The Records Your Accountant Will Thank You For
Ask an accountant what makes a client easy to work with and none of them say clever bookkeeping. They say the invoices are numbered, the bank matches, and the answers to their questions arrive the same week. That is a low bar and most of it can be set up once.
Every invoice, in order, in one place
Sequential numbers, no gaps, no duplicates, and credit notes rather than deletions. If an invoice was wrong, the fix is a credit note and a new invoice, not a quiet edit — the version the client has in their inbox is the one that counts.
The payment, matched to the invoice
What was owed, what arrived, when, and against which invoice. Part payments matched to their invoice rather than left as a lump. Ninety per cent of year-end questions are some version of "what was this £1,200 for".
Expenses with the reason attached
A receipt tells your accountant what you bought. A line of description tells them whether it belongs to the business. Write it at the time; you will not remember in eight months.
An export they can read
Give them a CSV rather than a login to a system they do not use, or a read-only account if they would prefer one. Either beats a folder of PDFs and an invitation to add it up.
The things you decided
Keep a note of anything unusual: a discount you agreed, a debt you wrote off, a client who paid in another currency. Two lines in a document is enough, and it turns the January phone call from an investigation into a confirmation.
