Eco Accounts Ltd

Eco Accounts Ltd helping eco conscious businesses with their bookkeeping needs

Imagine you’re on the beach. It’s a hot day (like today🥵)You’re wearing a polyester jacket, sweating and getting hotter ...
26/05/2026

Imagine you’re on the beach. It’s a hot day (like today🥵)

You’re wearing a polyester jacket, sweating and getting hotter by the minute. Now swap it for a linen shirt, it can breathe and you can stay cool in the breeze.

That’s how Antoinette from Agreka Build described the difference between synthetic and biobased isulation at Futurebuild last week. What a great analogy!

I was at Excel London for the day, crossing the concourse between Futurebuild and Accountex because I was genuinely interested in both shows.

The panel on biobased and natural building materials was hosted brilliantly by Ele George of Ele-vate, and the speakers brought it to life in the best way.

John Ferguson from Sisalwool talked about sisal insulation finished with wood wall and lime plaster. Antoinette from Agreka Build is taking agricultural waste and turning it into Wheatex. Chris Brookman from Back to Earth is championing woodfibre with Agrement certification behind it.

The message underneath all of it was that biobased materials need to move into mainstream construction. Not as a niche or a premium option for eco-conscious self-builders, but as standard.

I’m a bookkeeper, not a builder. But my clients are in this space and the more I understand what they’re working with, why it matters and what’s coming, the better I can support them.

There’s a VAT rule some builders don’t know about, and it’s costing their clients money....If you’re a contractor or tra...
21/05/2026

There’s a VAT rule some builders don’t know about, and it’s costing their clients money....

If you’re a contractor or tradesperson doing residential green retrofits, this one’s worth knowing.

Until March 2027, the government has set VAT to 0% on energy-saving materials, solar panels, insulation, heat pumps, as long as you supply and install them together on a residential property. After that, it goes back up to 5%.

That’s a real saving for your clients. But there’s a trap.
If you bury your green work inside one big “General Renovation” line, HMRC can treat the whole job as a standard refurbishment and charge 20% VAT across all of it. The eco bit loses its relief the moment it’s mixed in with everything else.

The fix is simple. Give the green work its own line on your quote and invoice. Separate it out, label it clearly, and you’ve got a straightforward paper trail showing exactly why you didn’t charge VAT on that part.
It makes your quote look more competitive too. Clients can actually see what they’re saving.

Three quick questions worth asking on every job:
Is it a residential property?
Are you supplying and fitting?
Does the green work have its own line on the bill?
If yes to all three, you’re good.

Drop me a message if you want a second pair of eyes on how you’re invoicing green work

Something a bit different today....Has anyone else been using a cashback app towards their mortgage?I’ve been doing it f...
19/05/2026

Something a bit different today....

Has anyone else been using a cashback app towards their mortgage?

I’ve been doing it for a month now and it’s great seeing it adding up. You shop for things you were going to buy anyway (groceries and DIY galore in my life these days). You get cashback. That cashback goes straight off the mortgage. Today it told me if I carry on at this rate I will save £8k in interest and 1yr and 4 months off my mortgage. And I fully intend to beat that.

Ok, it’s not going to pay it off overnight and it’s a new habit to get used to but it is almost effortless.

I buy a voucher for each of my regular supermarkets for a few hundred quid at the beginning of the month or after pay day and then add the voucher to my phones wallet. Then when i pay for my shopping i use the voucher instead of my bank card. It costs me the same either way but one reduces my mortgage and the other just reduces my bank account.

It’s the kind of thing I wish someone had told me about sooner.

If you want to know which one I use and how I’ve set it up, just drop me a message. Happy to share a code so you get £5 to start you off.

I’ve got mint rooting on the kitchen windowsill....And a snake plant sitting next to it doing the same. 5 more plants ar...
18/05/2026

I’ve got mint rooting on the kitchen windowsill....

And a snake plant sitting next to it doing the same. 5 more plants arriving in the post this week. Sunflower seedlings that have absolutely shot up in the last few days.

Everything is growing.

And I think my business is in its spring too.

It’s been slow and steady since the beginning, deliberately so. But lately I can feel a shift. Things are gaining momentum. Enquiries are coming in differently. It feels like something is about to properly take off.

