Hi everyone,
I am wondering if anyone could help me with the following issue I have.
I recently lost my sister to cancer and my sister used to complete her husbands books for him ready for the accountant.
I have offered to help as he is struggling trying to run his own gardening business and look after their 6 year old (but to be honest I am struggling).
My sister used to keep on top of the book work but her last three brain tumours all came very quickly and affected her too much so the books haven't been touched since April 2011. He has lost his paying in book from April to December so I am unsure of what cheques were cashed but I do have the amounts from the bank statements.
I have his day books which state which customer he has visited and whether they have paid. Does the accountant need these or do I add them up and enter the amounts in the cash book?
He uses a simplex D account book.
Also, he employs one other person and pays them minimum wage on a weekly basis. He has no proof of this as he pays him cash and sorts out the PAYE himself but I don't know how PAYE works? What would he have as proof or how would he know how much he has to pay for tax and NI?
Any help, information or advice would be greatly appreciated
Hi Clare, What an awful time you've had. I can imagine that bookkeeping & accounts were the last thing on anyone's mind.
In this instance, it might be worth having a conversation with your brother-in-law's accountant, who will probably (hopefully) be very understanding of the circumstances, and should hopefully have a good understanding of the business anyway. The accountant will also know what info s/he normally receives and should be able to guide you through this, so that you can do whatever needs to be done. (It might also be that they could do the bookkeeping work for you, albeit at an additional fee, but that would be up to you/your brother-in-law to decide it would be worth the extra money)
Anyway, the loss of the paying in book, whilst inconvenient, is not the end of the world. If the day books contain financial information, the accountant may find them helpful, (even if they don't usually receive them) given that the records are likely to be more incomplete than usual.
Regarding the Payroll, if the employee was paid over £102 for any week during 11/12 (the LEL - lower earnings limit) or the employee had a second job, if so, your brother-in-law would have needed a PAYE scheme and to have submitted a P35 to HMRC. Then normally, your brother in law would work out the gross amount, and PAYE & NI that was due (HMRC have a free calculator/payroll software that does this). He would hopefully pay the net amount to the employee (after deducting any PAYE & NI). Then, every month or quarter, he would pay any PAYE & NI to HMRC. And in an ideal world, he'd have lovely records (in particular, a P11, which HMRC's free software will produce) to show what he had done. In the absence of these records, it is possible to work backwards... you might want to check whether he was required to submit a P35 for 11/12 and if he was, did it get done? (the due date for that was 19 May 2012)
