The GoTaxes user guide

1. Before you start

GoTaxes works entirely in your browser — desktop, tablet or phone. Preparing is free; you only pay when you file. For a company filing you will eventually need three credentials, and each takes days (not minutes) to arrive by post, so request them early:

1. Your Corporation Tax UTR — the 10-digit reference on letters from HMRC. Lost it? Request a copy at gov.uk (arrives by post).
2. A Government Gateway account enrolled for Corporation Tax for your company. Enrolment posts an activation code to your registered office (about 10 days).
3. Your Companies House authentication code — a 6-character code, also posted to the registered office.

None of these are needed to prepare. Add your company, enter figures, and see your finished documents first — sort the credentials while you review.

2. Filing your accounts & tax return

Add your company

1. Create your free account, then search Companies House by company name or number.
2. Press "This is mine" — we pull your accounting reference date, current accounting period and every statutory deadline automatically.
3. Add your UTR when prompted (or later).

Enter the year's figures

Press File this year's accounts & tax. The interview asks around fifteen plain-English questions in four groups: money in, money out, what the company owns and owes, and sign-off. Your Corporation Tax — including marginal relief and capital allowances on equipment — recalculates live as you type.

1. Answer what you know; everything saves automatically as you go.
2. Import prior-year comparatives from Companies House with one click — we read your last filed accounts for you.
3. Using Xero, QuickBooks or FreeAgent? Export a trial balance CSV and upload it — the figures map onto the interview automatically, and anything we can't match is listed for you to place.

Check, validate, file

1. Preview the actual documents: your accounts and tax computations exactly as they will be filed, plus a plain-English CT600 summary.
2. Press validate — your return is checked against HMRC's own business rules before anything leaves your account.
3. Pay for the filing year (£19.99 +VAT).
4. Submit to Companies House with your authentication code (live — our filing package is granted). HMRC submission opens when our software recognition completes; until then your return is prepared, validated and ready. Credentials are used once, in memory, and never stored.
5. Keep the receipts: the HMRC IRmark and Companies House submission number are saved to the filing, and Companies House confirms acceptance shortly after.

If either submission is rejected, the filing drops back to draft with the reason spelled out. Fix the figure and re-file — no extra charge.

3. Money — MTD Income Tax

Money is for the income you earn outside the company: sole-trade work and rental property. It keeps digital records the way Making Tax Digital requires and shows you the tax building up honestly, all year.

1. Subscribe from the Money tab (£7.99/month +VAT, cancel any time).
2. Add each income source: a self-employment or a UK property. Landlords can set Rent-a-Room eligibility and ownership share for joint lets.
3. Record income and expenses as they happen. Type a description — "Boiler repair", "Invoice 014" — and the correct HMRC category is picked automatically (you can override it).
4. Import a bank statement: paste a CSV of date, description, amount and every line is categorised in one pass.
5. Attach receipt photos to expenses.
6. Watch the sidebar: your live income tax + Class 4 estimate, mortgage-interest credit where it applies, and the single number that matters — what to put aside by 31 January.
7. Each business shows its MTD quarterly deadlines with cumulative category totals — the exact shape HMRC's quarterly update expects.

4. Assist — AI admin

Assist is a junior admin assistant for the paperwork around the numbers: collecting documents, spotting what's missing, drafting the chaser, and packaging everything up for an accountant. It suggests; you approve. Every AI action is logged.

Set up a client workspace

1. Subscribe from the Assist tab (£19.99/month +VAT). The AI features are in private beta and switch on for your account as we roll them out; the module tools below work today.
2. Create a profile for each client (or for your own company) and choose its module: tax & company compliance, tender/bid preparation, landlord/property, or meeting records. The module shapes the checklist, the emails and the pack.
3. Link the profile to a GoTaxes company or Money business and its real deadlines appear automatically — nothing retyped.

The core loop

1. Generate the checklist — a standard template adapted to this client. Add or remove items freely.
2. Upload documents as they come in. Each is read, categorised, summarised, and matched against the checklist. Anything the AI isn't sure about is flagged "needs review" rather than guessed.
3. Press Check missing documents. Every item is reconciled: received (linked to its document), needs review (with the reason — wrong period, expired, ambiguous), or missing.
4. Generate the chaser email. It names the exact documents and deadlines. Edit it, approve it, then either send it from GoTaxes with one click or copy it into your own mailbox. Nothing is ever sent automatically — you see exactly what goes out, to whom, before it leaves.
5. Track the loose ends as tasks, with priorities and due dates.
6. When the folder is ready, generate the accountant pack — a structured handover document — and export it as Word or print-ready HTML.
7. Ask the folder anything ("which months of bank statements are missing?") — answers cite the documents they came from, page numbers included.

