Property and Site Developers

Type of business

Property developers specialising in listed buildings

About the client

Our client manages multiple building projects and sites, works with many trades and suppliers and finds technology and paperwork challenging.

Having traded as a sole trader for many years, it was recommended by the company’s accountant that they should become a Limited Company

The change would require running the two sets of accounts simultaneously, along with setting up new HMRC registrations complete with new CIS (construction industry scheme) and VAT details.  Whilst making the change it was also decided to change banks.

In addition, personal bank accounts were inadvertently being used to pay suppliers at times, which often caused confusion.

How we helped

We contacted HMRC and set up the new VAT and CIS schemes along with the new bank accounts.

Both the Sole Trader and the Limited Company accounts were set up using Excel (at the client’s request), with the emphasis on tracking the materials and labour costs to each individual project.

We arranged accounts with the main suppliers for both companies and requested that invoices were only submitted to us that had a property reference on them. The credit we had negotiated meant that most suppliers could be paid monthly and that invoices were sent to us via email where possible.

All invoices received were coded, entered to Excel and filed with a reference making them easy to retrieve if we needed to. Once collated we were able to report back to the client in our regular weekly meetings and provide detailed monthly statements of costs, by project.

We also raised invoices to the client’s client detailing the expenditure and made the supplier payments directly from their bank account ensuring everything balanced at the end of each month.

The payments for labour were also made by us, we filed the CIS returns, sent out the required statements and reconciled everything with HMRC.

VAT was calculated and reported to HMRC every quarter.

Where we are now.

We have worked closely with this company for over 10 years and have updated our approach to fit with the way their business has changed over the years.  Trading has decreased recently, however, we still have regular face to face and telephone meetings, and have more of a PA role, for both personal and business tasks.  We still make all the business-related payments and some personal ones too, which can sometimes require us working out of hours.

The company is looking to ramp up the business again soon and is keen to make the move to Xero accounting package when this happens.