I am doing my fathers book keeping, and have a couple of questions. I have no book keeping experience and relying on common sense and a lot of reading!!!
1.He works from home mostly in the evening doing all the paperwork, quotes, printing etc. How does he claim from the company a percentage of the electricity, mortgage interest, telephone bill that he uses whilst doing this? Can he claim these on his monthly expenses??? I know he can claim something but not sure of the procedure to do this.
2.Also, I am currently recording everything on an excel spreadsheet which is fine but is there a set list names for booking purchase too. I know in accounting software they use nominal codes etc, but how do you name the nominal codes. Do I just set up my own list and pick from there what to book purchases to. This is just so its easy to filter for stock, assets, expenses.
It is a ltd company.
Sorry if they are really simple, I am hoping that the company will make enough profit soon to get me trained but as always it a bit tight hence not being able to get a proper book keeper!!!
There are two methods of claiming for use of home.
1) Based on actual usage which he may be required to justify to HMRC. The charge should be based on the % of the house used combined with the length of time used for business purposes. Note that you are not paying for things like mortgage interest but rather using those a a basis the calculate cost upon which to base the compensation paid for use of.
2) £4 a week which is the accepted charge.
For use of the home I tend to drop the amopunt to the DLA rather than treating it as any form of income per se.
Nominal codes are just things used by some bits of software and not others. If you used software such as VT there is no requirement to use codes.
You say that you have no knowledge of bookkeeping and are applying common sense. Unfortunately common sense doesn't always apply and you need to get a grip at least of the basics.
The first will teach you the basics, the second will test your basic knowledge to entry level AAT standard.
I assume that your father also has an accountant and is looking to reduce his charges by having better prepared books?
welcome to the forum,
kind regards,
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
