Limited Company Bookkeeping Template

Every UK limited company has a legal duty to keep accounting records, whether or not an accountant prepares the annual accounts. This free spreadsheet gives you a practical starting point, with separate tabs for income, expenses, a chart of accounts, directors' loans and dividends, so nothing important gets left out.

What a limited company must record by law

Under the Companies Act, a limited company must keep records that show and explain its transactions. Those records must let you work out the company's financial position at any time. They must be accurate enough to support proper annual accounts. In practice, that means recording all money received and spent. You also need to note what the company owns and owes. If the company holds stock, keep a record of it at the year end too. Directors carry this duty personally, even when someone else does the day-to-day bookkeeping. A spreadsheet kept up to date beats receipts sorted in a rush before the accounts are due.

How to use each tab

The Chart of Accounts tab lists income, cost and overhead categories for a typical UK limited company. Use it as the category list on the Income and Expenses tabs. Add your own codes if your business needs something more specific.

The Income and Expenses tabs are where the daily recording happens. Add one row per transaction. Enter the date, a short description, and the net and VAT amounts from the invoice or receipt. The gross column and monthly totals add up on their own. If you are not VAT registered, leave the VAT column at zero.

The Directors Loan Account tab tracks money moving between you and the company, outside your salary, dividends and expense claims. It covers money you put in and money you draw out. The running balance shows who owes whom. Flag an overdrawn balance to your accountant early, since how and when it clears can affect your tax position.

The Dividends tab records every dividend declared, matched to a board minute reference. A dividend can only come from profit the company has actually made. This tab only helps if your income and expense records are current enough to show that profit clearly.

The three mistakes that create year-end work

The first is treating the bank balance as spare cash. Part of it is often already owed for VAT, PAYE or Corporation Tax that has built up but is not yet due. The second is drawing dividends without checking the company has enough retained profit behind them. That can leave the directors loan account overdrawn without anyone noticing. The third is letting the bookkeeping slip for a few months, then rebuilding it from bank statements alone. VAT treatment and the story behind an odd payment are far easier to record on the day.

When a spreadsheet stops being enough

A spreadsheet like this suits a company with steady, low transaction volume. It works well when one or two people keep it current. It gets harder to rely on once you run payroll, or handle more transactions than you can enter by hand. Several people updating it at once causes its own problems too. Automatic bank feeds are also hard to copy in a spreadsheet. At that point, proper accounting software such as QuickBooks is usually the better choice. Our QuickBooks setup and migration service handles that switch without losing your existing records. If you would rather hand bookkeeping over completely, our bookkeeping service keeps your records current through the year. Our year-end information pack checklist is a useful companion when it is time to pull everything together for your accountant.