The cause is often manual processes, such as clients providing 12 months’ worth of paperwork at tax time, and expecting their accountant or bookkeeper to make sense of it.

Even if manual entry is automated via a tool like AutoEntry, there’s still a need to reconcile and adjust the data to get to an accurate trial balance.

However, here at AutoEntry we have found the perfect solution.

Cloud accounting

Cloud accounting like Xero provides one solution, of course. Yet as all accountants and bookkeepers know, a stubborn subset of their client base won’t use any kind of accounting software.

This might be because they arguably have no need to do so. Small-scale landlords are a good example, where identical income arrives monthly and expenses are minimal. Other clients with simple accounting needs might be side hustlers, who earn a taxable income in addition to their day job.

But as you know, many clients simply can’t, or won’t, make use of technology no matter how powerful a case their accounting and bookkeeper makes.

We could call these do-it-for-me clients. They want you to do everything for them. That can be a lot of work, with little financial reward.

AutoEntry has a perfect solution: AccountsPrep. Its users tell us it can turn hours of work into mere minutes. It forms an efficient workflow to use as a foundation in your practice.

Introducing AccountsPrep

AccountsPrep means you can prepare, adjust and output a trial balance for an unlimited number of clients as an add-on to an AutoEntry subscription.

You can then output to a final accounts solution for compliance purposes.

It’s tax season in the UK right now. Accountands and bookkeepers can upload PDF or print bank statements into AutoEntry in the usual way for extraction. The data is then imported into AccountsPrep where it can be reviewed, updated and fast-coded to a chart of accounts (for which templates are provided, or you can use your own).

Cheques and deposits can be created and matched, too, and off-statement journal adjustments posted via three methods—standard journal, double journal, and manual quick edits direct in the journal.

Single transactions can be split into several lines for multiple nominal/tax codes, and you can make transfers between multiple bank and credit card accounts.

Once reconciliation has finished, you can instantly output reports such as a P&L, balance sheet, trial balance or tax report. Crucially, you can also export to your accounts production software of choice for tax compliance.

Easy-to-understand visuals demonstrating cash flow and yearly results can be created to provide clients with insight.

Get AccountsPrep

AccountsPrep is available now as an addition to any AutoEntry subscription at £50 per month, for use with an unlimited number of clients (€55 in Ireland, with other countries following soon).

This continues our “unlimited” approach, where with each subscription to AutoEntry, our customers pay only for the data extraction they use. All AutoEntry customers get unlimited client companies, user accounts and cloud storage for scanned docs.

If you’re an existing AutoEntry user, all you need do is open your dashboard, click Settings, and then select to add AccountsPrep.

If you’re a new customer, you can sign-up for a free trial of AutoEntry (and get 25 free credits!) Then after you’ve selected any subscription package, you can add AccountsPrep.

AccountsPrep features

Quickly prepare accounts in arrears for clients who don’t use accounting software. Prepare, adjust and output a trial balance for an unlimited number of clients with just one flat monthly subscription as an add on for any AutoEntry subscription. It’s ideal for tax submissions of any kind.

• Import a chart of accounts, or use one of the readymade templates.
• Split large transactions into individual lines for separate coding.
• Make adjustments via standard, double or manual quick journal edit.
• Cheque and deposit creation and matching.
• Transfer between multiple bank and credit card accounts.
• Help future-proof clients for government tax digitisation demands (e.g. Making Tax Digital in the UK) by moving their existing accounting into the digital realm.

AccountsPrep: The biggest cost and time saving tool you’re ever going to use

Accountant Lee Coombes has been using AccountsPrep for several months and had this to say about how it has transformed the way he works with simpler clients.

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How do you use AccountsPrep?

It’s brilliant for end-of-year work. I did a job this morning for a client who gave us 12 months’ worth of bank statements. With AccountsPrep I can literally just bash out a job with 500 transactions in about 30 minutes. And that’s not even rushing! Previously that would’ve taken me up to four hours.

You can also do things like VAT Returns because you can set AccountsPrep for quarterly filing, too. I used AccountsPrep this morning to prepare a VAT Return for a carpenter. There were 157 transactions and with AccountsPrep, it took me about three or four minutes to process.

I even use it daily. We have restaurant clients where we use AccountsPrep daily to pull the transactions off the bank account. I use software that turns the bank account into a CSV file and then I import this into AccountsPrep.

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What clients do you use AccountsPrep with?

It’s for clients don’t have accounting of any kind. They don’t use or they don’t need accounting software. They use cash accounting, rather than accrual.

And there are a lot of clients out there like this, believe it or not. In my practice, I’d say there’s a 70/30 split in favour of clients who don’t use accounting software. We’re moving them all over now to AutoEntry and AccountsPrep. Often these are clients like construction industry workers, or within the hospitality industry, like pubs and restaurants.

