What your accountant actually needs from you at year-end
On this page
- 1.How to get your books ready for your accountant (in an afternoon)
- 2.What your accountant actually needs from you at year-end
Exactly what your accountant needs from you at year-end — in plain English. Why the request feels vague, what's really on the list, and how to hand it over in one click.
The pain: "just send me everything"
Your accountant's request is always a little vague, and that's the problem. "Send me everything for the year-end." Everything? You don't know what everything is — that's literally why you hired an accountant.
So you guess. You forward a few bank statements, attach last year's spreadsheet, dig out the invoices you can find, and add "let me know if you need anything else." Then the back-and-forth starts: Can you send the missing bank statement for September? What was this £1,400 payment? Do you have the receipt for the laptop? Is this loan from you or a third party? Three weeks of email ping-pong, and somehow it's your fault the accounts are late.
The handoff feels stressful because nobody hands you the list. So let's write it down — exactly what your accountant needs, why they need it, and how to give them all of it without a single email thread.
Why the request is always so vague
It's not your accountant being unhelpful. It's that what they need depends on what's missing from your records — and they don't know that until they look.
If your books were complete and reconciled, the answer would be short and specific. But most founders' books aren't, so the accountant has to ask broadly ("send everything") and then narrow down as the gaps appear. Every "can you also send…" email is them discovering another hole. The vaguer the request, the messier they're expecting your records to be.
Flip it around and the request gets sharp. Hand over books that are already complete and tied to the bank, and there's almost nothing left to ask. The vagueness disappears because the gaps do.
The actual list (what they really need)
Here's what your accountant genuinely needs to prepare your accounts and tax return. It's shorter than you fear:
- A complete set of transactions. Every payment in and out for the year, categorised — not a stack of statements they have to type up. Sales, costs, the lot.
- Bank reconciliation. Proof that your records match your actual bank balances on the year-end date. This is the foundation; if it doesn't reconcile, nothing built on top can be trusted.
- Sales and invoices. What you billed, what's been paid, what's still outstanding (your accounts receivable — money owed to you).
- Bills and expenses with receipts. What you spent, on what, with the paperwork to back deductible costs — so you don't pay more tax than you owe.
- Opening balances. Where you finished last year, so this year picks up correctly. (If you're not their first-year client, they already have this.)
- The unusual items, flagged. A director's loan, money introduced or taken out, a big asset bought, a grant received, anything one-off. These need a human note, not just a category.
- Year-end specifics. Closing stock if you hold any, who owes what at the cutoff, and a heads-up on anything that changed (new loan, new shareholder, sold an asset).
That's the whole list. Notice what's not on it: a shoebox of receipts, sixteen separate statements, or your best-guess spreadsheet. Your accountant doesn't want raw materials. They want clean, reconciled books — the finished bookkeeping — so they can do the part that actually needs them: the accounts, the tax, the advice.
The hard way today (statements, spreadsheets, email threads)
On spreadsheets, you can't really give them reconciled books, because a spreadsheet doesn't reconcile — it just holds numbers you typed. So you send the raw stuff (statements, invoices, receipts) and your accountant rebuilds the bookkeeping from scratch, often charging you for the privilege. That's the most expensive way to do it.
On Xero, you can hand over proper books — if you kept them up. But Xero relies on you to reconcile as you go, and when you've drifted, your accountant opens the file to find a mountain of unmatched transactions and a reconciliation that doesn't tie out. Now they're chasing you for the same things a spreadsheet user gets chased for: what's this payment, where's that receipt, why doesn't September balance. The software was capable; the records weren't kept current.
In both cases the bottleneck is the same. The accountant needs finished bookkeeping, and the old way leaves the finishing until they ask — which is exactly when it's hardest to do.
How it's automatic in Ledgers
In Ledgers, the entire list above is produced as a by-product of just using the software — no year-end scramble required.
Your bank feed connects once (via TrueLayer, the secure connection your banking app uses) and every transaction flows in and gets categorised automatically. The books reconcile continuously, so your records and your bank balance stay matched all year — and a "Reconciled" badge shows you, at a glance, that they tie out. That covers "complete transactions" and "bank reconciliation" without you lifting a finger.
Invoices and bills live in the same place: you raise invoices in Ledgers (with auto-reminders chasing the unpaid ones), and bills get matched to the payments that clear them. Receipts attach by photo — snap it, and the OCR drafts the expense for you. So "sales," "bills with receipts," and "who owes what" are all just there, current.
The only things needing a human — the director's loan, the one-off asset, the money you introduced — don't get lost. They surface in the Exception Inbox as a short, plain-English question when they happen, and you answer in a sentence. By year-end, the "unusual items, flagged" part of the list is already flagged.
What you'd see and do (the one-click handoff)
When the accountant's email lands, you don't assemble anything. You open the accountant portal and invite them in.
From there, they have secure, read-ready access to everything on the list: your reconciled trial balance, your P&L and balance sheet, the full transaction detail, attached receipts, and the notes on any unusual items. They can drill into any figure and see the transactions behind it — because Ledgers keeps an event-sourced ledger where nothing is deleted or overwritten, so there's a clear, auditable trail for every number (see: "How to know if your books are actually correct").
What you don't do: export CSVs, attach statements, hunt for receipts, or answer fourteen follow-up emails. The gaps that used to generate those emails aren't there, so the questions aren't either. Your accountant gets exactly what they need, in the form they want it — finished books — and gets straight to the work you're actually paying them for.
That's the difference. The old handoff is you scrambling to supply raw materials. The Ledgers handoff is you granting access to a finished job. (For the step-by-step of running the close itself, see "How to get your books ready for your accountant (in an afternoon).")
The short version
Your accountant doesn't really want "everything." They want a short, specific list — complete transactions, a clean bank reconciliation, your sales and bills with receipts, opening balances, and the unusual items flagged. They ask vaguely only because they expect gaps. Keep your books reconciled as you go, and the gaps vanish, the questions stop, and the handoff becomes a single invite into clean, current records.
Tired of the year-end email ping-pong? In Ledgers, the whole list your accountant needs is produced automatically as you go — then you hand it over with one invite. See your numbers without learning accounting → start free.
Want the step-by-step of the close itself? How to get your books ready for your accountant (in an afternoon) →
Want to be sure the numbers are right before they see them? How to know if your books are actually correct →
Frequently asked questions
What does my accountant need for my year-end accounts?
A complete, categorised set of transactions; bank reconciliation to the year-end date; your sales and unpaid invoices; bills and expenses with receipts; opening balances; and any unusual items (director's loans, asset purchases, money introduced) flagged. In short: finished, reconciled bookkeeping — not raw statements.
Do I need to send my accountant bank statements?
If your books are properly reconciled, no — the reconciliation already proves your records match the bank. You only fall back to sending raw statements when the bookkeeping isn't complete and the accountant has to rebuild it.
What's the easiest way to give my accountant access?
Give them access to your live, reconciled books rather than emailing files. In Ledgers, the accountant portal lets you invite them in with one click, so they see everything they need without you exporting anything.
Why does my accountant keep asking for more things?
Each follow-up is them finding another gap — a missing receipt, an unmatched payment, a month that doesn't reconcile. Complete, continuously reconciled books remove the gaps, which removes the questions.
See your numbers without learning accounting
Ledgers does the bookkeeping — bank feeds, VAT, year-end — and keeps your accountant in the loop. Free for pre-revenue founders.
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