Editorial policy

Where our facts come from

We use primary sources first: the organisation that sets the rule or holds the record. In practice that means:

• GOV.UK and HMRC, for tax, filing and other government rules.
• legislation.gov.uk, for the law itself.
• Companies House, for company records.
• Professional bodies such as ICAEW, ACCA, AAT, ICB and CIOT, for what they require of their members.
• Other official bodies, such as the Office for National Statistics and the Bank of England, where they publish the figure.

We use a secondary source, such as a news report or a firm's own article, only when we cannot find a primary one. When we do, we say it is secondary beside the fact. A firm's own website is the source for what that firm says about itself, such as its prices, and we say so.

An AI tool's answer, a research summary or another site's claim is a lead to a source. It is never the source itself.

How we check facts

1. A person opens the source page and reads the wording.
2. We write the fact so it says no more than the source says, keeping its limits, such as who it applies to and any exceptions.
3. We put a numbered marker beside the fact and list the source at the foot of the page, with a link and the date we checked it, shown as "Checked".
4. If we cannot confirm a fact, we leave it out, or we say plainly that we have not found a reliable published source.

Facts about companies come from the Companies House register. Companies House publishes what companies file. Since March 2024 it can query and remove information it believes is wrong, but a record on the register is not a guarantee it is accurate.¹ Pages that show register facts say so, and What Register data, Checked and Spoken to mean explains how much we have checked about each company.

How we handle figures

• Surveys: we only quote a survey figure if we can show who published it, how many people took part and when it was carried out.
• Examples: a worked example or a price is labelled as an example. Two or three prices do not tell you what is normal, so we do not call them typical.
• Our own research: figures are worked out by a script from the source files, not typed in by hand. Each share comes with the count and what it is a share of. How our research works sets out the rules.
• No invented numbers: we do not give fees, day rates, salaries or timescales unless a source shows them.

Law, good practice and our judgement

We keep three things apart. A legal requirement, such as a filing deadline, applies whether or not you use an accountant. Good practice comes from published guidance or what lenders ask for, and is not law. Our judgement is where we combine your answers into a suggestion. Pages and results say which is which. Why these seven kinds of finance support shows this for each part of our method.

We do not give tax or accounting advice. We help you work out what kind of help to look for.

What we will not do

• Rate or score accountancy firms. When we show firms, we show up to two participating firms that meet the most of your needs, with the reasons. That is not a rating or a recommendation.
• Sell placement. Firms pay for introductions they accept. Our rule is that payment does not decide which firm we show or in what order. How we are paid explains this.
• Say a page or rule has been reviewed when it has not.
• Make up a case, a client story or a quote.
• Say we have checked whether an accountant is competent, qualified or suitable for your business. We do not check that.

How we use AI tools

Drafts of our pages are prepared with the help of AI tools. AI tools can get facts wrong, so we do not rely on them for facts. Before a page is published, a person checks every fact against its source, using the steps above. The sources listed on each page are the pages that person opened.

Review by a practising accountant

We plan to have pages that explain tax, accounts or our method reviewed by a paid practising accountant before they are released. No review has taken place yet. Each review will be logged with the date, the reviewer, the version reviewed and the result. Reviews of our method will be listed on How our method works.

Until a page has been reviewed, it carries a draft notice near the top. We remove the notice only when the review log shows the page has been reviewed.

Keeping pages up to date

• Each page shows when it was last updated, and each source shows when we checked it.
• When an official rate, threshold or deadline changes, we check the pages that use it against the official source and update them and their dates.
• We do not change a page's date unless we have checked what it says.
• Research figures carry the date of the data they come from.

We have not yet set how often each page is reviewed when nothing has changed. Until we do, every page shows the date its facts were last checked.

Corrections

If something on the site is wrong, tell us. We check it against the source, fix it, change the page's date and add it to the log. Corrections explains how to report an error and lists every correction to a fact.