Startup first accounts template (FRS 102 Section 1A)

Your company’s first statutory accounts are a milestone – and, for most founders, a first. The Startup First Accounts Template is a do-it-yourself Excel workbook that takes a newly incorporated Irish or UK company from its bank transactions to a complete first set of financial statements under FRS 102 Section 1A: the directors’ report, profit and loss account, balance sheet with the statutory statements, statement of changes in equity and notes – with a tax estimate, the filing dates and 24 checks alongside.

You enter what happened in the first period; the workbook does the double entry, the wording and the cross-checks. A complete worked example for a fictitious Irish start-up shows exactly what goes where before you enter your own figures.

See a sample first

Read the complete first-year accounts that the template produced for its worked example – free, in an Ireland and a UK edition: get the sample financial statements (PDF).

What it does

• Turns your bank transactions, and the costs founders paid personally – including those before incorporation – into a trial balance. Each row is coded to a plain-English chart of accounts and checked.

• Handles what makes a first year different: share allotments with share premium and unpaid shares, share issue costs, directors’ loan accounts, formation costs, grants, stock, deferred income, accruals and prepayments.

• Produces the directors’ report, profit and loss account, balance sheet, statement of changes in equity and 17 notes, worded for the Companies Act 2014 (Ireland) or the Companies Act 2006 (UK) with one switch.

• Puts the small-companies and audit-exemption statements in the right place on the balance sheet, with one or two signatures as the jurisdiction requires.

• Estimates corporation tax and deferred tax, including unused losses, and builds the tax reconciliation.

• Tests whether the company is small or micro, works out its filing and tax dates, and flags the points founders most often miss – an overdrawn director’s loan, SAFEs and convertible notes, dividends in the first period and the company secretary rules.

• Runs 24 checks, with a status line on every tab that turns green when everything agrees.

What you get

• One Excel workbook (.xlsx): cover, instructions, ten working tabs, a chart of accounts and the same ten tabs completed for a fictitious Irish smart-home start-up.

• Clearly marked input cells, protected formulas, and print-ready reports, statements and notes.

• Works in Microsoft Excel 2010 or later for Windows, or Excel 2011 or later for Mac. No macros.

Who it is for

Founders and directors of newly incorporated private companies in Ireland or the UK that qualify as small – and the bookkeepers and accountants who help them – preparing the company’s first financial statements under FRS 102 Section 1A.

A do-it-yourself template

You prepare the financial statements with this template; the company’s directors approve, sign and file them and remain responsible for them. Wide GAAP does not prepare, review, approve or file financial statements for buyers of the template, and buying it does not create an engagement or an adviser relationship. If you are unsure about a judgement, or the company needs its accounts prepared or audited, use a qualified accountant.

Scope

For the first period of one company with one bank account and one class of shares. Comparative figures, foreign currency, disposals of fixed assets, groups, leases longer than 12 months, share-based payments, SAFEs and convertible instruments are outside its scope; the Review tab flags the main ones. The tax figures are an estimate – use your tax return figures when you have them. The template does not produce an auditor’s report. It is a working aid: it does not replace FRS 102, company law, tax law or professional judgement, and its scope and limitations are set out in the Instructions tab.