RIP accountants:ANNA Money adds new pensions feature to its AI-powered tax-filing, VAT & payroll app
Which can save SMEs £1,800 a year
Let’s face it, for lots of SMEs the faff of doing tax returns and keeping up-to-date with the relentless monthly cycle of payroll, pension contributions, and invoicing is probably the biggest pain point of running a business.
But market-leading AI-powered business account and tax service ANNA can automate all the boring admin, saving owners of Limited Companies up to £1,800 a year (and hours of time) if they use their +Taxes service instead of an accountant.
The all-in-one accounting and business app has just added a pension function to its fully comprehensive service, which is currently used by nearly 8,000 UK Limited Companies. The payroll feature now supports workplace pensions, allowing employers to calculate pension contributions - making pension compliance so much easier.
ANNA +Taxes can…
- Sort and categorise transactions
- Read and categorise receipts for business expenses
- Sync invoices with a company’s business account
- Chase invoices until they are paid
- Calculate VAT and estimate future VAT bills
- Prepare tax returns for filing
- Run payroll
- Manage monthly pension contributions
- Run a ‘smart pot’ for Corporation Tax that calculates what’s owed and sets money aside from income
The app not only helps keep businesses HMRC compliant (avoiding fines for missing filing deadlines) but also helps businesses to run in the most tax efficient way possible - for example, calculating the best director income combination split between salary and dividends.
Customers get all this without an expensive accountant’s bill and hours spent doing financial admin. The average high street business bank account costs £150 a year and on top of this SMEs spend an average of £2k* per year outsourcing financial admin to an accountant. And sadly they often receive a poor level of service, as some accountancy practices prefer not to work with small businesses because of the high workload and low margin.
Extrapolating from these figures, ANNA estimates that its customers could save up to £1,800 a year by using its £14.90 a month business account in tandem with the ANNA +Taxes service at £24 a month instead of using an accountant.
ANNA’s Accounting and Tax expert, Aftab Hussain, says, ‘As a qualified chartered certified accountant with over 18 years of experience in the profession, I believe ANNA's +Taxes is a game-changer for SMEs. The automated bookkeeping, annual accounts, and company tax returns offered by +Taxes should have been standard in our industry long ago. This “routine” work being automated by ANNA equates to 90% of the work that accountants do for small businesses. It doesn’t mean the end of accountants, it just signals a shift in their role - moving away from routine tasks towards more advisory services.'
CASE STUDIES - the pictures are free to use, download hi res here
Anna Katharina Jens from Anna Loves Pottery
Anna says: ‘+Taxes helps us to categorise all our business expenses, then it does all the calculations automatically so we have a proper overview of what the VAT Return is going to be like at the end of every trimester. It also makes doing payroll for our team of eight super easy.’
Joel De Mowbray (fourth from right in red shorts), 32, from Yes Make , which uses reclaimed materials from the city to design and build beautiful public spaces with and for local people.
Joel says: ‘ANNA makes the day-to-day accounting for my business outrageously easy - I probably wouldn’t do the financial admin myself if I didn’t have +Taxes. I was paying £90 a month for payroll services and sorting out the VAT would take days of my time every month, and a few thousand pounds in accountancy fees over a year. I now pay £24 a month for payroll and VAT through ANNA.’
*BREAKDOWN OF AVERAGE ANNUAL ACCOUNTANCY FEES FOR SMES:
- £1,200 - Average price for year-end accounts and Corporation tax Return/year
- £180 - Payroll services per year including pension contribution services based on one employee (average cost £15/per month per employee)
- £300 - VAT Returns per year based on 4 returns
- £600 - Monthly bookkeeping (at £50/month)
TOTAL £2,280
ANNUAL FEES USING ANNA+TAXES INSTEAD OF ACCOUNTANT:
- £178.80 - ANNA business account (at £14.90/month)
- £288 - +Taxes service (at £24/month)
TOTAL £466.80
TOTAL POTENTIAL SAVING USING ANNA +TAXES INSTEAD OF ACCOUNTANT: £1,813
ABOUT ANNA MONEY:
ANNA Money is an AI-powered business account and tax app made to streamline financial management for SMEs. From creating invoices and chasing them until they’re paid, receipt scanning and even helping to set aside the right amount of money for tax, ANNA’s aim is to make life easier for small business owners - so they can focus on business, not admin. ANNA has supported over 100,000 UK businesses and currently has a Trustpilot rating of 4.5 ‘Excellent’.
- ANNA currently has 143 employees and has offices in London’s King’s Cross, Cardiff and Georgia.
- ANNA won “Best Application of AI or ML in Financial Services” at the 2023 Card and Payments Awards and the company continues to pioneer the use of AI, machine learning and Large Language Models (LLMs) to make things simpler and easier for small businesses across the UK
- ANNA recently entered the Australian market and will soon be adding expense management and credit cards to its offering for UK customers.
