White label bookkeeping for accountancy practices

Bookkeeping is the work most practices would hand over first. It arrives every week, it has to be right before anything else can start, and it is rarely what the client thinks they are paying you for. Our own delivery business, Buzz, does it for other practices on a white label basis: the client stays yours, the work is done inside your software, and nothing your client sees carries any name except your firm’s.

What we take on

• Bank reconciliations, daily, weekly or monthly to suit the client
• Sales and purchase ledgers, supplier statements and payment runs prepared for approval
• Receipt and invoice processing through Dext or the capture tool you already use
• VAT returns prepared and submitted under Making Tax Digital through your software
• Month-end close: accruals, prepayments, payroll journals and control account checks
• Catch-up and clean-up work on books that have fallen behind, before the year end starts

We work in your software: Xero, QuickBooks, Sage or FreeAgent. Each person has their own login on your subscription, with the permissions you choose, so every entry shows who made it.

How a month runs

Each client gets a simple routine agreed with you at the start: how often the bank is reconciled, when the VAT quarter closes, which day the month-end pack is due. The same bookkeeper works that client every month, so they learn the odd suppliers, the director who pays for things personally and the customer who always pays late.

Anything they cannot resolve comes to you as one list of questions per client. You decide whether we send the list to the client in your name or you send it yourself. Books go to you as ready for review on the agreed day, with the reconciliations and the open queries attached.

Where white label bookkeeping usually goes wrong

The common failure is work coming back coded by guesswork. A payment is posted to sundries to make the bank reconcile, nobody is told, and the problem surfaces months later at the year end when it takes longer to fix than it would have taken to ask. Our rule is that an unresolved item is listed and left visible. You would rather see twelve honest queries than a clean-looking set of books you cannot trust.

The second failure is people changing. If a different bookkeeper picks up the client each month, every month is the first month. A seat is a named person, and their cover is someone who has already worked on the same clients.

VAT and the HMRC changes that touch it

VAT is where bookkeeping meets a deadline. Returns are prepared from reconciled books, checked against the previous quarter for anything unusual, and sent to you for approval before they are filed through your software. HMRC is also changing how VAT and PAYE are paid, which affects what you need to tell clients. We set that out in HMRC’s move to mandatory direct debit.

How you buy it, and what it costs

This work is sold through Muckin, the business we own for exactly this. It is staffed by the same Buzz team described on this page. You take a seat, which is a fixed share of a named person's month, and fill it with whatever work you need. The price is the same whether a job runs long or short, so there is no hourly bill to check. Muckin publishes its seat prices, and its capacity calculator turns your workload into the number of seats it would take.

Frequently asked questions

Will my clients know someone else does the bookkeeping?

Only if you tell them. Work is done inside your software under logins on your subscription, queries go out in your firm’s name, and nothing the client receives mentions us.

Which bookkeeping software do you work in?

Yours. Xero, QuickBooks, Sage and FreeAgent, with Dext or your existing capture tool for receipts and invoices. We work inside your licences and file structure, so there is nothing to export or re-import.

Can you take on books that are months behind?

Yes. Catch-up and clean-up work is a normal part of a seat, and it is often where a practice starts, because it is the work nobody in the firm has time for.

Who is responsible for the VAT return?

You are. We prepare the return from reconciled books and send it for your approval. It is filed through your software, by you or by us on your instruction.

Where is the work done?

By Buzz’s own employed team, across our UK offices and our office in Pretoria, South Africa, working to one standard with review in the UK.

The rest of the back office

• White label payroll
• White label accounts and tax
• White label company secretarial
• White label tax for solicitors