So, I’m a very small business owner, 1 man and occasional subbies kind of small. Up until now I have done manual tax returns and VAT returns, but as of April ‘22 I’ve got to go digital.

I’m looking for a software recommendation for my needs. I don’t need payroll or whizz bang features, I just have simple accounting needs, up until now I’ve just had an excell spreadsheet set up to record everything and churn out my return figures.

I’m a bit of a Luddite so self explanatory is good, It would be nice if it plays nicely with Mac, but happy to buy a cheap window laptop if it doesn’t and it would be nice if it didn’t cost an arm and a leg. What do you other small business owners use please?

Beware – a lot of software companies were charging a fortune to add on the tax module.

Provider for the place I was at wanted several £k each for all 3 companies in the group and as we did VAT monthly, were going to charge more as we did 12×3 submissions rather than 4×3 they expected.

In the end I found an intermediary company that only cost £60 pa for all 3 companies. Used the tax info from the system, loaded it into their interface and they sent it to HMRC.

We use Freeagent in our business and the charity I am a trustee of uses Xero. I prefer Freeagent, we file PAYE/CT/VAT from it directly and it produces our annual accounts. Costs us £28 a month.

I recommend an online product as they are often updated quicker and can be used on multiple devices.

QuickBooks Online here (so can be used by anything) don’t use it for my tax return as my BIL does that for me, but it produces all the numbers – and can do the return if you want.

I do use it for VAT and have used it for employees PAYE.
I pay £14/month.
Well worth it for the ease of use, backups, updates, automatic import of linked bank accounts, etc.

Chap I ride with is an accountant, all his clients use his cloud based software which he uses for everything – it creates accounts for each of his clients. Saves him loads of work and means he doesn’t charge much for small companies etc. Can’t recall what it’s called….

Mrs Zip uses VT and finds it good. Like me ,she is a total numpty on a computer.
We did buy a cheap laptop specifically for the purpose.

I used https://123sheets.com/ – it is the most basic – an excel spreadsheet that will upload. Cheap and cheerful

A marker whilst I get some info from herself who works from the other side.

Mrs Zip uses VT and finds it good. Like me ,she is a total numpty on a computer.
We did buy a cheap laptop specifically for the purpose.

I used to have my accounting software on my PC, but online offering has taken all away the worry about backing up and hardware/software failures.

OP, if you go too cheap you may not get the full integration with HMRC/customs & excise which is one of the best bits.

may not get the full integration with HMRC/customs & excise

I thought their approved software list should weed out incompatible software?

QuickBooks self employed here. Easy to use, runs in browser or on my phone app when I spend anything or record a journey. Submits without bother, once you have wrangled the HMRC government gateway registration in place.