#Doing the Books for Your Husband's Business: A Setup That Actually Holds

Most people who end up doing the books for a trade business didn't set out to. It starts with answering the phone once because he's under a sink, and a few years later you're the one who knows the VAT deadline, which customers are trouble, and where the insurance certificate is.

Nobody trains you for it. There's plenty written for accountants and plenty written for tradespeople, and almost nothing written for the person in between who is actually doing it.

This is that. It's the setup — what you're responsible for, how to get paid for it properly, what HMRC expects you to keep, and a weekly rhythm that means January is a formality rather than a crisis.

The disclaimer that actually matters: this is general information, not tax or legal advice. The right answers depend on your business structure and your circumstances, and the rules and thresholds change. Confirm anything you act on with your accountant or on GOV.UK.

#First: name the job

You're not "helping out with the paperwork". You're running the finance and operations side of a business. Sales ledger, purchase ledger, credit control, scheduling, compliance records and customer service.

That's not a pep talk, it's a practical point. Once the job has a name and a shape you can decide what's in it, what's out of it, when it happens and what it's worth. While it's just "the paperwork" it expands to fill every evening you've got.

Write down what's yours and what's his. The list that matters most is the short one — the things only he can do, because he's the one on site. Everything else is negotiable; those aren't.

#Second: separate the money

If you do nothing else in this article, do this.

One business bank account. One card. Nothing personal through it.

Mixing personal and business spending is the single biggest cause of a bad year-end. Every mixed transaction is one you'll have to explain, to yourself in six months or to an accountant at £X an hour. Sole traders aren't legally required to have a separate business account the way a limited company is, but it makes the books dramatically easier either way.

While you're at it: if there's a personal card being used for materials "just this once", stop it now rather than in April.

#Third: understand what structure you're in — and whether you're in it

This matters more than people expect, because it decides how you can be paid and what you're liable for.

Sole trader. He is the business. Profits are his, and he pays Income Tax and National Insurance on them through Self Assessment. You have no automatic stake and no automatic liability. He can employ you, or pay you as a subcontractor if that genuinely reflects the arrangement.

Partnership. You're both partners, both share the profits, and — importantly — you're both personally liable for the business's debts. A partnership files its own return as well as each partner filing their own. Don't drift into one accidentally; if you're going to be a partner, do it deliberately and get a partnership agreement.

Limited company. The company is separate from both of you. You can be a director, a shareholder, an employee, or some combination. This is where most of the flexibility around how you're paid lives, and also most of the admin.

Ask your accountant which one you're actually in. A surprising number of people doing the books turn out to be a partner in a business they thought was his, or to have no formal role in one they've run for a decade.

#Fourth: get paid, properly

If you're doing ten or twenty hours a week for a business, the business can pay you for it. It's not greedy and it's not a formality — depending on the structure it can be genuinely tax-efficient, because it uses your personal allowance and can move income out of a higher band.

The rules that stop it being a wheeze are simple enough:

• The work has to be real. You have to actually do it, which you do.
• The pay has to be reasonable for the work. Roughly what you'd pay someone else to do the same job. Not £40,000 for answering two phone calls.
• It has to be paid. Actually leave the business account and arrive in yours. A journal entry that never moves money is not a wage.
• It has to be documented. Payroll if you're an employee — including PAYE registration and, above certain thresholds, real-time reporting to HMRC — or an invoice if you're genuinely self-employed.

There's also a version of this you may not have thought about: National Insurance credits and your State Pension. Years of unpaid work in someone else's business are years that may not count towards your own record. Being paid properly, or being a partner with declared profits, can change that. It's worth asking about specifically, because nobody volunteers it.

Take advice on which route fits. The difference between doing this right and doing it casually is the difference between a legitimate tax saving and a problem in an enquiry.

#Fifth: know what HMRC expects you to keep

You need to be able to show what came in, what went out, and what was left.

In practice that means:

• Sales: every invoice you've raised, in a consistent numbering sequence with no gaps
• Purchases: receipts and invoices for materials, fuel, tools, subcontractors, insurance, software
• Bank: statements for the business account, reconciled
• Mileage: a log if you're claiming mileage rather than actual vehicle costs
• CIS: deduction statements, if construction subcontracting is involved
• VAT: if registered, records supporting every return

Two things people get wrong:

Digital copies are fine. You do not need to keep a shoebox of thermal paper that will be blank in two years. A clear photograph of a receipt, stored somewhere it can be found, is an acceptable record — provided it's legible and complete. Photograph it at the counter, not in March.

