The accountant for architects who thinks in work stages.

Most accountants treat an architecture practice like any other small business. They file last year, post your fees as they were invoiced, and miss the things that make your practice different.

They value work in progress wrongly, so a project that straddles two tax years either inflates this year’s profit or hides next year’s. They miss the run-off PII you keep paying after a job ends. They treat ARB and RIBA as personal costs rather than the allowable practice expenses they are. So you overpay, and you never quite know why.

A specialist accountant for architects works the other way round. We know how practices earn, so we know where the money leaks. We do not just record your numbers, we make sure HMRC only takes what it is actually owed.

This is the one general accountants get wrong. You bill by work stage, often against the RIBA Plan of Work, so a single project can run for months and cross a tax year end with the design half done and the fee only partly invoiced.

If your accountant simply counts the invoices you raised, your profit jumps around and your tax bill rarely matches the work you have actually done. The correct approach is to recognise income as you deliver each stage and to value the work in progress sitting on your desk at the year end, the design effort you have put in but not yet billed.

Get that valuation right and your accounts tell the truth: you pay tax on what you have genuinely earned, not on cash that has not arrived and not on a project you are only halfway through.

We set this up for you and review it every year, so a long, complex job never lands you with a lumpy or premature tax bill.

More than most architects realise. Good accounting for architects starts with claiming every cost your practice genuinely incurs, and your profession comes with a long list a generic accountant would never think to ask about.

As a sole trader sole practitioner, it is simple. You pay Income Tax and National Insurance on your profits through Self Assessment, usually with Payments on Account, and your accounts stay light.

Bring in a co-director or share profits with another architect and a partnership or LLP may fit better, spreading income and limiting personal liability. Earn more, and a limited company often keeps more in your pocket: you pay Corporation Tax, then take a modest salary and dividends rather than drawing everything as profit.

But a company means more admin, accounts at Companies House, tighter record-keeping and stricter rules on how you take money out. Each structure has real trade-offs.

The right answer depends on your profit, your plans and whether you work alone or with others. We model the numbers and tell you which one puts more money in your pocket.

Once your taxable turnover passes the £90,000 VAT threshold over a rolling 12 months, registration is compulsory. Many growing practices reach it sooner than they expect, because a couple of large stage fees can tip you over.

Below the threshold, registering can still be worth it if most of your clients are VAT-registered businesses and you carry meaningful costs, since you reclaim the VAT on software, equipment and professional fees.

Stage billing makes the timing of your VAT matter, because the tax point can fall when you invoice a stage rather than when the project completes. We get your VAT registration decision, scheme choice and return timing right, so you neither register too late nor pay more than you need.