Higher ground for business.

Stoneledger Accounts. CIS. VAT. Tax.
Automated. Done.

Accounting and tax software for UK sole traders, LLPs and limited companies. Less admin. More progress.

£8 a month or £50 a year

No hidden fees.

30 days free, no card needed.

  • Automated
    postings
  • Connect to
    HMRC securely
  • Encrypted and
    secured data
  • Built for
    UK business

Construction Industry Scheme (CIS)

Built around CIS, not bolted on.

Most accounting software treats CIS as a percentage knocked off an invoice. Stoneledger was built around it. Every invoice separates labour from materials, so the deduction is worked out on the right figure at the right rate. Your turnover stays gross, because a CIS deduction is not a cost: it is your own tax, paid early. And Stoneledger tells you, in plain English and with the real dates, how and when you get it back.

  • Labour and materials, split on every invoice. Deductions at gross, 20% or 30%, taken on labour only.
  • What you’re owed, and when. A running total of what has been taken off you, the refund it adds up to, and the route back - your Self Assessment as a sole trader or partner, or your monthly payroll return as a limited company.
  • Every statement checked. Payment and deduction statements are matched to your invoices; missing statements, wrong rates and materials that don’t add up are flagged.
  • Retention tracked from the invoice until the money is released.
  • Quarterly figures on gross turnover, with CIS shown separately - the mistake that understates your income by a fifth is designed out.
  • Contractor and subcontractor in one book, if you are both. For contractors

Making Tax Digital

On track for Making Tax Digital.

Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Income Tax reaches sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000 from April 2026, over £30,000 from April 2027 and over £20,000 from April 2028. Once you are in, you send four quarterly updates a year and then your tax return by 31 January. Stoneledger already prepares the figures HMRC asks for - here they are, straight from the product - and it has completed its testing in HMRC’s sandbox. We are on track to send them for you from the 2027 to 2028 tax year.

What Stoneledger will do

  • Connect to HMRC securely. You sign in on HMRC’s own site; Stoneledger never sees your Government Gateway password.
  • Send your quarterly updates straight from your books, with your obligations and deadlines as HMRC holds them.
  • Show HMRC’s tax calculation after each update, next to Stoneledger’s own.
  • Real-time insights. Your profit, your tax bill, VAT, CIS and the money in the bank move the moment you record something, not at the year end. Every figure opens into the entries behind it, so you know where you stand before a deadline rather than after it.
  • Submit your tax return at the end of the tax year, through MTD.
  • File VAT returns under MTD for VAT, and show your VAT obligations, liabilities and payments.
  • File CIS300 monthly returns and verify subcontractors with HMRC.
  • Send the fraud-prevention data HMRC requires with every submission. This part is built, and is being tested against HMRC’s test service now.

Already do your accounts elsewhere?

Keep your spreadsheet or your software. Submit through Stoneledger Bridge.

MTD does not make you move your books. Bridging software - HMRC’s own name for it - is the digital link between the records you already keep and HMRC: a spreadsheet, or a report exported from Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, FreeAgent or whichever package you use. The figures you send are the figures in your records, and nothing is retyped along the way.

  1. Import a CSV or Excel file, just as it comes out of your spreadsheet or your software.
  2. Match your columns and categories to HMRC’s boxes once. Stoneledger remembers them, so next quarter’s file matches itself.
  3. Check every figure back to the rows it came from, with a warning before anything goes: a total counted twice, a VAT box in pence, a CIS rate that does not fit.
  4. Submit your MTD for Income Tax quarterly update, your VAT return or your CIS300 monthly return, and keep HMRC’s receipt with the file it came from.

Unlimited submissions · pay for the time, not the filing

  • £10 a year Unlimited submissions for twelve months every quarterly update, every VAT return, every CIS300
  • £4 a quarter Unlimited submissions for three months enough for a quarter’s update and a VAT return
  • £3 a month Unlimited submissions for one month for one deadline, or a month of catching up

One business, as many submissions as it needs. No subscription you have to remember to stop. The full product - the books, the tax and every submission - is £8 a month or £50 a year.

Stoneledger Bridge runs on the same connection to HMRC, and the same checks, as the full product. It is being built alongside it, and goes live with it once HMRC grants Stoneledger live access.

Free checker

Am I in Making Tax Digital?

Over a million sole traders and landlords come into Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Income Tax in April 2027, and most do not know it yet. Two questions, and you will know your date. No email, no sign-up - the answer is free either way.

Where does your income come from?

MTD for Income Tax counts self-employment and property. Nothing else - not wages, dividends, interest or a pension.

Gross income from those sources added together - the turnover and the rent, not the profit.

Every Making Tax Digital for Income Tax start date
FromIncome overYou

HMRC tests the tax year two years before your start date, because it reads the figure off a return you have already filed. So this is a guide from where you are now. Partnerships have no announced date, and a limited company is not in MTD for Income Tax at all.

The year still ends with a tax return. Under MTD it is due by 31 January as now, sent through your software. It is not an extra filing, and nothing replaces it.

For accountancy practices

Get started

Accounts open ahead of April 2027.

