Making Tax Digital for self employment - anyone doing this, who do you use?

[Dollymixture17]

I do mine and DPs books, although we can hold off going digital to next financial year, I'd rather practice it for a year so I know what I'm doing.

I straight away thought of quick books (intuit) but I've just read some awful reviews on a Facebook ad they posted, looks like it totally backfired for getting new customer's. Apparently when it was a desktop application it was very good, but online is a no no.

Any recommendations? I am looking at FreeAgent but you need a certain bank account to use it free. Probably worth it, but wondering if anyone has any feedback on taht or anything else?

Thanks

Freeagent and Xero are the ones we use the most. Quickbooks is also fine and we have plenty of clients using that too. All three are different, so why not just do the free trials and play around with them to find what works best for you.

What we don't yet know is how well they'll handle MTD as it's not in force until next April, so it's impossible to know which will work better than others. All currently are able to do MTD for VAT, and all are perfectly good for VAT, so we can hope/assume that the MTD for income tax will likewise work well.

Re freeagent, why not open a second business bank account with Mettle (Nat West subsidiary) which is an free online only account for you to use with just a few online transactions (even if only transfers in/out) and then you'll get a freeagent subscription for free, whilst still keeping your existing business bank account.

Xero. I’m an accountant. It just works. Will save you time in the long run.

I’m a big fan of xero. The guides are really useful and the system is very intuitive.

Xero is great. Don't touch quickbooks, it's dreadful.
But also look at QuickFile. It's a little known gem and exceptionally good value. It's confirmed that it will work with MTD too.

Don't know why my post has been auto-hidden, maybe I used a banned word. It's nothing dodgy 😀

Another vote for Xero. Wouldn’t touch free agent. Sage online also awful. Quick books ok, but prefer Xero.

Thanks. Do you know if QuickFile include CIS payments?

Thanks all, looks like Xero is recommended, ill take a look at that and QuickFile

I haven't used quickfile but its website appears to explain what it can and can't do for CIS

I can’t believe QuickBooks is now nearly £40/month for the self-employed version. It’s getting ridiculous. I’m seriously thinking of cancelling, the Open Banking feeds constantly disconnect, and the whole system feels clunky.
I’m wondering if it might be better to just download CSVs from my bank and credit cards and dump them into ChatGPT or Excel to generate a simple spreadsheet. Has anyone else ditched QuickBooks and gone fully DIY? Would love to hear how you’re managing things now.