Almost nobody gets behind on purpose. It starts with one busy month, a bookkeeper who left, an illness, or a business that grew faster than the admin behind it. Then the next return is due before the last one is done, and at some point opening the accounting software stops being a task and becomes a thing you avoid.
This page is for that. Not a lecture on staying current — we do that on the monthly bookkeeping page, and it is no help to you today.
How far behind are you, really
Before quoting, we work out which of these you are. The honest answer changes the price, the timescale and the order we do things in, and it is worth knowing even if you never contact us.
| Behind by | What that usually means | What clearing it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| A quarter or two | A GST return is probably late or was filed on an estimate. Nothing structural is broken. | Reconcile the period, correct the return, get back on schedule. |
| Six to twelve months | Multiple GST periods and, if you have staff, several monthly employer returns outstanding. The bank balance no longer means anything. | Full rebuild of the period, corrected returns, a real profit figure for the first time in a year. |
| One to three years | Year-end accounts are overdue, the Companies Registry annual return may have slipped, and Revenue Jersey may already have written. | Year-by-year reconstruction, a gaps schedule, and a disclosure position to take to Revenue Jersey. |
| Longer, or you have stopped counting | Records may be incomplete and some accounts closed. Usually the fear is worse than the file. | Statements requested from the bank, records rebuilt from the outside in, priorities agreed with you first. |
One thing worth knowing regardless: Jersey businesses are expected to keep records for six years. A backlog is not only a tax problem, it is a records problem, and the older it gets the more expensive the reconstruction becomes.
How we clear it
- A short conversation about scope. How many periods, how many accounts, GST registered or not, staff or no staff. Fifteen minutes of questions, not a discovery process.
- A fixed project price and a date. Written, with the periods listed. If we find the backlog is materially worse than described once we are inside the records, we come back to you before doing extra work, never after.
- Reconstruction from the bank outward. Every account, every period, statement line by statement line. Documents are matched where they exist; where they do not, the transaction is still recorded and flagged.
- Reconciliation and a gaps schedule. You get a written list of everything we could not evidence, so nothing is hidden behind a tidy-looking balance sheet.
- Overdue returns prepared. Late GST periods, outstanding Combined Employer Returns covering ITIS and Social Security, and the figures your accountant needs for late year-end accounts.
- A clean handover point. A defined date from which the books are current, plus what has to happen to keep them that way.
If any of that already describes your situation, start with the enquiry form. A rough answer to "how far behind" is enough — we will ask the rest.
What to dig out before you contact us
You do not need this to get a quote, and you should not delay asking while you look for it. But when the project starts, these are the things that make it faster and cheaper:
- Bank statements for every business account, including any account you have closed
- Credit card and finance statements
- Login or read access to any accounting software you started and abandoned
- Sales invoices, in whatever state they exist
- Purchase invoices and receipts, including the photos on your phone
- Payroll records: who you paid, when, and what you deducted
- Any letter from Revenue Jersey, Social Security or the JFSC, opened or not
Unopened post is the one people are most embarrassed about and the one we most want. A letter from Revenue Jersey changes the order of the work, because responding to it comes before anything else.
Who comes to us for this
- Owners whose bookkeeper left, retired or went quiet mid-year
- Sole traders who started strong in Xero or QuickBooks and stopped in March
- Companies with an overdue year-end and an accountant who cannot start without records
- Businesses that have crossed the £300,000 GST registration threshold without noticing and now need to work out from when
- Anyone who has had a letter from Revenue Jersey and needs accurate figures quickly
- People buying or selling a Jersey business who need historical accounts that stand up to a buyer's questions
What happens once you are current
The catch-up ends at a clean date. After that you either keep the books yourself, hand them to whoever does your year-end, or move onto a monthly service so the same thing does not happen again. Most clients choose the third, but it is a separate decision and a separate quote — clearing the backlog is not conditional on signing up for anything.
Where a backlog is really a structural mess rather than an absence — wrong opening balances, a chart of accounts nobody understands, VAT-style coding applied to Jersey GST — the right fix is our bookkeeping cleanup service instead. We will tell you which one you actually need.
Where we work
All twelve Jersey parishes: St. Helier, St. Saviour, St. Clement, Grouville, St. Martin, Trinity, St. John, St. Mary, St. Ouen, St. Peter, St. Brelade and St. Lawrence. Records can be sent digitally, dropped off, or collected as a box if that is genuinely what you have.
When the books exist but cannot be trusted
Not every problem is a missing year. Plenty of businesses are fully up to date and still cannot rely on a single figure in the file. The entries are there; they are just wrong, and every report built on them inherits the error.
The pattern is nearly always the same. Software was set up on UK defaults, so tax has been posted at 20% VAT instead of Jersey GST at 5%. Bank feeds duplicated transactions nobody deleted. Owner drawings went through as expenses. Transfers between accounts got recorded as income, inflating turnover — occasionally to the point of a GST registration question that was never real. A clean-up unpicks that.
- Duplicate and mis-posted transactions identified and corrected
- Tax codes reconfigured for Jersey rather than UK defaults, and prior entries repointed
- Bank, credit card and finance accounts reconciled to the statement, line by line
- Supplier and customer ledgers matched, so debtors and creditors mean something again
- Chart of accounts rebuilt where the categories were never fit for the business
- Records migrated into Xero or QuickBooks properly if you are moving from spreadsheets
- A written list of anything still outstanding from you, rather than silent assumptions
Catch-up and clean-up usually arrive together. A backlog rebuilt from bank statements almost always surfaces historic errors in whatever partial records already existed, so we quote the two as one project rather than pretending they are separable.
Questions people ask before they ring the bell
I am years behind. Is it too late?
No. If the bank statements exist the records can be rebuilt, and Jersey banks can supply historical statements even for closed accounts. The length of the backlog changes the price and the timescale, not whether it can be done.
What if I have lost invoices and receipts?
Normal, and not a blocker. The bank statement becomes the primary record and we rebuild around it, chasing duplicates from suppliers where the amount matters. Everything we cannot evidence goes on a written gaps schedule rather than being quietly assumed.
Will Revenue Jersey penalise me for filing late?
Late returns can attract penalties and interest, and we will not pretend otherwise. Coming forward voluntarily with accurate figures is generally treated differently from being found in a compliance check. We prepare the returns, quantify the position, and help you approach them.
How long does the work take?
A single missed quarter is usually about a week. A full year with payroll and GST is more often three to five weeks. Multi-year backlogs take longer, especially when statements have to be requested from the bank. You get a target date with the quote.
Send it as it is
You do not need to tidy anything first, and you do not need to know how bad it is. Say roughly how far behind you are and whether you have staff or GST to worry about, and we will come back with a fixed price and a date by which it will be done.
Get a catch-up quote — reply within one business day, and no judgement in it.
General guidance only. Penalties, rates and deadlines are set by Revenue Jersey and change; confirm the current position on gov.je or ask us to establish it for your periods.