Monthly bank reconciliation, transaction coding and quarterly VAT — run by a CIMA Chartered Accountant. Priced honestly because everything routine is automated. All the compliance rigour of a full practice, none of the boutique overhead.
Vigil Books is built for one buyer profile: UK SME owners already on Xero who know their books need a professional pair of hands, but don't want a five-figure annual accountancy bill for what is fundamentally a monthly rhythm.
01 — DIY isn't working
Bank feeds aren't matching. VAT returns feel like a coin toss. Duplicate transactions keep appearing. You know Xero is powerful — you also know you're not using it properly, and every month you fall further behind.
02 — Your bookkeeper has gone quiet
They post transactions. That's roughly all you know they do. You don't know what qualifications they hold, whether they're supervised, or whether the coding is even right. The relationship is transactional. The books might be too.
03 — VAT quarter is looming
VAT rates on some transactions look wrong. Reverse charge on your foreign suppliers is a mystery. You know the deadline. You don't know whether hitting Submit is going to trigger an HMRC letter three months later. You're guessing.
The scope is deliberately narrow and deliberately consistent. Every client, every month, gets the same rigorous foundation — because that's how quality stays high at this price point.
Billed monthly in advance via GoCardless direct debit. 30-day rolling agreement. Cancel with a month's notice — no exit fees, no lock-in.
Everything on the list
No timesheets, no hourly rate
No surprise invoices
Up to 300 transactions/month
All work in UK, no offshoring
The onboarding is deliberately quick because it's built on the same rigour every month uses — nothing bespoke, nothing invented on the fly for each client. You go from first call to fully-onboarded inside a week.
20 minutes with Peter directly. Are you a fit? Is Vigil Books the right thing? Any awkward questions asked and answered. No pitch, no obligation.
Engagement letter signed via DocuSign. AML KYC completed via SmartSearch. Xero advisor access granted. GoCardless mandate set up. All takes under 15 minutes of your time.
Everything from your engagement date reconciled and coded. Anomalies flagged. Bank balances agreed to Xero. Your first monthly summary lands within 15 days.
From month two onwards you barely think about it. Books are done. VAT is prepared. Summary lands. Questions get answered. Direct debit collects. Done.
Vigil Books is the foundation. Once you've got three months of properly-coded data, the first Vigil finance app clicks into place: CashFlow Clarity — a 13-week rolling cash flow forecast built by a CIMA finance director, updated weekly from your live Xero data. Normally £29 per month. Free for the first three months to Vigil Books early customers.
Yes, with a caveat. If your existing Xero needs cleanup before the monthly rhythm can start, we'll quote a one-off cleanup fee (typically £250-£600 depending on scope) after the discovery call. From the point cleanup is done, the £199/mo rhythm kicks in. If your books are already reasonably clean, we start straight into the monthly cycle.
Only if you have a specific reason to. Vigil Books is aimed at three groups: people doing it themselves, people with no bookkeeping arrangement, and people whose current bookkeeper isn't giving them what they need. If your current bookkeeper is CIMA/ACCA-supervised, responsive, and getting the work right, don't switch on price alone.
No — those are outside CIMA's practising scope. We handle bookkeeping, bank recs and VAT. Year-end statutory accounts and tax returns are handled by your accountant. We work alongside your existing accountant and hand over clean books at year end — which typically reduces your annual accountancy bill significantly because there's no cleanup work required.
Not at £199. Payroll can be added as a bolt-on (£15/month for up to 5 employees, £30/month for up to 15) with our payroll partner. It's separate from the base bookkeeping engagement.
Xero — always Xero. If you're on QuickBooks, Sage, FreeAgent or Kashflow, part of onboarding is migrating you to Xero. We're Xero Certified Advisors and we get a partner discount that we pass through to you.
No. Vigil Books runs on a 30-day rolling agreement. Cancel any time with a month's notice. Pay only for the notice period, no exit fees, no lock-in. If we're not delivering value, you can leave clean.
GoCardless direct debit, collected monthly in advance on your engagement anniversary date. First payment collected on engagement letter signature. VAT-inclusive £199 (i.e. what you pay total, no VAT added).
The £199 covers up to 300 posted transactions per month, which suits most UK SMEs in the £200k-£1.5m turnover band. If you're regularly above that, we agree a slightly higher rate at onboarding (typically £249 or £299/mo). We tell you honestly at the discovery call which bracket you fall in.
Peter Edwards ACMA CGMA — a CIMA Member in Practice with 20 years of senior finance experience. All work is done in the UK. No offshoring, no subcontracting. Every decision on your books is traceable to a CIMA-supervised professional.
MTD for Income Tax is for sole traders and landlords over the income threshold — different from the MTD-for-VAT that limited companies file. If you're a limited company on Xero, we handle your MTD-for-VAT quarterly submissions as part of the £199. If you're a sole trader or landlord looking at MTD for Income Tax, our sister product SheetMTD covers that use case for £24.99/year.
A 20-minute call to establish fit. No pitch, no obligation, no follow-up sequence. Either it's a fit and we go from there, or it isn't and we both save the time.
peter@insightprofessionalpartners.com · 07540 288 077