Accounts & Bookkeeping

Bookkeeping Outsourcing

Transactional bookkeeping is the largest single consumer of chargeable hours in most UK practices and the hardest work to recruit for. We take the processing, keep the ledgers reconciled to an agreed cut-off, and hand back files that are ready for review rather than ready for repair.

Accountancy practices
UK businesses

Discuss this service Engagement models

The problem

Why firms hand this over first

Bookkeeping is high-volume, low-margin and relentlessly deadline-driven. It is also the work that most reliably burns out junior staff and the work clients least want to pay a UK charge-out rate for. Left in-house it crowds out advisory capacity; done badly offshore it creates a review burden worse than the original job.

Recruitment for AAT-level roles is slow and expensive, and retention at that grade is poor.
Quarterly MTD obligations have turned an annual clean-up into a recurring cycle.
Client record quality varies wildly — the work is unpredictable, so it never fits a hiring plan.
Every hour spent on data entry is an hour not spent on the advisory work that carries the margin.

At a glance

Service line: Accounts & Bookkeeping
Delivered for: Accountancy practices and UK businesses
Typical cadence: Daily — High-volume retail, hospitality and e-commerce ledgers processed every working day. Weekly — Bank reconciliation and purchase ledger run weekly for clients on rolling management reporting. Monthly — Full ledger close, reconciliations and query pack delivered to an agreed day of the month. Quarterly — VAT-cycle bookkeeping aligned to return periods and MTD submission windows.
Engagement models: Available per job, on ad-hoc hours, or through a dedicated resource. Compare models.

Scope

What we take on

Scope is agreed in writing before work starts and reviewed at each service review. Anything outside it is quoted separately rather than absorbed quietly and invoiced later.

Transaction processing

Purchase and sales invoice processing via Dext, Hubdoc, AutoEntry or direct upload
Bank, credit card, PayPal, Stripe and merchant account reconciliation
Multi-currency transactions and FX revaluation
Petty cash, expense claims and employee reimbursements
Journal preparation, accruals, prepayments and recurring entries

Ledger control

Aged debtor and aged creditor reviews with exception reporting
Supplier statement reconciliation and query logs
Fixed asset register maintenance and depreciation runs
Intercompany reconciliation and consolidation support
Control account reconciliation — VAT, PAYE, wages, directors' loan

Handover pack

Reconciled trial balance with supporting schedules
Open query list, categorised and evidenced, ready for the client
Cut-off checklist signed off by our reviewer before it reaches you
Notes on anything unusual, one-off or requiring a judgement call

Software

Platforms we work in for this service

We work inside your existing systems under named user accounts. If your stack is not listed, tell us — we will confirm honestly whether we can support it immediately or need a ramp-up period.

Xero
QuickBooks Online
Sage Business Cloud
Sage 50
FreeAgent
Dext
AutoEntry
Hubdoc
ApprovalMax

The boundary

What stays with your firm

This matters more than the task list. A delivery partner that blurs this line creates regulatory exposure for you, so we state it explicitly on every engagement.

Yours, always

The client engagement and engagement letter
Professional judgement and final review
Sign-off, submission authority and the fee
Client advice and the client relationship

Ours

Preparation, processing and documentation
Internal second-person review before release
Turnaround against the agreed timetable
Rework at our cost where the error is ours

Questions

Bookkeeping — what firms ask

All FAQs

Do you work in our software or yours?

Yours, always. We work inside your practice's software estate under named user logins that you create, permission and revoke. We do not extract client data into our own systems and we do not ask you to migrate anything.

How do you handle client queries?

We never contact your clients directly unless you specifically ask us to under your own brand. Queries are logged, evidenced and batched into a single structured list so your team raises them once rather than piecemeal.

What happens with poor-quality records?

We flag a records-quality issue within the first cycle rather than absorbing it silently. You get an assessment of what is missing, what it will take to fix, and a recommendation on whether to re-scope the client's fee.

Services that usually move together

Most firms start with one service line. These are the ones that most often follow.

See the full picture

Talk to us about bookkeeping.

Bring a real example — a live job, a difficult client file, a cycle you are behind on. A concrete case tells you far more about a provider than a capability slide ever will.

Book a scoping call See how we work

What to expect

No obligation and no minimum commitment to talk
A written proposal within five working days
A paid pilot before any long-term arrangement

Prefer email? hello@b4es.co.uk