43 free resources
Operational checklists for accounting firms
Interactive, printable checklists for onboarding, compliance, staff and practice management.
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Browse 43 practical checklists written for UK accountants and bookkeepers.
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43 resources
- Checklist · Client
New Client Onboarding Checklist for Accountants
An effective onboarding process ensures you collect all necessary documentation, set up client records, and establish clear expectations from day one. Using a standardised checklist reduces administrative friction, avoids common compliance oversights, and provides a professional experience for every new client your firm takes on.
- Checklist · Client
Client Offboarding Checklist for Accountants
Professional offboarding is just as important as onboarding. It involves formal disengagement, securing final payments, and transferring records. A structured checklist protects your firm from future liability and ensures the transition is smooth for both your team and the client.
- Checklist · Previous accountant
Client Takeover Checklist for Accountants
Taking over a new client requires professional clearance, receipt of all necessary financial records, and ensuring no filings are missed during the transition. Use this checklist to standardise your takeover procedure and ensure all compliance requirements are satisfied before you start working for your new client.
- Checklist · Client
Self Assessment Tax Return Checklist for Accountants
The annual self assessment deadline is a critical moment in every accounting practice. Using a standardised checklist ensures all income sources are captured, reliefs are claimed, and deadlines are met, reducing last-minute stress and protecting your firm from errors.
- Checklist · Client
VAT Return Checklist for Accountants
VAT returns require precise data and regular reconciliation to avoid HMRC scrutiny. A structured checklist ensures every transaction is correctly categorised, potential errors are identified, and the return is ready for submission well before the deadline.
- Checklist · Client
Mtd Income Tax Readiness Checklist for Accountants
MTD for Income Tax mandates digital record-keeping and regular submissions. Preparing clients now is vital. This checklist guides you through the necessary steps for software adoption, digital linking, and process transformation before the mandatory deadlines.
- Checklist · Client
P11d Checklist for Accountants
P11D filings are often complex due to the variety of benefits offered. A rigorous checklist ensures you capture every taxable benefit, correctly calculate the values, and submit everything by the 6 July deadline to avoid interest and penalties.
- Checklist · Client
Dormant Company Accounts Checklist for Accountants
Even a dormant company has filing obligations. Failing to file correctly can result in penalties or forced strike-off. This checklist ensures you keep your company in good standing, documenting its dormant status every year.
- Checklist · Client
Company Strike Off Checklist for Accountants
Voluntary strike-off is a precise process with mandatory notifications and specific HMRC clearances. This checklist ensures you handle the dissolution orderly, protecting your client from future liabilities by confirming all loose ends are tied before submission.
- Checklist · Client
Sole Trader Setup Checklist for Accountants
Setting up as a sole trader involves registration with HMRC for tax, NICs, and potentially VAT. This checklist ensures your new client has all the foundational elements of their business structure, compliance, and accounting process in place from day one.
- Checklist · Client
Landlord Tax Return Checklist for Accountants
Property income tax reporting has become significantly more complex, especially with mortgage interest relief changes. A structured checklist ensures all allowable expenses, mortgage interest, and property income are captured correctly, avoiding common pitfalls.
- Checklist · Internal
AML Annual Review Checklist for Accountants
AML compliance requires a firm-wide risk assessment that you must review at least annually. This checklist ensures you cover all key risk areas, update your firm's procedures, and document your findings thoroughly, as required by supervisory bodies.
- Checklist · Internal
AML Monitoring Visit Preparation Checklist for Accountants
A successful AML monitoring visit depends on having your firm-wide risk assessment, individual client risk assessments, and training records clearly organised. Review your policies, ensure evidence of ongoing monitoring is up-to-date, and confirm that all staff training is documented to demonstrate compliance with your supervisory body’s standards.
- Checklist · Internal
Gdpr Compliance Accounting Firms Checklist for Accountants
GDPR compliance is about knowing what data you hold, why you hold it, and keeping it secure. Maintain a data inventory, have clear privacy notices, implement robust IT security measures, and ensure your staff are trained to recognise and report data breaches immediately.
- Checklist · Internal
Busy Season Preparation Checklist for Accountants
Successful busy seasons are built on preparation before the rush begins. This involves auditing your client list for missing information early, setting clear internal deadlines, leveraging bulk emails for reminders, and ensuring your team has the capacity to handle the peak volume.
- Checklist · Staff
New Staff Onboarding Checklist for Accountants
Effective onboarding balances administration (IT access, contracts) with culture and training. Assign a mentor, provide a clear roadmap for their first 30 days, and ensure they understand your firm's standards for service and communication.
- Checklist · Staff
Staff Leaver Checklist for Accountants
Offboarding requires a focus on security (revoking access), knowledge transfer (handover notes), and legal compliance (final pay, P45). Start early to ensure a smooth transition of client relationships and tasks.
