Three jobs hide behind one word
"Get an accountant" bundles three quite different things. Separating them is the whole answer to whether you need one:
- Bookkeeping — recording what came in and went out. Mechanical, and software does it well.
- Compliance filing — turning those records into accounts for Companies House and a CT600 for HMRC. Also mechanical, also very automatable when the company is simple.
- Advice — judgement about what's allowable, how to structure things, what to claim. This is the part a human is genuinely worth paying for.
When you probably don't need one
The simpler the company, the more the first two jobs are just software:
- A dormant company — the filing is short and well-defined
- A single-director company with straightforward income and no payroll
- A contractor billing a handful of clients with simple expenses
In these cases, accurate filing software plus a little care will file correctly and on time. You're not missing hidden genius — you're avoiding a few hundred pounds for work a tool does deterministically.
When you probably do
Complexity is the real trigger, not company size
If any of those apply, the money you spend on advice usually pays for itself, and the risk you offload is real. The honest test isn't "am I a limited company" — it's "does this year need a judgement call I'm not confident making?"
Where WrenTax fits
WrenTax does the mechanical half properly: it prepares the exact accounts and CT600, validates them against the official taxonomies, files to both registers, and watches every deadline so nothing lapses. It doesn't pretend to be your adviser — when a year needs real judgement, get it. For the many years that don't, you shouldn't pay accountant prices for a filing a tool can do correctly. General information, not tax advice.