Will a single "sole trader plus" account cater for a self-employed individual (sole-trader, no VAT) who also has a couple of rental properties?

Hello there, Steven. QuickBooks Sole Trader Plus is suitable for a non-VAT registered business. You'll need a separate subscription to handle your rental business, but as long as all properties are under the same ownership, one additional subscription will cover them. This keeps your records organized and compliant with HMRC.

For your self-employment, the QuickBooks Sole Trader Plus account will manage all your business income and expenses. When it comes to your income from employment, you don't need an additional subscription. You can connect your bank feed and categorize salary deposits as Personal within the account. This approach ensures your business records remain accurate and that your employment income is kept separate from your tax-deductible expenses.

Feel free to return if you have follow-up questions.

thanks for the reply.
so are you suggesting this requires 3 quickbook accounts- one for self-employment and two others for the 2 properties? I
Is this advice to keep things clean (to monitor the properties individually), a legal requirement or limitations of this quickbooks product?

As i understand it, and forgive as i am new to all this, much of the the data submitted to HMRC will be combined and ultimately delivered as  income/expenses from self employment and income/expenses from self-employment besides other bits and bobs like bank interest, mileage, etc)

Overall this is a factor that means the difference between choosing quickbooks and another leading competitor 

Good day, Steven. No, you do not need three separate accounts. Under HMRC rules for Making Tax Digital (MTD) and Income Tax, your self-employment and your property portfolio are treated as two distinct income streams. However, all UK-based rental properties are grouped into one Property Business.

The QuickBooks Sole Trader Plus plan is designed specifically for one income. It doesn't natively allow you to split your tax summary into two distinct HMRC categories. Therefore, you only need two subscriptions, one QuickBooks license for Self-Employment and another Plus account to manage your property data or through a simple spreadsheet. HMRC views all your UK properties as one entity, so you only ever need one property record, not one per house.

If there’s anything else you’re unsure about, please get in touch. Happy to help you get this sorted.

thanks for the reply.

That is such a shame and slightly misleading as i read it as self-employed income and rental income could be separated into categories that would be filed with HMRC as required which some other major MTD software platforms appear to offer under one product.

This indicates to me having to subscribe to multiple quickbooks products, complicating the matter further and increasing the costs.

i was hoping quickbooks would be the all-in-one cost effective solution but is seems this is not the case, unfortunately. thank you for explaining before i part with my money

as you may have gathered, i am new to MTD and somewhat naive and learning as i go along.

Surely, using virtually any MTD software, ultimately the system will deliver/map the various account-categories to HMRC as individually chosen to the relevant "boxes", whether that be employed income, self-employed expenses, mortgage-interest expenses, rental income, work income, etc etc.

is it not up to the user to filter these into HMRC however they see fit?

thanks for baring with a complete learner

Hello there, Steven. You're unable to choose which HMRC boxes to place different types of income and expenses into within a single account. Only one income source is allowed per account, whether when you set up your account or later in your Account and settings in the Company tab.

You'll need to subscribe to a different plan for your other income source, like QuickBooks Sole Trader Plus.

For any further questions or clarifications, leave a comment below.

thank you for the information.

who can or change or control the "mapping" of account charts (categories) data to HMRC?

if i was using an accountant (with quickbooks) would they be able to allocate the totals to the relevant HMRC requirements to ensure i was filing my data correctly?

BTW, i dont see a "QuickBooks Self-Employed" option in the available packages

Hi Steven, thanks for getting back to us. To ensure your tax filings are accurate, you just need to categorize your transactions in QuickBooks Sole Trader Plus.

When it’s time to submit your MTD Income Tax update, QuickBooks will automatically gather the totals from the bank transactions you’ve matched or categorized. If those are correct, your submission will be too.

For more information, you can check out these articles:

• Moving from paper or spreadsheets to digital record-keeping in QuickBooks
• Making Tax Digital for Income Tax (MTD for IT) Resource Hub

Just to clarify what my previous colleague mentioned about the QuickBooks Self-Employed (QBSE) subscription: it is still supported, but right now, it's only available for existing users, not for new sign-ups.

Please let us know if you have any follow-up questions or concerns with this matter.

thanks again for your time and support,

so, again, forgive my ignorance, but what is stopping me from having just one sole-trader-plus account (or any other package for that matter) and configure it such that i can create a chart of accounts to categorise everything (be that self-employed income/expense as well as all things landlord/rental related) and then "map" those categories to fulfil the criteria required by HMRC ?

Hi Steven, while you can create a custom Chart of Accounts to tag your rental income within a Sole Trader account, the system is designed to report on a single entity. It may not be able to generate two separate compliant tax filings required by HMRC. QuickBooks generally requires one license per distinct income source to maintain clear profit and loss statements.

Keeping these accounts separate prevents your business costs from mixing with your rental income, ensuring your tax reporting remains accurate and fully compliant.

For further guidance, you can refer to this article: MTD for IT: Managing combined business and rental income in QuickBooks.

Please don't hesitate to reply here if you have any questions or need further clarification.