Sidekick - Limited Company and Self-Employed Accountants

Sidekick - Limited Company and Self-Employed Accountants Sidekick are one of the fastest growing accounting services for Self-Employed professionals and Contractors.

Sidekick was created by a team who have over 25 years’ experience providing services to small business owners. Having recognised the way others do things, and feeling that this is outdated, we felt we could offer more. The world is changing, people are busier than ever and the days of putting receipts in an envelope and having a stressful year end are long gone. Life doesn’t have to be stressful w

ith Sidekick, we are here to make running a small business or getting paid as simple and efficient as possible.

Taking on your first member of staff is exciting. It also comes with a set of legal and financial obligations that catch...
20/07/2026

Taking on your first member of staff is exciting. It also comes with a set of legal and financial obligations that catch most first-time employers by surprise.

Here is what you need to do, in order.

Register as an employer with HMRC before your first payday. HMRC will issue you a PAYE reference number. It can take up to 30 days to arrive, so do not leave it late.

Set up payroll software. You need to submit a Full Payment Submission to HMRC on or before every single payday. This is called RTI, Real Time Information. One missed submission means a penalty.

Get employers' liability insurance. Minimum cover of £5 million. This is a legal requirement the moment you take on staff.

Provide a written employment contract from day one. Not within a week. Day one.

Check right to work before they start. You need to see the original documents and keep copies.

Set up auto-enrolment. If your employee is aged 22 to state pension age and earns over £10,000 per year, they must be enrolled into a qualifying pension from their first day. You contribute at least 3% of qualifying earnings. They contribute at least 5%.

Then there are the ongoing costs. Employer National Insurance is 15% on earnings above £5,000 per year. The National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over is £12.71 per hour from April 2026. PAYE and NI payments go to HMRC by the 22nd of the following month.

If you are eligible, the Employment Allowance reduces your employer National Insurance bill by up to £10,500 per year. Sole directors who are the only employee of their company cannot claim it.

It is a lot, but with the right support, it does not have to feel that way.

Our Payroll Bureau service takes all of this off your plate. Get in touch.

Your employer handles your employment income through PAYE. That part is sorted.The side income sits on top. At the end o...
17/07/2026

Your employer handles your employment income through PAYE. That part is sorted.

The side income sits on top. At the end of the year, you file a self-assessment return, declare the extra, and pay tax based on everything you earned combined that year.

If your employment salary already uses up your personal allowance, your side income gets taxed from where your employment left off. Go over £50,270 combined and that income is taxed at 40%.

Here is the part most people miss. You can deduct the genuine costs of doing that side work before tax is calculated. Equipment. Software. Mileage. A proportion of your phone bill. That reduces the profit figure, which reduces the tax.

You also pay Class 4 National Insurance on the self-employed profits. Currently, 6% between £12,570 and £50,270. Then 2% above that.

If your combined National Insurance from your job and your side work goes over the annual maximum, you are entitled to claim the overpayment back. We check this for every client in this position. Most people have never heard of it.

Side income is manageable. It just needs to be set up properly.

Get in touch to see how we can help you.

Most people assume their savings are tucked away and there is nothing to worry about. That is true up to a point.Every U...
15/07/2026

Most people assume their savings are tucked away and there is nothing to worry about. That is true up to a point.

Every UK taxpayer gets a Personal Savings Allowance. If you pay basic rate tax, the first £1,000 of savings interest you earn each year is tax-free. Higher-rate taxpayers get £500.

Additional rate taxpayers get nothing at all.

With savings rates where they have been over the last couple of years, a lot more people are going over those limits than ever before. You do not need a huge amount saved to tip over the edge.

The straightforward fix is a Cash ISA. You can put up to £20,000 into ISAs this tax year. Interest inside an ISA is completely tax-free and never touches your allowance.

If you are self-employed, savings interest needs to go on your self-assessment return. If you are employed, HMRC usually adjusts your tax code automatically. Either way, the tax catches up with you eventually.

