Closing LTD company, docs to prepare?

[James Parnell]

Hi guys, James here!

I have never spoken to an accountant or dealt with one before but after some research what I want to do seems fairly straight forward. I started a LTD company 3 months ago with someone else, he has since resigned and now I wish to close the company, 'strike it off' if you will.

I would like to know if possible, in very specific detail what I need to prepare in advance for an accountant so they don't have any issues. Is it a case of downloading all bank statements, paypal transactions, e-commerce orders, facebook receipts, invoices, etc and handing them over to the accountant and let them sort it out?

The company has no outstanding bills, debts, etc nothing is coming out of the companies bank account at the moment or will come out as I have ceased trading and there is enough left in the bank account to pay for any taxes, corp tax, VAT, accountant fees (if they are less than £700) etc

Also how much would an accountant charge to do this?

Thank you in advance, I really do appreciate all your help.

 

[Mr D]

The more you require the accountant to do (ie more time spent on the accounts) the more they will charge.
At a rough guess a set of accounts seems to be a grand for a limited company. Some higher some lower.

Question perhaps becomes, to shut down do you need annual accounts done?

 

[James Parnell]

The more you require the accountant to do (ie more time spent on the accounts) the more they will charge.
At a rough guess a set of accounts seems to be a grand for a limited company. Some higher some lower.

Question perhaps becomes, to shut down do you need annual accounts done?

Annual accounts? The company has only been trading for 3 months.

Like I before mentioned, I have a copy of all income and expenditure - everything was either paid through the PayPal account or Bank Account so its easy to account for.

Why would it cost £1000, the work involved would be very minimal as there are no debts or issues? It just needs to be de-registered for VAT, the vat to be paid, corp tax/tax to be paid and then for the company to be dormant. After 3 months I can send off a DS01 form to strike off the company if that isn't something that can be done immediately?

Thank you for taking the time to reply!

 

[Scalloway]

Why would it cost £1000

I am sure you can get it done cheaper. As Mr D says the more work you to to put things in order the less work the accountant has to charge you.

Annual accounts? The company has only been trading for 3 months.

You need to have accounts done for the period of trading. The format will be exactly the same as annual accounts.

 

[dan19900]

Register for some accounting software and get the figures sorted out yourself, quickbooks has a 30 day free trial.
Find a cheap accountant, message some on here or try emailing some. I'd probably just pay a freelancer on pph or upwork to do it seeing as it's so simple. Will probably only cost around 200.

 

[James Parnell]

I am sure you can get it done cheaper. As Mr D says the more work you to to put things in order the less work the accountant has to charge you.



You need to have accounts done for the period of trading. The format will be exactly the same as annual accounts.

Okay thanks Scalloway, you have been an incredible help throughout this process and it doesn't go unappreciated.

I have been quoted £500 plus VAT for an accountant to do it but they mentioned that there is another accountant looking over the company and I would need to get authorisation from them before they could do anything.

I have contacted the accountant that my ex biz partner assigned with the details of what needs to be done, hopefully he gets back to me today so I can weigh up my options. He did mention that there is an outstanding bill of £95.00 that is owed to him so if he quotes me too high of a price I'll most likely pay his bill and contact the other accountant.

 

[James Parnell]

Register for some accounting software and get the figures sorted out yourself, quickbooks has a 30 day free trial.
Find a cheap accountant, message some on here or try emailing some. I'd probably just pay a freelancer on pph or upwork to do it seeing as it's so simple. Will probably only cost around 200.

Thank you, I'll look into quickbooks - I have no issue paying what ever needs to be paid to get this over and done with but £1000 seems a bit steep.