Small business accountants for 5 to 50 employee firms.

Small business accountants for firms with 5 to 50 employees run the whole finance function rather than a single task: daily bookkeeping, monthly payroll, quarterly VAT, monthly management accounts and the statutory year end. At that size the alternative is a part-time bookkeeper plus a separate year-end firm, and the handover between them is where errors live.

There's a stretch where small businesses outgrow part-time bookkeeping but can't justify hiring a full-time financial controller. Revenue is past £500k. Headcount is 5–50. Payroll, VAT, year-end accounts and management reporting are increasingly demanding work, and your existing setup (founder doing books, junior bookkeeper, or aging local firm) starts creaking.

We're built for that stretch. A full finance function on a fixed monthly retainer: daily bookkeeping, monthly payroll, quarterly VAT, monthly management accounts, year-end statutory accounts and Corporation Tax, plus strategic finance support when you need it. One engagement, one team, one fee.

Our small-business clients span sectors: professional services, manufacturing, hospitality, retail, e-commerce, healthcare practices, creative agencies. The mechanics shift by sector but the standard stays the same: 5-day month-end, 4-hour query response, no surprise invoices.

Six obligations, on four different clocks. Annual accounts go to Companies House within nine months of the accounting reference date, and the rules for a company's first set are different again, as set out in the guidance on annual accounts. The confirmation statement is a separate annual filing about the company itself rather than its finances, explained in filing your company's confirmation statement. The Corporation Tax return is due twelve months after the period end, but the tax itself is payable nine months and one day after it, so the payment falls due three months before the return.

On top of that sit the recurring filings. VAT returns are quarterly for most companies and must be filed from digital records under Making Tax Digital for VAT. Payroll is reported to HMRC on or before each payday under Real Time Information, with the wider rules collected under PAYE detailed information. Benefits in kind are reported after the tax year ends, and pension auto-enrolment brings a re-declaration of compliance on its own three-year cycle. Miss any of them and the penalty is automatic rather than discretionary.

The failure sequence at this size is predictable and always runs in the same order. The bank feed stops being reconciled, usually during a busy quarter. Two months later the VAT return is filed from an unreconciled ledger, so it is wrong but nobody knows. Payroll journals go unposted, so the wage cost in the management accounts is whatever left the bank rather than what was earned. By the year end the accountant is rebuilding nine months of coding, the accounts land late, and the Corporation Tax payment date has already passed. Catching it at step one costs a morning. Catching it at step four costs a restatement, and that is the work described on our catch-up bookkeeping service page.

What we do differently at 5 to 50 employees is refuse the split. One team owns the bookkeeping, the payroll and the year end, so there is no handover and no version of the ledger that only one party trusts. Reporting is described on our monthly management accounts page, and pricing by size is on our fixed-fee pricing page. If you are still deciding what level of support you need, our bookkeeper vs accountant comparison sets out what each role delivers, what each costs, and the monthly reporting role that sits between them. Owners comparing scope rather than price should start from our full list of accounting services, which lists each service by what it delivers month to month. Practical write-ups on the filings above are on the Accountaire blog.