Stoneledger is in private testing. Already testing with us? Log in. Or register your interest now, and you’ll be among the first to use Stoneledger as soon as it’s ready.

See features

What's inside

Everything in one place.

Accounts. CIS. VAT. Tax. Automated. Done.

Open any of them for what it actually does.

Journal entry

Journals, with the guidance built in.

Most books need a few journals a year: income received before it is earned, a bill that arrives after the year end, a cost paid from your own pocket. Stoneledger has a template for each. The accounts a journal always uses are filled in and locked, the guidance beside it says what to choose, and you type the amount once.

Nine templates down the side, from income received in advance to a depreciation adjustment, with a blank journal for anything else. Each one says when to use it, what it posts, what you choose and gives an example, in a few lines rather than a manual.

Stoneledger's journal templates, with Income received in advance picked and its guidance showing

A customer pays for a year up front. Deferred income is fixed. Choose the income account, or link the sales invoice and it is filled in for you, then type the amount once. Say when it is fully earned, and whether monthly, quarterly or all on that date. Stoneledger posts the deferral now and every release with it, and shows you each one before you post. A part month takes its share by days.

An Income received in advance journal: £1,200 from Client work to Deferred income, earned monthly, with its twelve releases listed

March's electricity, billed in April. Accruals is fixed and the journal reverses itself on 1 April, so when the real bill arrives it is not counted twice.

An accrual journal for £186.40 of electricity, reversing automatically on 1 April

A year's van insurance paid in June. Prepayments is fixed. Link the purchase invoice and its account, amount and date are filled in. Give the first and last day the bill covers, and the cost goes back into the profit at each month end, so each month carries its own share.

A prepayment journal linked to an insurance invoice: moved to Prepayments and released at each month end over the year it covers

A business cost paid on your own card. The other side is filled in for you: money introduced by the owner for a sole trader, the director's loan account for a company, which the company now owes you.

A Paid personally journal: £96 of software, with the director's loan account filled in and locked

Every journal in the year, with its reference and lines. Releases carry their place in the schedule, and a journal and its reversal point at each other. Each one flows into the trial balance, the balance sheet and your tax figures straight away.

Stoneledger's list of journals: a reversal, prepayment releases, an accrual and a depreciation adjustment
  • The fixed account
    locked for you
  • Type an account
    by code or name
  • Releases and reversals
    posted for you
  • Balanced before
    it can be posted

For landlords

Letting is its own business. Stoneledger treats it as one.

If your rents, together with any self-employed income, come to more than £30,000 before costs, Making Tax Digital (MTD) catches you from April 2027: four updates a year, and your tax return sent through the software. Stoneledger keeps the properties, the tenancies, the certificates and the figures in one place - and works your mortgage interest the way the law actually does, which is the thing cheap software most often gets wrong.

Every property on one screen: what it earns, what it costs, the profit, what you paid for it and the yield that follows. Jointly owned? Your share of the income and your share of the capital, so the yield is yours and not the whole property's. Click any figure to open the entries behind it.

A landlord's portfolio in Stoneledger: two houses with income, costs, profit, what each cost to buy and the yield

What the agreement says is due, against what has actually arrived, tenancy by tenancy. Deposits are shown with the one thing that matters about them: whether they are protected. They must be in an approved scheme within 30 days, and the penalty for missing it is up to three times the deposit.

Tenancies in Stoneledger: rent due against rent received, arrears, and a deposit flagged as not protected

Since 2020 mortgage interest on a residential letting is not a cost of the business. It buys a 20% reduction off your tax instead - capped, with whatever the caps hold back carried forward to later years. Stoneledger shows the whole working, says where every figure came from, and carries the balance into next year for you.

Stoneledger's residential finance cost working: interest, the cap, and 20% coming off the tax bill

Gas safety every year, an electrical report every five, the EPC, the deposit, the licence, the Right to Rent check and the paperwork the Renters' Rights Act now requires. Each one dated, each one with what it costs to get wrong - an unlimited fine and six months for the gas certificate, up to three times the deposit for the protection.

Four quarterly updates and your tax return, in HMRC's own boxes. Plus the ones that are not annual and do not go through software at all - above all the 60-day capital gains report on selling a let home, which is late long before your tax return is due. Stoneledger works the gain out and counts the days; it tells you plainly that the report itself goes through your own HMRC account.

Stoneledger's list of landlord returns: quarterly updates, the tax return, capital gains and the rest
  • Unlimited properties
    on one price
  • Mortgage interest
    done properly
  • Every certificate
    and licence dated
  • Rent never becomes
    trading turnover

For contractors

Paying subcontractors? Stoneledger runs your CIS.

If you pay subcontractors for construction work, you are a CIS contractor: a return to file every tax month, a statement for every subcontractor you paid, and deductions to pass on to HMRC. Stoneledger keeps all of it together, worked out from the same invoices, so the return, the statements and your books always agree.

What you have taken off your subcontractors is HMRC's money from the moment you deduct it, not yours. Stoneledger shows what has been deducted, what has actually been paid over, and what is still sitting in the business - worked from the invoices and the bank, not from a figure anybody typed. Beside it: this year against last, and a month-by-month view of exactly what each return will say.

