Bookkeeping services for Irish businesses
Records that are current, reconciled, and ready for VAT — not a shoebox handed over eleven months later. We keep the books in cloud software you can see any day of the month, and you get real figures rather than a year-end surprise.
In short
Bookkeeping keeps a complete, reconciled record of every transaction in your business. In Ireland those records must be retained for six years and must support every figure on your VAT3s, your CT1 and your financial statements. We maintain them in Xero, Surf Accounts or Sage, reconcile monthly, and hand you management figures rather than a pile of receipts.
Why the books are a legal obligation, not admin
Revenue requires records capable of supporting every figure you return, retained for six years. Separately, the Companies Act 2014 places a duty on directors to keep adequate accounting records — and where that duty is breached and the company later becomes insolvent, directors can be held personally liable.
Bookkeeping is the only part of the compliance chain that cannot be done retrospectively without cost. Everything downstream is built on it.
The practical consequence is simpler than the legal one. If the books are wrong, the VAT return is wrong, the accounts are wrong, and the tax figure is wrong. Fixing it at year end costs several times what keeping it right costs monthly.
What we actually do each month
- Pull bank and card feeds, and match every transaction to a source document.
- Process purchase invoices and post them to the right nominal and the right VAT rate.
- Record sales invoices and track what is outstanding, with an aged debtor list you can act on.
- Reconcile every bank and card account to the statement, so the balance in the software is the balance in reality.
- Review the VAT control account before the period closes, so errors are caught while they are still fixable.
- Send you a profit and loss, a balance sheet and an aged debtor report.
The records that matter, and the ones people skip
A bank statement line is not a valid VAT invoice. It shows that money moved; it does not show what was bought, from whom, or at what VAT rate. Revenue can and does disallow input VAT where the invoice is missing, regardless of what the bank shows.
- Purchase invoices and receipts, not just card statements.
- A mileage record kept as you travel, not reconstructed from memory in October.
- The business-use proportion for anything with mixed use, and the basis you calculated it on.
- Supplier VAT numbers where you are reclaiming input VAT.
- Evidence behind any VIES-validated zero-rated EU sale.
Cloud software, and who owns it
We work in Xero, Surf Accounts and Sage. The licence stays in your name, the data is yours, and you can log in any day of the month to see the position rather than waiting for us to tell you.
If you are moving from spreadsheets or from desktop software, the migration is part of onboarding. If you already run one of these and want us working inside it, that is straightforward too.
Who this suits
- Businesses past the point where the owner can keep up with it at the weekend.
- Anyone VAT-registered, where the books have to be right six times a year rather than once.
- Companies that want monthly figures to make decisions on, not just a statutory year end.
- Businesses whose last set of accounts took months because the records were not there.
What it costs
Bookkeeping is a fixed monthly fee based on transaction volume, the number of bank accounts, and whether VAT is in scope. It is quoted before you commit and it does not move because a month was busier than expected.
Most clients take bookkeeping bundled with VAT and year-end accounts, which is cheaper than the three priced separately and removes the handover points where things get lost.
Sources
Bookkeeping questions we get asked
- How long do I have to keep accounting records in Ireland?
- Six years. Revenue requires records capable of supporting every figure returned, and company directors have a separate statutory duty under the Companies Act 2014 to keep adequate accounting records.
- Is a bank statement enough to claim a business expense?
- No. A bank line shows money moved but not what was bought or at what VAT rate. For VAT purposes you need a valid VAT invoice, and Revenue can disallow the input VAT where it is missing.
- Which accounting software do you use?
- Xero, Surf Accounts and Sage. The licence stays in your name and the data remains yours, so you can see the position at any time and take it with you if you ever leave.
- Can you catch up books that are months behind?
- Yes, and it is common. We quote the catch-up separately from the ongoing monthly fee so you can see exactly what the backlog costs, then move you onto the regular cycle once you are current.
- Do I still need an accountant if I have a bookkeeper?
- They are different jobs. Bookkeeping records what happened; the accountant prepares the statutory financial statements, files the CT1 or Form 11, and advises on structure and tax. We do both, which removes the handover where errors usually appear.
Read more on this
VAT
VAT registration in Ireland: when you must register, and how
The VAT registration thresholds in Ireland, how to register through ROS, and what actually changes for your business the day your registration takes effect.
Deadlines
Irish tax return deadlines
Form 11, CT1, VAT3, B1 and CGT — every deadline an Irish business faces in a year, with the surcharge and penalty for missing each one.
Starting Out
Starting a business in Ireland
The order in which the decisions actually have to be made, which ones are cheap to reverse, and where the state supports are worth the paperwork.
Get a fixed quote for bookkeeping
Tell us about your business and we will send a fixed-fee proposal within 48 hours.