The owner taking money out in a way that costs more than it needs to. A supplier quietly becoming the biggest line in the accounts. These show up in the records months before they show up in the bank balance, and they only reach the owner if somebody is looking and willing to say so.
We think this is the whole point of the relationship. The compliance is the entry ticket. Returns have to be filed and deadlines have to be met, and we do that properly, but any firm can do that. The value is in the call that starts with “I have been through last month and we should talk about something.”
If you have not had a conversation like that with your accountant in the past year, it is worth asking why. Either the records are not current enough to spot anything, or they are and nobody is looking.
Common questions
How often should I actually hear from my accountant?
There is no rule, but a growing limited company should have real contact several times a year, not once. In practice that means monthly or quarterly figures with a short explanation of what changed, plus a call whenever a decision needs a number. If the only contact is a records request and a signature request, the relationship is a filing service.
My accountant files everything on time. Is that not enough?
Filing on time is the minimum, and for a business that is not changing much it can be enough. Once you are hiring, moving premises, buying vehicles or growing quickly, accounts filed months after the year end tell you what happened rather than what to do. The decisions that change your tax position have to be made before the year end closes.
Can I ask my current accountant to be more involved during the year?
Yes, and it is worth asking before you move. Set out what you want: a running corporation tax figure, management accounts with commentary, and the ability to ring about a hire or a lease. Some firms will take it on and reprice the work. If the answer is vague, you have your answer.
What should I send my accountant during the year to make this work?
Records, promptly and in one place. Bank feeds connected, sales and purchase invoices in as they happen, and a note when something unusual goes through. Advice during the year only works if the figures are current. The owners who get the most out of it are the ones who send things in on time and ask questions early.
Will switching accountants mid-year cause me to miss a deadline?
It should not. We write to your previous accountant, request professional clearance and the records, and check what is outstanding with HMRC and Companies House before anything else. The catch-up work comes with a discount and the monthly fee is agreed before any work starts. Returns due in the handover period are tracked as part of it.
Related reading
Where we stand
What your accountant should be telling you during the year comes down to four things: what the tax bill is shaping up to be, what the next decision costs, which work actually makes money, and anything the numbers have started to say. None of it is possible if the records sit untouched until month ten.
Plenty of firms file accurately and on time, and for some businesses that is genuinely enough. If you are past six figures, working on the business full time, and weighing up a hire, a van or bigger premises, it is not. Those decisions need current figures and somebody to talk them through.
If that sounds like your year, answer a few quick questions and Crosby will come back with a recommendation. The free growth review follows if there is a fit.