AccountsPrep is open to so many different types of clients, even up to medium-sized businesses as well as smaller.

Typically with these clients, they’re paid through the bank, and everything they buy is through the bank (or cash, or on account with a supplier). Effectively, the bank account is their general ledger. Everything I need as an accountant is there. And AccountsPrep lets me turn that into accounts incredibly easy.

You can use it for limited companies, too. You can input the opening balances from the previous year, then pull through the new data from the bank accounts and so forth. You can then produce journals for end of year, produce a trial balance, and then import that into accounting software.

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Is AccountsPrep useful now governments require the digitisation of tax?

Here in the UK we have Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Income Tax coming in 2026. I’m building my MTD proposition around AccountsPrep. The fact is that clients who don’t want accounting software now are not going to want it when MTD comes in, either.

We can pull regular bank transactions in and we know what they are, obviously. But we can also manually input to AccountsPrep, as well.

So even if a client’s using their personal account they can give us a list of their debits and we can pull them in manually from their bank account. Even more than this, we can use AutoEntry to extract the data for clients with cash paperwork receipts, or invoices for things out of the ordinary, and put it straight into AccountsPrep.

We can just ask them for access to the bank account. It’s faster and cheaper for them, too, compared to a cloud accounting subscription.

MTD requires client data to be sent to HMRC every 90 days. But with AccountsPrep we can be updating their accounts once a week or once a month. We’re not chasing clients for data. We’re just going to do it live, all the time.

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What are the strengths of AccountsPrep?

The coding, reconciling and adjusting is so simple. Just click the income button so all the income transactions at the top, select them all, and code them as sales straight away. Then just list all the outgoings by alphabetical order so all the identical ones are next to each other, and it’s just a process of tick-tick-tick to code them. From a cost point of view, it’s perfect.

If you can use a spreadsheet, you can use AccountsPrep. I can use my own chart of accounts, like I do for corporation tax with limited companies, or use the ones that are already there for sole trader clients.

We use the reporting feature to output a profit & loss for some clients, too.

The price is perfect. We use a fixed pricing model, so if we can save time, it’s a no-brainer for us. Clients don’t care how we do it. They don’t care if it takes you one hour, or ten hours.

AccountsPrep is the biggest cost and time saving tool you’re ever going to use for fast coding bank transactions.

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Why AccountsPrep is so important

Phil Thornton is Senior Director of Product Management at Sage, and responsible for development of AutoEntry and AccountsPrep. Here he explains why accountants and bookkeepers need to use both.

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How would you describe AccountsPrep?

How are you working today with those clients who turn up periodically with bags or boxes of paperwork? Or who email you all their paperwork once a year?

You can try and digitalise them to avoid this happening. Not all clients are interested or willing to use accounting software, however.

AccountsPrep expands AutoEntry’s data entry automation into full digitalisation of their accounting through to trial balance, profit and loss and balance sheet. For tax submission, as an example, you can use it maybe every quarter or 12 months to get to trial balance. With Making Tax Digital for Income Tax here in the UK, AccountsPrep in conjunction with AutoEntry will speed up the process of digitalising records and producing reports for the quarterly reviews and check points with clients.

More than this, though, AccountsPrep is about servicing these clients as efficiently as possible. You go from getting their bank data through to accounts in the fastest possible time, while retaining or even improving accuracy.

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Where did the idea for AccountsPrep come from?

We are lucky enough to have a panel of accounting professionals who advise us on the best way forward for our products.

Those firms seeing the benefits of AccountsPrep already regularly tell us how important this tool is to their practice and supporting their clients. When we show AccountsPrep to new firms, they are blown away by the simplicity and efficiency.

AccountsPrep is unique. We feel there is nothing else like it on the market. And we’re very proud of it.

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What kind of people should use AccountsPrep?

It’s for accountants and bookkeepers, in any size of practice. AccountsPrep solves a problem for sole practitioners all the way up to firms who are managing the affairs of thousands of clients.

We feel it’s very much a tool for the practice who are doing work on behalf of their clients in a way that collects the data and produces the required reporting as efficiently as possible. If clients are looking for a way to manage their own finances in conjunction with their accountant, then a cloud accounting solution would likely be best placed.

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What are the benefits of AccountsPrep?

There are so many.

At its core, it’s the simplicity. It’s just so easy to use, and that’s a strength: Get the data such as invoices, receipts and bank statements from the client, feed them into AutoEntry, then use AccountsPrep to instantly reconcile, adjust and prepare the reports.

Add to that speed and efficiency I’ve already talked about. We can’t think of a better or faster way to do this job. Accountants and bookkeepers are able to use AccountsPrep to reduce the time it takes to service those shoebox clients, while maintaining fee structures which ultimately leads to stronger margins. We love that!