Small business, first VAT return due in ten days, and the bookkeeping is behind on both sales and purchase invoices. I know exactly how this happened: we hired a bookkeeper in month three who never actually did the work, parted ways in month seven, and nobody picked it back up. Now the return is due and the raw material is half in Xero, half in Shopify exports, half in a shared drive of supplier PDFs.
I am not looking for reassurance that we will be fine. I am looking for an accountant who can triage this in ten days: reconstruct the sales side from Shopify and the bank, reconcile the purchase side from supplier invoices and the card statements, identify what input VAT we can actually claim with evidence and what we have to let go, and file the return correctly with the supporting records retained in a format FTA accepts if they come back.
The obvious risk is a return that is filed on time but wrong, which creates a larger problem three quarters later. The less obvious risk is a return that is late because we tried to be too neat, which creates an immediate penalty problem. Need an accountant who can make that trade-off transparently with me, not behind my back.
Secondary ask: after the return is filed, I want the same accountant to set up a repeatable month-end close so the next quarter is mechanical. One person, one workflow, one recurring meeting. Happy to sign a retainer immediately if day one looks right.
If you have done exactly this kind of ten-day rescue recently, please say so and tell me what worked. If this would be your first time, I would rather know that up front.