This is exactly the kind of thing your Sidekick keeps an eye on for you. The thing you did not know to ask about, flagged before it becomes a problem.

Get in touch, and we will check where you stand.

Day one after 31 January, an automatic £100 penalty. Even if you owe no tax at all.After three months, daily £10 penalti...
13/07/2026

Day one after 31 January, an automatic £100 penalty. Even if you owe no tax at all.

After three months, daily £10 penalties start. Up to 90 days, that is another £900.

After six months, 5% of the tax owed or £300, whichever is higher, is added on top.

After twelve months, another 5% or £300.

HMRC also charges interest on any unpaid tax from the due date. Currently 11.75%. Running every day until you pay.

The longer it sits, the more expensive it gets. But here is what most people do not know: HMRC is more reasonable when you come to them before they come to you. Penalties can sometimes be appealed where there is a genuine, reasonable excuse.

If you have a return sitting unfiled, do not wait. Sort it now.

Get in touch, and we will get it resolved. No judgement. Just your sidekick sorting it out for you.

Plenty of self-employed people start out doing their own bookkeeping. Some keep doing it well for years. Others find out...
10/07/2026

Plenty of self-employed people start out doing their own bookkeeping. Some keep doing it well for years. Others find out the hard way that a spreadsheet and good intentions only get you so far.

The risk isn't usually getting the maths wrong. Most people can add up. The risk is not knowing what you don't know, missing an allowable expense because you didn't realise it qualified, misclassifying something that should have been treated differently, or falling behind during a busy month and trying to reconstruct three months of transactions from memory at year end.

Since Making Tax Digital came into force this year, the cost of falling behind is higher than it used to be. Quarterly submissions mean quarterly records. There's no waiting until January to catch up anymore.

DIY bookkeeping isn't wrong. For some businesses, at some stages, it's perfectly fine. The honest question to ask is whether the time it takes you and the risk of getting something wrong is actually worth what you're saving by not having proper support.

If you've been doing your own books and you're not sure if it's still the right call, that's a conversation worth having.

Get in touch and we'll give you a straight answer either way.

Late payment isn't just annoying. It's a financial cost that most self-employed people and small business owners absorb ...
08/07/2026

Late payment isn't just annoying. It's a financial cost that most self-employed people and small business owners absorb quietly, every single month, without ever putting a number on it.

When a client pays 60 days late on a £5,000 invoice, that's £5,000 sitting outside your business for two extra months. Money you can't invest, can't use to cover your own bills, and can't put towards your tax bill that's still due on time, regardless of whether you've actually been paid.

You're already entitled to charge statutory interest on late commercial payments under existing law, currently 12.5%, made up of the Bank of England base rate plus 8%, along with a fixed compensation fee of £40 to £100 depending on the invoice value. Most businesses never charge it. Most clients don't expect to be charged it either, which is exactly why it works as leverage in the conversation.

Cash flow problems in small businesses are rarely about a lack of profit. They're about timing. Money owed but not yet received, while your own bills don't wait.

If chasing payments and managing cash flow feels like a constant background stress, that's something we help clients get ahead of.

Get in touch if this sounds familiar.

If your business has ever solved a technical problem that wasn't straightforward, you might be sitting on a tax relief y...
06/07/2026

If your business has ever solved a technical problem that wasn't straightforward, you might be sitting on a tax relief you've never claimed.

R&D tax relief isn't just for labs and tech startups. It covers any business that has tried to develop or improve a product, process or piece of software and faced genuine technical uncertainty along the way. Building custom software. Improving a manufacturing process. Working through a formulation that took real trial and error.

For accounting periods starting on or after 1 April 2024, most profitable companies claim under the merged R&D scheme, which gives a 20% credit on qualifying expenditure. After tax, that works out at a net benefit of around 15% of what you spent.

If your company is loss-making and spends at least 30% of its total costs on qualifying R&D, you may qualify for the more generous Enhanced R&D Intensive Support scheme instead, which can be worth up to around 27% back on qualifying spend.

