The seven buckets, and why each one
Our review covers seven buckets that, between them, account for the vast majority of preventable mistakes UK limited companies make. The bucket framing maps directly onto how a senior accountant would walk through your accounts in a year-end review meeting — separating the structural questions (tax efficiency, director's loan) from the operational ones (bookkeeping, expenses, VAT) from the calendar-driven ones (compliance dates).
| Bucket | What we measure | Primary FA endpoints |
|---|---|---|
| Tax efficiency | Director salary vs optimum, dividend split, allowance headroom. | /v2/payroll, /v2/users |
| Director's loan | DLA balance, days overdrawn, s455 risk, BIK threshold. | /v2/accounting/balance_sheet |
| Pension | Employer contributions YTD, annual allowance, carry-forward. | /v2/accounting/profit_and_loss |
| Expenses | Categories used vs typical, home office, mileage, missing items. | /v2/expenses |
| VAT | 12-month rolling turnover vs threshold, scheme, last filed. | /v2/vat_returns, /v2/invoices |
| Bookkeeping | Unreconciled items, overdue invoices, ageing bills. | /v2/bank_accounts, /v2/invoices |
| Compliance | Year-end, accounts due, CT due, Confirmation Statement. | /v2/company |
How a finding is constructed
Every finding has the same five-part shape, so the report is scannable whether you're reading it on a phone in 30 seconds or sharing it with a finance director for a 30-minute review.
- Title — the one-line headline of what we found.
- Status — good (you're doing this right), watch (worth keeping an eye on), or issue (something to action soon).
- Summary — one or two sentences explaining what we saw and why it matters.
- Evidence — the specific numbers from your books that the finding is based on.
- Recommendation — exactly one concrete action you can take, with the expected impact when it can be quantified.
Scoring
Each bucket gets a score out of 100 derived from the status distribution of its findings: a clean bucket scores ~85, a watch-item bucket scores ~65, an issue-item bucket scores ~45. The overall score is the unweighted mean of the seven buckets.
We use unweighted means rather than weighted because the right weights depend on the company. A consulting Ltd with a tax-inefficient salary split is bleeding value; for a contractor inside IR35, that bucket is academic. We surface the per-bucket scores so you can apply your own weighting if you want to.
What we deliberately do not assess (yet)
- IR35 status — needs contract review, not books review. We do this separately on the consultation call.
- Personal tax (Self Assessment) — out of scope unless the director's loan or dividend strategy bleeds into it.
- R&D tax credit eligibility — separate workstream, ask us if you think you qualify.
- Group / multi-entity structures — the engine assumes a single trading entity.
- Cryptocurrency / digital assets — needs different data than what's in FreeAgent.