Does/Has anyone use Quickbooks or similar for their accounts?

[Swifey]

I have a ltd company, that is VAT registered, that used the turnover about £140k pa, since having children ans have had a few health issues I haven't really worked, so have not had a turnover to speak of really. But have been paying out £130 to my accountants every month, so I have cancelled them and decided to do it myself. Quick books looks good, but does anyone have any experience? Tia

Quickbooks is just book-keeping - it's not the statutory accounts needed for Companies house and won't do the corporation tax return needed for HMRC. There will undoubtedly be adjustments/journals to be made to deal with accruals/prepayments, corporation tax provisions, depreciation, capital allowances on asset purchases/sales, etc. For the basic recording of in's and out's, it's fine as long as you read the online tutorials properly and make sure you understand terminology, but it's no substitute for an accountant.

The trouble is, at the moment the accountants are costing me more than I am making!

Did you not talk to the accountants about simplifying their work to make their fees less? If it's making so little profit, then you could deregister from VAT so no more quarterly VAT returns. Presumably it can't afford to pay you a wage, so deregister as an employer, so no payroll preparation and monthly RTI returns to submit. If there's fewer transactions, there'll be less book-keeping, so their book-keeping charges will be lower. If you had been one of my clients, we could have halved that fee by simplifying things (maybe even less than half if you were going to do proper book-keeping yourself). You need to be careful - if you're late with filing accounts/returns (or they reject them if not in the right format or there are errors), the fines you incur could easily cost you more than the accountant's fees.

And if trading is so little, why not just get it struck off and do what little trading you have as a sole trader which is a lot simpler and the tax return a lot easier.

The accountants won't budge on the monthly fees, and told me that it was very hard to deregister from VAT. I don't want to not a be a ltd company as I like the security it gives me, and hopefully with one the next 12 to 18 months I'll be back to earning proper money. I don't take a wage, so there is no payroll at the moment anyway.

it was very hard to deregister from VAT

Complete rubbish. It's just a very quick/simple online form accessed via your Govt Gateway account - takes 5 minutes at most - just a few easy questions to answer. If your business is as simple as wound down as you say, there'd be no complications at all. A simple Google search and looking at the gov.uk website will explain the process.