How long to keep them. There's a minimum retention period and it differs between sole traders and limited companies. Check the current requirement on GOV.UK rather than relying on a number in an article, including this one — but the practical answer is "keep everything, it's digital, it costs nothing".

#Sixth: the weekly rhythm

This is what turns the job from a permanent low-level panic into something with edges. It's roughly twenty minutes a day and an hour on a Friday.

Every day (ten minutes, whenever suits)

• New enquiries answered and booked in
• Anything he finished yesterday turned into an invoice

Every Friday (an hour)

• Quotes that haven't been answered — follow them up
• Debtor check: who's overdue, and send the next reminder in the ladder
• Receipts for the week categorised
• Next week's diary sanity-checked against materials and deliveries

Every month (an hour or two)

• Bank reconciled
• A look at what each finished job actually made, not what you thought it would
• Anything unpaid over 60 days escalated rather than re-nudged

Every quarter

• VAT return, if registered
• A short honest look at the numbers together — not a business review, just half an hour and a cup of tea

The point of the rhythm isn't discipline for its own sake. It's that nothing gets more than seven days old. Everything horrible about doing the books is a consequence of things being months old when you touch them.

#Seventh: VAT and Making Tax Digital

Two things to have on your radar rather than in your face.

VAT registration is compulsory once taxable turnover in any rolling 12-month period crosses the threshold — and it's rolling, not April to April, and it's turnover, not profit. If he supplies and fits materials, the materials count, which means businesses hit it far sooner than their profit suggests. We've written this up in full in VAT for trade businesses, including the markup arithmetic that people most often get wrong.

Making Tax Digital is the direction of travel for both VAT and, on a rolling timetable, Income Tax. The practical implication is that "digital records" and software-based filing stop being optional. If your records are already in software rather than a notebook, this happens to you as a change of setting rather than a change of life. Check the current timetable and thresholds on GOV.UK, as they've moved more than once.

#Eighth: know when to hand it over

Doing the books yourself doesn't mean doing everything yourself. A reasonable split for most small trade businesses:

• You: the day-to-day. Invoices, chasing, receipts, the diary, the customer relationship.
• An accountant: the year-end, the tax returns, the structure question, the payroll if you're employing anyone.

Handing over the annual work usually costs less than people fear, and it costs a lot less when your records are clean — which is the actual argument for the weekly rhythm above. Accountants price partly on how much mess they have to sort out.

Get an accountant early if any of these are true: you're near the VAT threshold, you're thinking about incorporating, you're employing anyone, or CIS is involved.

#What software should be doing for you

Not "going digital" for its own sake. Specifically:

Ending the re-typing. The job should be entered once — by him, on site — and the quote, the invoice, the expenses and the record should all come off that one entry. Every time information is typed twice, it's a chance for a number to go wrong and a job that lands on you.

Capturing receipts where they happen. Photographed at the merchant's counter and filed against the job, not gathered off the van floor in a carrier bag.

Making the debtor list a screen, not a memory. Paid, part-paid and overdue at a glance. And a way for customers to pay by card from a link, which does more for cash flow than any reminder email.

Feeding your accounting software directly. If invoices, expenses and payments push into Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent or Sage automatically, your month-end stops being data entry and becomes checking.

Working where he works. If it needs signal, it fails in basements, plant rooms and new-builds — which is exactly where he is.

#The short version

1. Name the job and give it edges.
2. One business account, nothing personal through it.
3. Find out what structure you're actually in.
4. Get paid properly, and ask about National Insurance credits.
5. Photograph receipts at the counter. Digital is fine.
6. Nothing gets more than seven days old.
7. Let the accountant do the year-end; do the week yourself.
8. Make the information get recorded once, by the person who was there.

None of it is complicated. It's just that nobody hands you the list.

TradePlanr is job management software for UK trades. He records the job on his phone on site; you work from the same records in a browser at the kitchen table, and push invoices, expenses and payments straight into Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent or Sage. There's more written for the partner running the office, and if you're doing this professionally for clients, there's a page for that too. Free to start, no card needed.