Accounts that already know what kind of business you are
Tell us your company number — or that you are self-employed — and we read the register. A charity gets funds and donations, a care home gets its three payers, a builder gets both sides of a CIS deduction. Not a generic list of categories you spend a weekend renaming.
New accounts are set up by invitation. Ask for one, and the link arrives by email.
Free while you set your books up. No card until you file. From £15 a month, up to £45, excluding VAT.
For sole traders, small companies, and the charities and care homes in between. Your accountant can have a login too.
What you have
Cash in the bank
£18,420
Owed to you
£6,150
You owe
£2,940
VAT position
£1,310
What you earned
Turnover
£146,800
Expenditure
£118,240
Profit
£28,560
A balance and a year’s trading answer different questions, so they are not mixed in one row. A charity sees Income, Expenditure and Net movement in funds instead.
MTD VAT, without the retyping
Every box on the return comes from what you have already recorded, not a spreadsheet you rebuild each quarter. The return and your accounts cannot disagree, because they are the same figures.
Your bank, already matched
Connect your account and payments arrive on their own, matched against what you have recorded. Pulling the same fortnight twice imports nothing twice.
Suggestions you approve
Every category is offered with how sure we are, and waits for you to accept it. Nothing reaches your books on a machine's say-so unless you deliberately turn that on.
Straight into Excel
The three reports your accountant will ask for — trial balance, profit and loss, balance sheet — as feeds a workbook can refresh, with column names stable enough to build on.
The VAT return is your ledger, added up
Every box is a total of entries you can open. HMRC says which period is due and when; the figures come from what you have already recorded, so there is nothing to transcribe and nothing that can be transcribed wrongly.
A filed return is kept with the receipt HMRC gave back for it, so what was sent and when is a matter of record rather than of memory.
- Box 1VAT due on sales
- £4,216.40
- Box 4VAT reclaimed on purchases
- £1,902.18
- Box 5Net VAT to pay
- £2,314.22
- Box 6Total sales excluding VAT
- £21,082.00
Every box adds up from your own ledger, and the figure it came from can be opened.
| Invoice | Due | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| INV-0042 | 12 Oct | £1,450.00 | Delivered |
| INV-0041 | 12 Sep | £980.00 | Paid |
| INV-0040 | 12 Aug | £1,450.00 | Queued |
Delivered means the receiving mail server took it — not merely that we pressed send.
Invoices that say whether they arrived
Raise it, email it, and see what became of it — sent, delivered, opened, bounced — against the invoice itself rather than in a log somewhere else. Rent and retainers can raise themselves on a schedule, with the period written into the line.
A statement over any two dates comes out as a PDF that opens with what was already owed, and the aged debtors report says who is late rather than only how much is.
The words your accounts actually use
A report headed “Profit and loss” showing “Net profit” is one an independent examiner sends back, and one a trustee reasonably distrusts. The vocabulary follows the body.
Find a plan that fits your books
Every plan keeps proper double-entry books, files MTD VAT from your own figures, and uses the words your kind of business actually uses. The difference is how much of it you need.
- Sole Trader
- £15/month
- Essential
- £35/month
- Advance
- £45/month
Questions people ask before they sign up
- How much does OctBooks cost?
- £15 a month for a sole trader, £35 for a growing company, and £45 where there is a lot to file. Prices exclude VAT. Setting your books up is free, and there is no card until you file.
- Does OctBooks file Making Tax Digital VAT returns?
- Yes. Every box is added up from your own ledger rather than retyped, and the figure behind each one can be opened. Because the return and the accounts are the same entries, they cannot disagree.
- Will it connect to my bank?
- Yes, through open banking. Payments arrive matched against what you have already recorded, and pulling the same fortnight twice imports nothing twice.
- Can my accountant have a login?
- Yes. They join your books with their own account and their own role, and every change anybody makes is recorded against the person who made it.
- Is it suitable for a charity, a care home or a landlord?
- That is what it is built for. The chart of accounts and the words on the reports come from your legal form and what the register says you do: funds and donations for a charity, three payers for a care home, rent and tenants for a landlord.
- Can I get my figures out again?
- At any time. The trial balance, profit and loss and balance sheet come out as spreadsheet feeds a workbook can refresh, and every report downloads as a PDF or a CSV named for the business and the period it covers.
Set your books up in a minute
Your name, your company number, and we do the rest.
New accounts are set up by invitation. Ask for one, and the link arrives by email.