Outsourced Bookkeeping Services for Growing UK Businesses
Outsourced bookkeeping means a qualified team keeps your books accurate and up to date every month, on your own cloud software, without you employing a bookkeeper. We do it for owner-managed businesses turning over £1m and above: ledgers, reconciliations, VAT, payroll journals and a proper month-end close, reviewed by qualified accountants and supervised by Chartered Tax Advisers.
Bookkeeping is the foundation everything else stands on. If the books are late or wrong, your management accounts are wrong, your VAT return is wrong and every decision made from those numbers is a guess. Our job is to make sure that does not happen.
The service is overseen by partner Mukkarram Ali FCCA, a former Group Financial Controller at one of the UK’s largest industrial property developers. For businesses in the east of Greater Manchester, see our bookkeeping service for Tameside businesses, run from our Stalybridge office.
3,000+ owner-managed business clients
Xero Platinum partner
Second-specialist review on every VAT return
Fixed monthly fee, agreed before we start
What our outsourced bookkeeping service covers
We take on the whole bookkeeping cycle or the parts you want to hand over. For most clients turning over £1m or more, that includes:
- Sales and purchase ledgers, with supplier statement reconciliations each month
- Bank, credit card and payment platform reconciliations, including Stripe, PayPal, GoCardless, Shopify and Amazon settlements
- Expense claims and receipt capture, linked directly to your software
- Sales invoicing and customer statements
- Credit control: chasing overdue invoices and reporting who owes what
- Supplier payment runs prepared and processed for you to approve
- Payroll journals and pension reconciliations
- VAT returns under Making Tax Digital, including the construction reverse charge and partial exemption
- Month-end close: accruals, prepayments, deferred income and depreciation
- Fixed asset register, kept up to date with additions, disposals and depreciation
- Stock reconciliations where you count stock
- CIS returns for contractors
- Multi-currency, intercompany and group bookkeeping
- Aged debtor and aged creditor reports every month
If you would rather hand over the whole finance function, including payroll, VAT, management accounts and finance director support, under one fixed fee, see our Complete Finance Function.
Books that are closed each month, not just kept up to date
For a larger business, entering transactions is only half the job. Without a proper month-end close, the numbers move about for reasons that have nothing to do with trading. An annual insurance premium paid in one month makes that month look like a loss. A twelve-month contract invoiced in advance makes one month look spectacular. Stock bought ahead of a busy season distorts the margin.
We close your books every month. Prepayments, accruals and deferred income are posted, stock is adjusted where you count it, and depreciation is charged. The result is a monthly profit figure you can trust and compare with last month, last year and your budget.
Reviewed by qualified accountants, supervised by Chartered Tax Advisers
Every set of books we keep is reviewed by a qualified accountant, and every VAT return is checked by a second tax specialist who did not prepare it. Our team includes Chartered Tax Advisers, holders of the highest tax qualification in the UK, and professionals who have worked inside HMRC. They know which entries HMRC questions and why.
That matters because many tax problems start in the bookkeeping. A few we catch regularly:
- Capital purchases posted as expenses, or the reverse, which affects both profit and capital allowances
- Personal spending posted to the director’s loan account until it triggers a section 455 charge
- VAT reclaimed on invoices that should have used the domestic reverse charge
- Benefits in kind buried in general expenses that should be on a P11D
Catching these as they happen costs very little. Finding them at the year end, or when HMRC asks, costs a great deal more.
Already have a bookkeeper? We can review their work instead
Plenty of businesses at this size already employ a good bookkeeper. What they often lack is someone senior checking the work and turning it into reports the directors can use.
Our quarterly bookkeeping review does exactly that. Your bookkeeper carries on with the day-to-day, and each quarter we review the books, correct anything that needs it, explain why, and produce a full set of management reports followed by a review meeting with you.
From bookkeeping to management accounts
Once the books are closed, the most useful thing you can do with them is read them. Our monthly management accounts turn your bookkeeping into an analysis of each revenue stream, your costs, performance against budget and a cash flow forecast, presented with charts that make anomalies easy to spot.
Every pack is reviewed by two partners: Hussein Bhaiji, a Chartered Tax Adviser, for tax efficiency, and Mukkarram Ali, a former Group Financial Controller, for business performance. They both attend your review meeting, so you get tax and commercial advice from the same conversation.
Cloud accounting software we work with
We work with Xero, QuickBooks, Sage and FreeAgent, and connect them to the apps you already use for payments, stock, payroll and receipts. Merit is a Xero Platinum partner. For migration, set-up and training, see our Xero and cloud accounting service.
Bookkeeping and payroll together
If we run your payroll as well, the payroll journals, pension liabilities and PAYE balances are reconciled to the books every month. One team, one set of numbers, no gaps between providers.
How we take over your bookkeeping
- Free appointment. We find out how your business works, what software you use and what state the books are in. You get a fixed fee quote, and we respond to every enquiry within two business days.
- Access and handover. We set up access to your software and bank feeds and collect what we need from you or your previous bookkeeper.
