When you decide to change accountants, one of the first questions is usually what you actually need to provide. A handover involves more than sending across last year's accounts. You need enough reliable information to understand your current position, protect upcoming deadlines, and give your new accountant a sound starting point.

The good news is that incomplete records are not, by themselves, a reason to stay with an accountant that is no longer right for your business. What matters is knowing where your books actually stand. Once you have that clarity, the accountant handover can be planned properly: outstanding work identified, catch-up bookkeeping scoped separately, and responsibility agreed for every submission that falls during the transition.

Below, we cover the records you should have ready, how to check whether your books are genuinely reliable, what professional enquiry means, how HMRC authorisation works, and what tends to make a handover more complicated than it should be.

You do not normally need to build an enormous handover folder yourself. What you do need is enough current information that your incoming accountant can establish what has been completed and what remains outstanding.

Accounting records to have ready

The exact list depends on your business, but a useful accountant handover checklist will normally include:

• Latest statutory accounts
• Corporation Tax returns and computations
• Current trial balance
• Nominal or general ledger
• Aged debtor and creditor reports
• Bank and credit-card reconciliations
• Fixed asset register
• Accruals and prepayments
• Stock records where relevant
• Director's loan account balances
• Recent management accounts, where prepared

If your records are not currently in this condition, that does not prevent you from moving. It simply means identifying what requires correcting or bringing up to date. Our bookkeeping services are designed around keeping transactions, reconciliations and reporting records current rather than leaving everything until year-end.

Tax records and reference numbers

You should also have the key information that connects your business with HMRC. Depending on your circumstances, this includes your Corporation Tax Unique Taxpayer Reference, VAT registration number, PAYE references and CIS information. Flag any open HMRC enquiries, outstanding liabilities, payment arrangements or correspondence that your new accountant needs to understand. The aim is continuity — you do not want an unresolved tax issue disappearing simply because responsibility for the accounts has changed.

Books can look complete without being reliable. Before a handover, you need to establish the last date to which your bookkeeping has been properly reconciled, and which figures have already been included in returns or statutory accounts.

What to reconcile before changing accountants

Where possible, check that:

• Bank and credit-card balances agree with statements
• VAT balances agree with submitted returns
• Debtors and creditors are reasonably current
• Payroll and PAYE balances can be explained
• Director's loan accounts are understood
• Suspense accounts do not contain unexplained transactions
• Opening balances agree with the last finalised accounts

You are separating reliable figures from areas that still require investigation, not chasing artificial perfection.

If your bookkeeping is several months behind

Being behind is not a reason to stay with an accountant that is no longer right for your business. Instead, identify the last reliable accounting date. Your new accountant can then determine what needs to be reconstructed, reconciled or caught up, and whether that work should happen before or during onboarding. This distinction also makes costs clearer — catch-up bookkeeping is additional work and should be identified explicitly rather than quietly absorbed into an ongoing fee.

Invoices and receipts

If invoices, receipts and supporting evidence are already stored correctly in your cloud accounting software or document-management system, they can normally remain there. What matters is that your records are complete, accessible and retained for the required period. For a limited company, accounting records generally need to be kept for six years from the end of the financial year they relate to, though longer periods can apply in certain circumstances.

The phrase "professional clearance" is commonly used when changing accountants, but the more accurate term is professional enquiry. Your outgoing accountant is not granting you permission to leave — you are free to appoint another firm at any time. What happens instead is that your incoming accountant contacts the existing firm, with your authority, to establish whether there are any circumstances they should know about before accepting the appointment.

The ICAEW guidance on changing professional appointment sets out the professional enquiry process and the importance of obtaining your authority before the two firms exchange relevant information.

