Limited Company Accounts

HarryJ

Hello All, I am new to the forum and wanted to ask a question.

I currently work for a medium sized company in the accounts department, I became an MAAT at the end of 2014 and started studying CIMA in January this year, our company has quite a few small 'sister' companies which are based in different industries, they are all under the audit threshold and all have the same person as their main shareholder. My manager and I prepare the accounts for all of these companies and hand them to our external accountant who then files them and a second accountant then deals with the Corporation tax. When the external accountant files our accounts they do not amend our figures in anyway and just puts them into the statutory filing format and files them with Companies House. My manager has asked if it is possible for me to file the accounts for these small companies instead of paying our external accountant to essentially do some formatting work but still use our tax accountant as I am not confident with the tax return side of things yet. I believe I have the knowledge and experience to file the accounts for the small companies.

My manager also mentioned filing the accounts for the larger company I work for, at the moment we are above the audit threshold (I know by studying CIMA I cannot audit) but it may be the case that we are below the threshold this year.

I just wondered what your views are on this and whether I could file the accounts for all of these companies?

Thanks in advance
Harry

hkaur92

Hi Harry

Reading from your post, it seems your manager sees confidence in you that you have the capability to file all the company's accounts. In all honesty, I'm not in a position to suggest what you should do in your company role as I have insufficient practical accountancy experience. However, by studying with CIMA and having a MAAT status, it's a good chance that you could higher your role in the company to manage those small companies' accounts and have your external accountant maybe check these accounts on a temporary basis until you feel your confident enough to manage these accounts alone.

As for filing for the larger company's accounts, it would seem sensible for your external accountant to manage the accounts as you have mentioned you cannot audit or have little or experience in auditing (If I have read that correctly). This could be something you can undertake in the future when you have gained more experience.

Hope this helps.
Harinder MAAT