Assist reads PDFs with selectable text, Word files and text/CSV. Scanned images are queued for manual review until OCR lands. Fair use is 1,000 pages and 300 AI actions per month. AI outputs are generated to help organise admin work and may require professional review — they are not a substitute for accounting, tax or legal advice.

5. The business modules

Every Assist workspace can switch on six extra tabs — no extra charge. Turn on only what each client needs from the "Workspace modules" card; each module's deadlines (certificate renewals, invoice due dates, tender deadlines, right-to-work re-checks) join the workspace header and the dashboard automatically.

Company — the statutory registers

1. Prefill the officer and PSC registers straight from Companies House, then keep them current — resignations, new appointments, share transactions and dividends are all recorded, and every change lands in an append-only register journal.
2. Record a dividend and the total is computed from the shareholder register; generate the voucher (instantly, no AI quota used) and board minutes from templates.
3. Before each confirmation statement, start a review: tick off registered office, officers, PSCs, share capital, shareholders and SIC codes, mark it ready, then record it filed.

Contracts & e-signing

1. Pick a template — NDA, consultancy, contractor, services, employment contract, loan, tenancy (AST), privacy policy, website terms, supplier agreement, board minutes or dividend voucher — and answer its short questionnaire.
2. The draft arrives with a plain-English summary and attention flags. Edit it, approve it, export it as Word, and set an end or review date to get an automatic renewal reminder.
3. Already have a contract on file? "Summarise" reads it and reports the key terms, risk flags and recommended actions.
4. To e-sign: on an approved document, create a signing link per signer and we email it to the signer if you give their address, or you copy it into your own email (links are single-use, expire, and are shown exactly once). Signers read and sign with a typed name; every step is logged and the audit certificate is downloadable once signed. Editing a document withdraws its links.

Invoices — getting paid

1. Add customers and invoices; the ledger sorts overdue-first and shows days late and what's been chased already.
2. Draft a chaser on the tone ladder — friendly at a few days, firm at two weeks, final at a month. Escalation wording exists only when you choose it yourself. Every draft uses the real figures, including the statutory late-payment interest and £40–£100 fixed compensation you may claim.
3. Send a statement of account, or propose a payment plan split into equal instalments — both exportable, both drafts until you approve.

Property — landlord compliance

1. Add properties, tenants and tenancies; generate the rent schedule (weekly, 4-weekly, monthly or quarterly — part-periods prorated) and tick payments off as they arrive. Arrears are worked out from the actual records.
2. Record safety certificates — gas (annual), EICR (5 years), EPC (10 years) — and their expiry dates become deadlines. The one-click compliance check reports what's missing per property, including deposit protection.
3. Draft an arrears letter that cites the real payment history, and export the accountant-ready tax summary with your linked Money property business totals.

Tenders — winning work

1. Create a tender workspace with the deadline, attach the pack from your document vault, and extract: every requirement lands in a compliance matrix with its reference, pass/fail or scored status, weighting, word limit and where it came from.
2. Build your answer library and case studies once — they're reused across every client and bid. Drafting pulls from them and flags evidence gaps rather than inventing credentials.
3. Check each answer ("does this actually answer the question?"), mark responses final, and export the assembled bid as Word.

HR — from offer to onboarded

1. Add an employee and their onboarding checklist is seeded automatically — right-to-work first, then contract, payroll details, pension assessment and the rest.
2. Generate the employment contract and offer letter from templates; track holiday against the real allowance (pro-rata for mid-year starters, half-days supported), plus absence and training records.
3. Right-to-work re-checks and training expiries appear as deadlines. HR letters always flag anything that needs a professional's review — the module never advises on dismissals or disputes.

Everything the modules produce is a draft until you approve it, and the sensitive edges — evictions, dismissals, court action — are deliberately flagged to professionals rather than handled by AI. Generated documents are solid standard-terms drafts, not legal advice.

6. Troubleshooting

My deadlines look wrong

Deadlines come straight from Companies House. If you've recently changed your accounting reference date, re-add the company to refresh them — or check the company's filing history on Companies House.

Validation failed

The message names the exact figure and rule. Most failures are a missing sign-off field (director name, approval date) or a balance sheet that doesn't balance — the interview highlights what to fix.

A document came back "needs review" in Assist

Either it's a scan (no readable text), or the AI wasn't confident about what it is or the period it covers. Open it, check the summary's reasoning, set the right category, and mark the checklist item yourself — your call always wins.

Anything else

The help centre covers the common questions, and hello@gotaxes.co.uk reaches a human within one working day.