What your incoming accountant may request

Depending on the work previously carried out, your new accountant may ask for:

• Final accounts and Corporation Tax computations
• Trial balance and supporting schedules
• Capital allowance information and fixed asset records
• VAT information and payroll balances
• Details of tax losses carried forward
• Director's loan account information
• Relevant HMRC correspondence
• Bookkeeping exports or backups
• Information about unfinished work

Not every internal working paper automatically forms part of a handover. Document ownership and access rights can differ, so the information required should be considered according to the engagement and the records involved.

Can your previous accountant refuse?

Changing accountant does not depend on your outgoing firm approving your decision. However, individual documents can raise questions around ownership, confidentiality and, in some circumstances, rights of lien where fees remain outstanding. Outstanding fees alone do not allow an accountant to ignore a professional enquiry, though a valid lien may allow certain records to be withheld. If there is a fee dispute or missing information, identify it early rather than allowing it to delay statutory work.

Authorising your new accountant with HMRC

Changing accountant and transferring accounting records are separate from giving a new firm authority to deal with HMRC. Your existing accountant's authority does not move across when you appoint another firm — HMRC requires your new agent to be authorised directly.

The process depends on the relevant tax and service. HMRC uses several authorisation methods across different services, including online processes and, in some cases, form 64-8. Current HMRC guidance on authorising a tax agent explains the different routes and confirms that the method can vary according to the tax involved. You should follow the process appropriate to Corporation Tax, VAT, PAYE, Self Assessment or any other service being handled, and confirm authorisation rather than assuming your new accountant already has access.

You should also use HMRC's proper agent-authorisation processes rather than sharing your own Government Gateway credentials. Keeping access separate gives you clearer control over who is authorised to act for your business.

Timing the handover

There is no rule requiring you to wait until your financial year-end. Changing shortly after year-end can make the cut-off straightforward because one accounting period has just been completed, but switching during the year is perfectly workable if you have a clear transfer date. The more important consideration is whether Corporation Tax, VAT, payroll, annual accounts or other deadlines fall close to the change — responsibility for those submissions should be agreed before the handover begins.

Before giving notice to your current accountant, you should establish which work has been completed, which returns have been submitted, which work remains in progress, the latest reconciled bookkeeping date, upcoming deadlines, whether fees or queries remain outstanding, who controls the accounting software, and who will complete submissions due during the transition. A simple written list of deadlines and owners can prevent a surprising number of problems.

Cloud accounting can make an accountant handover much simpler because your bookkeeping history may already sit in one system that both firms can access. It does not remove the need for checking. Moving incorrect data more efficiently still leaves you with incorrect data.

Giving your new accountant access to existing software

Often you can grant access directly, particularly if your company controls its own subscription. Your new accountant should still review user permissions, bank feeds, integrations, reconciliations and opening balances. You also need to establish whether the existing setup is worth retaining rather than changing software simply because your accountant has changed.

If you want to change accounting system at the same time, treat the migration as a controlled project. You need to decide which historic data should move, how accounts will be mapped, what needs cleaning before transfer, and how the resulting balances will be tested. Our guidance on data migration services explains why planning, cleansing and checking the migrated information matters as much as moving it. At minimum, you should compare closing and opening trial balances, bank balances, debtor and creditor totals, VAT balances, payroll liabilities, fixed assets, director's loan accounts and retained earnings before treating the new system as your accounting record.

What makes a handover slower or more expensive

Changing accountants is not usually the expensive part. Extra work arises when the records being transferred are incomplete, unreconciled or inconsistent. Common problems include missing transactions, unreconciled bank accounts, duplicate entries, large suspense balances, missing VAT evidence, old unpaid invoices still showing as current, unexplained director's loan balances, and differences between accounting software and filed accounts. A clean handover identifies these issues rather than transferring them unnoticed into the next accounting period.

Poor records affect more than your accountant's workload. If your bookkeeping is unreliable, management accounts can be misleading, Corporation Tax estimates can be distorted, and cash-flow forecasts become less useful. Changing accountant can therefore be a useful opportunity to establish a cleaner financial baseline.