- Checklist · Internal
Annual Fee Review Checklist for Accountants
Reviewing fees should be a regular, unemotional part of your firm’s management. Look at total time spent versus fixed fees for every client, identify 'scope creep' that hasn't been charged for, and communicate any increases clearly and well in advance.
- Checklist · Internal
Practice Software Migration Checklist for Accountants
Software migration requires detailed planning: audit your data, choose the right time (avoiding busy seasons), clean your existing files, and run parallel testing before going fully live. Always keep an archive of your old data for compliance and historical reference.
- Checklist · Internal
Month End Practice Management Checklist for Accountants
A monthly review ensures you aren't just reacting to crises. Review your firm's KPIs (capacity, utilisation, debtors), plan upcoming client deadlines, and touch base with your team to clear bottlenecks before they become urgent.
- Checklist · Internal
Year End Practice Review Checklist for Accountants
An annual review is the strategic heart of your practice. Analyse your financial health, client satisfaction, staff performance, and operational efficiency over the past year. Use these insights to set clear, actionable goals for the next 12 months.
- Checklist · Internal
Client Deadline Audit Checklist for Accountants
A regular deadline audit is your safety net. Review all upcoming Companies House and HMRC filings, verify that you have all required information from clients, and ensure your team knows who is responsible for what. Identify any 'at-risk' clients early.
- Checklist · Internal
Lead Follow Up Checklist for Accountants
Responsiveness is your biggest competitive advantage. Have a standard process for every lead: acknowledge immediately, schedule a discovery call, send a follow-up summary, and keep the relationship warm until they decide—or you decide they aren't the right fit.
- Checklist · Internal
Engagement Letter Review Checklist for Accountants
Review your engagement letters annually. Ensure they clearly define the scope of work, fees, responsibilities of both parties, and include robust clauses for limitation of liability, data protection, and termination. If the client’s requirements change, update the engagement letter *before* you do the work.
- Checklist · Internal
CDD and EDD Checklist for Accountants
Use this checklist to document who the client and beneficial owners are, why the relationship makes sense, which risk factors apply, what evidence you checked, whether enhanced measures are required and who approved the decision.
- Checklist · Internal
AML Ongoing Monitoring Schedule
Set a documented review cadence for each risk band, then review sooner when ownership, activity, instructions, geography, adverse information or another relevant factor changes. A calendar date must not prevent an earlier risk-triggered review.
- Checklist · Staff
Offshore Team Onboarding Checklist for Accountants
Onboarding offshore or outsourced team members properly protects client data and sets clear expectations from day one. This checklist covers agreements, access controls, training and confirming who is doing what before any client work is handed over.
- Checklist · Staff
Offshore Leaver Access Checklist for Accountants
When an offshore or outsourced team member leaves the provider, or is moved off your account, access to your systems and client data needs to be removed promptly. This checklist helps ensure nothing is left open after someone stops working on your firm's files.
- Checklist · Internal
QA Review Checklist for Accountants
Work carried out by an outsourcing or offshore provider still needs a proper quality review by your firm before it reaches a client. This checklist sets out review points across Accounts, VAT, Bookkeeping, Payroll and SA to help catch errors before sign-off.
- Checklist · Internal
Outsourcing Provider Due Diligence Checklist for Accountants
General guidance, not legal advice. Take advice on your contracts and data transfers. This checklist helps you assess a prospective outsourcing or offshore provider before signing an agreement, covering security, data protection, quality controls and business continuity. Take legal and, where relevant, technical advice before finalising the arrangement.
- Checklist · Internal
Transfer Risk Assessment Checklist for Accountants
General guidance, not legal advice. Take advice on your contracts and data transfers. A transfer risk assessment (TRA) helps you consider whether it's appropriate to transfer client personal data to a provider outside the UK, and what safeguards are needed. This checklist is a general prompt only — take legal advice and refer to current ICO guidance before relying on it.
- Checklist · Internal
MTD ITSA Checklist for Accountants
An MTD ITSA checklist helps your practice identify which sole trader and landlord clients fall in scope, confirm their qualifying income, set up digital record keeping, agree who sends quarterly updates, and build a repeating internal timetable. In Remindoo you turn each stage into recurring tasks per client so nothing slips.
- Checklist · Client
How to Prepare Clients for MTD ITSA
Preparing clients for MTD ITSA means segmenting your client base by readiness, communicating in plain English, converting record keeping, repricing the engagement and running a trial quarter. Remindoo turns that plan into tracked tasks per client so you can see how many are actually ready.
- Checklist · Internal
CT600 Preparation Checklist for Accountants
A CT600 preparation checklist covers the records you need from the client, the accounts adjustments to review, the claims and reliefs to consider, and the sign-off steps before filing. In Remindoo each stage becomes a sub-task on a recurring corporation tax job, so every company follows the same route.