Stoneledger's contractor money screen: deducted from subcontractors, paid over to HMRC, and what is still to pay

Every subcontractor on file with their UTR, verification number and deduction rate - gross, 20% or 30% - so each payment is deducted correctly. Anyone missing something a return needs is flagged before the month closes, not after. Verify before you pay, not after: an unverified subcontractor is deducted at 30% instead of 20%, and you cannot put that right retrospectively once the month's return has gone.

Stoneledger's subcontractor list: three subcontractors at gross, 20% and 30%, one flagged as missing a UTR and verification number

Money held back against defects is theirs, not yours - it is owed, but not payable until the defects period ends. Stoneledger keeps it on its own account instead of burying it in what you owe your suppliers, tracks it invoice by invoice, and works the CIS on it at the rate in force on the day you release it, because HMRC treats a release as a payment in its own right.

Stoneledger's contractor retention screen: money held back from subcontractors invoice by invoice, with what it releases to

A CIS300 for every tax month, nil returns included, with the due date, the penalty building up if one is late, and a record of when each was prepared and when it was submitted. Stoneledger keeps those two apart, because only a submitted return stops a penalty.

Stoneledger's CIS300 monthly returns: each tax month with its due date, amounts paid and deducted, and which returns are late with the penalty so far

A payment and deduction statement for every subcontractor you paid, every month, from the same figures as the return - issued, referenced and kept on file in the Statement Outbox. They are due within 14 days of the tax month end, and they are the only proof your subcontractor has that the tax was ever taken.

Stoneledger's Statement Outbox: statements issued to each subcontractor with the gross paid, materials, deduction and a reference

CIS records have to be kept for three years after the end of the tax year they relate to, and Stoneledger says the date rather than the rule: how many subcontractors, how many invoices, how many returns prepared, and the day you can stop keeping them. When the accountant asks, the whole contractor side comes out as one file.

Stoneledger's CIS records screen: what has to be kept, how long for, and the date it can be disposed of
  • Due dates and
    penalty clock
  • Statements from
    the same figures
  • Subcontractor
    and contractor
  • Prepared kept apart
    from submitted

Pricing

£8 a month or £50 a year. That is the whole price.

One plan, with everything in it: the books, both sides of CIS, VAT, your Self Assessment or Corporation Tax, payroll, property and journals. No tiers to climb, no add-ons, and no price that jumps the day you register for VAT or take on a subcontractor.

Monthly

£8 a month

Stop whenever you like.

Yearly Best value

£50 a year

About £4.17 a month. £46 less than paying monthly.

30 days free, no card needed.

Comparison vs what the big names charge you

Stoneledger's price against Xero, QuickBooks and Sage
SoftwareThe plan you would needA monthA year
Stoneledger Everything, one plan £8 £50 on the yearly plan
QuickBooks Simple Start - its first plan with VAT £16 £192
Xero Ignite - VAT and CIS, and £5 a month more to file contractor CIS returns £18 £216
Sage Accounting Standard - its first plan with CIS £43 £516

On the yearly plan that is £142 to £466 a year less, for one plan that already includes what theirs charge extra for.

List prices before VAT as each company publishes them, checked on 5 October 2026, ignoring introductory discounts. Their introductory offers - up to 90% off - last six months, and then the full price applies: from £16 a month at QuickBooks, £18 to £70 at Xero and £20 to £59 at Sage for the plans that handle VAT. CIS and payroll can cost extra on top: Xero charges £5 a month more to file contractor CIS returns, Sage moves you up a plan for CIS, QuickBooks sells payroll as a separate subscription, and Xero and Sage charge for each person on payroll beyond those included. With Stoneledger, VAT, CIS and payroll are all in the one price.

See the full comparison

Only need to submit?

Stoneledger Bridge, from £3.

Keep your spreadsheet or the software you already use, and send the figures to HMRC through Stoneledger Bridge: your Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Income Tax quarterly updates, VAT returns and CIS300 monthly returns. Unlimited submissions for the time you pay for, once HMRC has recognised it. How bridging works

  • £10 a year Unlimited submissions for twelve months
  • £4 a quarter Unlimited submissions for three months
  • £3 a month Unlimited submissions for one month

How it can cost this little

Stoneledger is built and run by a small, dedicated team. We don’t have a sales floor, a big head office or a national advertising budget to pay for, and we build one product for the businesses we know rather than a range of them. So there are no large running costs to price into your subscription - and the saving is passed straight to you.

£8 a month or £50 a year

Everything in one plan: the books, VAT, CIS, payroll and your tax.

Need to bridge for submission only?

  • £10 a year
  • £4 a quarter
  • £3 a month

Unlimited submissions.

Register interest

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See Stoneledger with your own kind of business.

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See walkthroughs

For accountancy practices

Put our free checkers on your own website.

The CIS refund checker and the MTD checker, in your practice’s name and colour. The enquiries they bring go straight to you, and nothing a visitor types is kept by us. When the rates change, the checkers change with them. Fields marked * are required.

£29 a month, plus £100 to set up

No VAT to add. Both checkers included.