Self-assessment: sorting out your expenses

If you are self-employed you'll be familiar with the date of 31st January looming on your horizon. For the un-initiated this is the deadline for filing your tax return with HMRC.

If you are very organised (or a bookkeeper like me) you'll have submitted your tax return shortly after the financial year end in April. If you're a normal business person you may well be hoarding a box of receipts which will need sorting through in January :-)

This year take the stress off and get yourself ahead of the game by sorting out your receipts now. It's a good investment to get a bookkeeper to work through them for you. Many of my clients find that I've saved them money by pointing out receipts which are missing. Or you can tackle the work yourself by setting up a simple spreadsheet or making use of an online accounting package.

Here's how to manage your own expenses (if you are not VAT registered):

1) Get all of your invoices and receipts together and make piles for each month. Remember the financial year usually runs from April-March unless you have a different financial year for your business.

2) Set up a spreadsheet with the columns 'date', 'description' and 'amount'. Then further to the right you can add a few columns for type of expense, eg 'travel', 'stationery'.

3) Type in your expenses one by one. Type in the amount in both the column for amount and also the type of expense. For example, if you paid £10 for some printer paper type in 'amount' £10 and 'stationery' £10. You can then total your expense type columns to see where your money is going.

4) Once an invoice or receipt has been entered put a tick in the corner. Then you can file them away in a folder.

5) Make a list of all of the things you have not got a receipt for. Did you make any business trips which had online tickets that you didn't print out? Have you claimed for mileage? What about claiming for using a home office? Print out any documentation you may have for these items and add them to your spreadsheet. HMRC has some guides for what can be claimed for home offices and mileage etc.


If you are VAT registered then you should ideally be inputting this data into an accounting software package so that you can claim the VAT portion of your expenses. Cloud based software is expanding rapidly and allows you to enter details from anywhere, including on your smart phone. I use Sage One for my business and I usually recommend it to my clients.

Let's get organised!