- Checklist · Internal
Month-End Close Checklist for Accountants
A month-end close checklist standardises the reconciliations, accruals, prepayments and review steps behind management accounts. Used consistently it shortens the close and makes reviews faster. In Remindoo the close becomes a recurring monthly job with sub-tasks, so any team member can pick it up.
- Checklist · Internal
Accounting Deadline Checklist for UK Practices
An accounting deadline checklist brings together the recurring statutory dates UK practices manage: annual accounts, corporation tax, confirmation statements, VAT returns, payroll and CIS submissions, and self assessment. Remindoo tracks them per client with internal deadlines set ahead of each statutory date.
- Checklist · Client
Client Document Request Checklist for Accountants
A client document request checklist lists exactly what you need for each service, in language clients understand, so records arrive complete first time. Remindoo turns each list into a request with attachments collected through the client portal, plus automatic reminders until everything has arrived.
- Checklist · Client
Year-End Accounts Records Request Checklist
A year-end accounts records request checklist sets out every document needed to prepare statutory accounts, grouped by where the client keeps it. Sending the full list with a records deadline, then chasing only what is missing, is what gets year ends finished early. Remindoo automates the request and the follow-ups.
- Checklist · Client
Client Disengagement Checklist for Accountants
A client disengagement checklist covers giving proper notice, confirming what work is and is not complete, handing over records, removing agent authorisations, retaining AML and working papers, and closing the file. Remindoo tracks each step as a task so nothing is left half-finished.
- Checklist · Staff
New Employee Onboarding Checklist for Accounting Firms
A new employee onboarding checklist for an accounting firm covers contracts and right-to-work checks, system access by role, AML and data protection training, client introductions and structured reviews in the first three months. Remindoo tracks each step with owners and dates so induction does not depend on one manager remembering.
- Checklist · Internal
Monthly Bookkeeping Checklist for UK Accountants and Bookkeepers
A monthly bookkeeping checklist covers the tasks that keep a client's books accurate: reconciling every bank and card account, posting sales and purchases, clearing suspense, posting payroll journals, checking VAT coding and reviewing debtors and creditors. Running the same list each month makes quarter-end VAT and year-end accounts far quicker. Remindoo turns it into a recurring task per client.
- Checklist · Internal
Payroll Implementation Checklist for a New UK Payroll Client
A payroll implementation checklist makes sure a new payroll client is set up correctly before the first pay run: employer PAYE registration and references, agent authorisation, employee starter details, year-to-date figures from any previous provider, pension scheme and auto-enrolment duties, pay dates and approval process. Getting these right first avoids RTI errors and HMRC penalties.
- Checklist · Internal
Year-End Payroll Processing Checklist (UK)
Year-end payroll in the UK means sending the final Full Payment Submission for the tax year ending 5 April (or an Employer Payment Summary by 19 April if needed), giving employees P60s by 31 May, filing P11Ds and paying Class 1A National Insurance by the July deadlines, and updating tax codes and rates for the new year. Check each date on GOV.UK.
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Why recording every task matters in an accountancy practice
Accounting firms run on deadlines: VAT returns, payroll, confirmation statements, accounts and Self Assessment. Recording every job as a task, with an owner and a date, is the simplest way to make sure nothing is missed.
Avoid penalties
HMRC and Companies House charge penalties for late filing. A task for every deadline, with an internal date before it, gives the team a buffer.
Nothing depends on memory
Recorded tasks mean work continues when someone is off sick, on leave or has left the firm.
Consistent quality
Subtask checklists make every job follow the same steps and reviews, whoever does the work.
Visibility for managers
Filters by owner, status and deadline show at a glance what is late, what is due and who needs help.
Practical tips from UK practice
- Set an internal deadline two to four weeks before every statutory deadline.
- Use recurring tasks for repeat work such as VAT, payroll and bookkeeping.
- Break larger jobs into subtasks, including a review step.
- Comment on the task instead of by email, so the history stays with the work.
Related Remindoo features
Written and reviewed by Waqas Sagar ACA FCCA FMAAT, Chartered Accountant with 18+ years in practice. Founder and MD of Accotax, an ICAEW, ACCA and AAT regulated London practice that has served over 5,000 clients, and founder of Remindoo. Guidance is general; check current GOV.UK and professional body guidance for your firm.
What UK practices say about Remindoo
Read all reviews on Trustpilot“With Remindoo, everything from the first enquiry to onboarding and ongoing client management is tracked in one place… It saves us hours and gives me, as a practice owner, complete visibility of where the firm stands.”
“The biggest benefit is having clients, tasks, deadlines, workflows, proposals and communication all organised in one place.”
“During my trial, the team were absolutely amazing. They helped onboard my clients, set up my settings and made sure everything was ready for me to use… they made the whole process completely stress-free.”
“It brings client information, tasks, recurring deadlines, workflows and reminders together in one place, giving us much better visibility across the team.”