The test for qualifying isn't "did you invent something revolutionary" It's "did you face a genuine technical challenge where the answer wasn't obvious from the start, even to someone competent in the field."

Most businesses that qualify never claim. Not because the relief doesn't exist for them, but because nobody ever asked them the right question.

If you've spent time and money this year solving a problem that wasn't easy, that's worth a conversation before your year-end, not after it.

Get in touch and we'll find out if you qualify.

A lot of accountancy firms use the word “all-inclusive” loosely. It often means most things are included, until you need...
03/07/2026

A lot of accountancy firms use the word “all-inclusive” loosely. It often means most things are included, until you need something slightly outside the standard package, and then a new invoice appears.

When we say all-inclusive at Sidekick, here’s what that actually covers under one fixed monthly fee. Your tax returns. Your bookkeeping. Your Making Tax Digital submissions. Payroll if you employ staff. Advice whenever you need it, not billed by the phone call or the email.

We built it this way deliberately. Not because it’s generous, but because we think the alternative creates the wrong incentive. If every question costs you money to ask, you stop asking. The moment clients stop asking questions is the moment small problems turn into expensive ones.

We’d rather you message us five times a month with something on your mind than once a year with a problem that’s already happened.

That’s the actual reasoning behind the fixed fee.

If your current setup makes you think twice before asking a question, that’s worth changing.

Get in touch to find out what’s included.

What the April 2026 dividend tax changes mean for limited company directors...If you are a limited company director who ...
03/07/2026

What the April 2026 dividend tax changes mean for limited company directors...

If you are a limited company director who takes dividends, your tax bill has just gone up, even if nothing else about your income has changed.

From 6 April 2026, dividend tax rates increased by 2 percentage points across the board. The basic rate moved from 8.75% to 10.75%. The higher rate moved from 33.75% to 35.75%. The additional rate stays at 39.35%.

The dividend allowance remains at £500, unchanged from last year. This is the amount of dividend income you can receive before any tax is due. Anything above that is taxed at the new rates.

To put it in real terms, a director taking £37,700 in dividends within the basic rate band will pay around £744 more in tax this year purely because of the rate increase, even with identical income to last year.

This is exactly the kind of change that should be reflected in how you structure your salary and dividends going forward. The optimum salary level for most directors remains around £12,570, in line with the personal allowance. But the dividend side of the equation is worth reviewing now rather than finding out the impact when your tax return is prepared.

If you have not had a conversation about your salary and dividend split since the new tax year started, that conversation is overdue.

Get in touch, and we will take a look at your numbers.

The home office deduction myth that costs self-employed people money every year...A lot of people believe you can only c...
29/06/2026

The home office deduction myth that costs self-employed people money every year...

A lot of people believe you can only claim home office expenses if you have a dedicated room used exclusively for work. That is not correct for the self-employed, and believing it means many sole traders are claiming far less than they are entitled to.

This applies specifically to sole traders and business partnerships. HMRC does not require a separate room. What matters is that the space and time are used for business purposes and that the claim is calculated on a fair and reasonable basis.

There are two common approaches.

The simplified flat rate method, available if you work from home at least 25 hours a month, ranges from £10 per month for 25 to 50 hours, £18 per month for 51 to 100 hours, up to £26 per month for 101 or more hours. This figure does not include phone or broadband, which can be claimed separately based on actual business use.

The actual cost method calculates a proportion of your household bills, including heating, electricity and mortgage interest or rent, based on the number of rooms in your home and the proportion of time used for work. This often results in a larger claim but requires more detailed record-keeping.

It is worth being clear that this is different from the position for employees. From 6 April 2026, employees can no longer claim tax relief on homeworking expenses at all, as this relief has been fully withdrawn. The rules above apply to self-employed people only.

If you are self-employed and not sure which method suits your situation, that is exactly the kind of thing worth checking before your next return. Send us a DM to find out more about how we can support you.

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+448081643000

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