- Catch-up and clean-up. If the books are behind or have errors, we bring them up to date and tell you what we corrected.
- First month-end close. We close the first month and walk you through the figures.
- Ongoing. Your books are closed every month on an agreed timetable, and you know who to call.
Who this service is for
Our outsourced bookkeeping is built for owner-managed businesses turning over £1m and above, including clients over £15m. Typically you have outgrown doing the books yourself or relying on a single part-time bookkeeper, you have a bank or investors who want regular figures, and you want to know your numbers are right without checking them yourself.
If a smaller, stable business only needs its year-end accounts, we will say so. It depends on the business, not on what we would rather sell.
An example from our work
Case study: picking up the pieces after a bookkeeper left
The business. A hospitality group with three sites turning over £2.4m, whose bookkeeper left without notice.
What the numbers showed. We found seven months of unreconciled bank transactions, supplier statements that had not been checked for a year, and two VAT returns filed from estimates. Matching every supplier statement to the purchase ledger turned up £14,600 of invoices paid twice, and £9,200 of supplier credit notes that had never been claimed.
What we did. We brought the books up to date in five weeks, recovered the duplicate payments and credits, corrected the VAT position on the next return within the error correction limits, and set up proper recording of tips and service charges across all three sites.
The result. The group recovered £23,800 in cash, saw site-by-site figures for the first time, and has had its books kept by us every month since, on a fixed fee.
Why growing businesses choose Merit
- Chartered Tax Adviser-led. Your bookkeeping is reviewed by people who know the tax consequences of every entry, including professionals who have worked inside HMRC.
- Partners who have built businesses. Our partners have built their own businesses from nothing to over £1m in turnover. We understand cash flow pressure because we have lived it.
- We grow with you. We have worked alongside clients as they grew past £1m, and some beyond £50m, in turnover.
- Books that stand up to scrutiny. As a registered audit firm, we know what auditors, lenders and buyers look for in a set of books.
- Three offices. London, Manchester and Hertfordshire, working with clients across the UK.
Talk to us about your bookkeeping
Book a free appointment and we will look at how your books are kept now, what is working and what is not, and give you a fixed fee quote.
Outsourced bookkeeping FAQs
How much does outsourced bookkeeping cost?
It depends on the number of transactions, bank accounts, entities and currencies rather than turnover, which is why we quote after a short conversation. You pay a fixed monthly fee agreed before we start, quoted separately from year-end work so you can see what each part costs.
Is outsourced bookkeeping cheaper than employing a bookkeeper?
Usually, once you count the full cost. An employed bookkeeper costs salary plus employer’s National Insurance at 15% above £5,000 a year, a pension contribution of at least 3% of qualifying earnings, software, training and recruitment, and you still need cover for holidays and sickness. Outsourcing gives you a team on one fixed fee, reviewed by qualified accountants, with no gap when someone is off. If your volume justifies an in-house bookkeeper, we will tell you, and we can review their work instead.
Can you work alongside our in-house finance team?
Yes. Many of our clients keep a bookkeeper or finance assistant for day-to-day processing and use us for the month-end close, VAT and review. See our quarterly bookkeeping review service for how that works.
Which accounting software should we use?
It depends on how your business works. Xero suits most limited companies, Sage handles stock well, QuickBooks suits simpler set-ups, and FreeAgent comes free with some business bank accounts. We work with all four every day and take no commission for steering you towards any of them. Merit is a Xero Platinum partner, a tier reached through the volume of clients we run on the platform rather than any incentive to put you there.
Can you take over bookkeeping we have started ourselves, or that a previous bookkeeper left behind?
Yes. We review what is there, correct what needs correcting and carry on. Half-finished books are extremely common and not a problem. We will tell you at the start how far behind things are and what the catch-up involves.
Do we have to switch software to work with you?
Not usually. If a change would help, we will explain why and handle the migration ourselves rather than leaving it with you.
Do you handle multi-currency, intercompany and group bookkeeping?
Yes. We keep the books for groups with several companies, post and reconcile intercompany balances each month, and handle foreign currency bank accounts, suppliers and customers.
What is the difference between bookkeeping and management accounts?
Bookkeeping records and reconciles your transactions. Management accounts turn those records into reports you can act on: profit by revenue stream, performance against budget, cash flow forecasts and commentary. One is compliance; the other is information you can use.
Does Making Tax Digital affect our bookkeeping?
If you are VAT registered, digital records are already required. For income tax, Making Tax Digital began in April 2026 for sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000, with those over £30,000 joining from April 2027 and those over £20,000 from April 2028. Limited companies are outside Making Tax Digital for Income Tax altogether, and HMRC confirmed in July 2025 that it does not intend to introduce Making Tax Digital for corporation tax, so a company carries on filing its annual corporation tax return as it does now.
Do you collect paperwork or do we send it?
Most clients photograph receipts straight into a receipt capture app linked to their software, which takes seconds and removes the paper entirely. Supplier invoices can be emailed to a dedicated inbox. If you would rather hand over physical records, we will arrange that.