I am excited and I want to grow carefully. Not just because I want the business to be strong but because the clients I have right now matter. Their service comes first. Always. Any growth I take on has to make that better, not compromise it.

I think my conclusion is that slow and steady really does get you somewhere worth going.

Are you in a growth phase right now, in business or life? I’d love to know how you’re navigating it.

Anyone else back at their desk after Futurebuild and Accountex and not quite sure where to start?My inbox is full. My no...
15/05/2026

Anyone else back at their desk after Futurebuild and Accountex and not quite sure where to start?

My inbox is full. My notebook is fuller. I’ve got so much information to process, work to catch up on, and a house that definitely noticed I was gone for two days.

Did I connect with everyone I meant to? Probably not. Am I going to bombard you with LinkedIn posts about everything I learned? ...maybe a little. Sorry in advance.

Both shows were genuinely great CPD and good fun! I’ll be sharing a few nuggets over the coming weeks, the good stuff, I promise, not just the free pen haul.

For now though it’s just a quick Hi 🙋‍♀️ while I untangle my brain 🤯

I don’t think I can fit it all in!On my way to two (yes two in one day!) exhibitions at London Excel today.Futurebuild a...
13/05/2026

I don’t think I can fit it all in!

On my way to two (yes two in one day!) exhibitions at London Excel today.

Futurebuild and Accountex

Looking forward to seeing:
Hilary Lewis 💻♣️
The 6 Figure Bookkeeper friends
Kathryn Frimond
Alasdair Ben Dixon
Ele George
ASBP - Alliance for Sustainable Building Products
Good Homes Alliance
National Retrofit Hub
Passivhaus Trust
Sustainable Traditional Building Alliance
Sustainable Development Foundation

So many good people all in one place. I’ve never had such a tight itinerary for one day.

Our ‘experiment’ update....Basically, I still think my son’s life would be better without a PS5. He still has it but thi...
11/05/2026

Our ‘experiment’ update....

Basically, I still think my son’s life would be better without a PS5. He still has it but things are better.

He got a glimpse of life without a PS5 for 3 weeks.

A few months back I posted about an experiment we were trying for six weeks. Three weeks of unlimited PlayStation, followed by three weeks of nothing. A few of you said you were curious how it went so here’s my summary.

The unlimited phase wasn’t what I feared. He still had to stop by 7.15pm and couldn’t start before half seven in the morning, but within those hours, no limits. Less arguments, less stress. He didn’t turn into the screen-zombie I was bracing for.

Then the three weeks of nothing. He barely pushed back! Got on his bike, started doing jumps, met his mates outside. And he told me himself he was really enjoying it. Not me saying it. Him!!

Coming back to screens, the first day was eleven hours straight and a meltdown. Followed by similar the next day while I figured out where we go from here. Clearly he still wasn’t able to manage his time himself and the absence of it for 3 weeks then lead to an overload. But I knew he’d seen what the other version of his life looked like, and he’d liked it.

He’s nearly twelve now. Still has his PS5 but some days he doesn’t touch it. He’s more understanding about the rules. He gets it more than he did. But a twelve year old is not suddenly making wise decisions about his own screen time just because he’s had a moment of clarity. The guardrails are still there. I’ve just loosened my grip a little.

I think my conclusion is that our kids are way more adaptable than we give them credit for. A big change won’t break them. It might be exactly what they needed.

He still doesn’t have a smartphone, by the way. Every single person I mention that to says “”good for you.”” Maybe they’re being polite. Maybe they mean it. I won’t pretend I don’t care what people think cos I really do. So it helps more than I’d like to admit.

Building a garden office? Here is what you can actually claim.The tax rules around garden offices catch a lot of people ...
08/05/2026

Building a garden office? Here is what you can actually claim.

The tax rules around garden offices catch a lot of people out. The short version is:
-the building itself is not claimable
-but most of what goes inside it is
-running costs are deductible too

There are also two things worth knowing before you start, particularly around Benefit in Kind and Capital Gains Tax, that most people do not think about until it is too late.

I have written a full breakdown on the blog if you want the detail. It covers what HMRC actually says about insulation, professional fees, and sole traders versus limited companies. Worth a read before you pick up a hammer.

“Who knows what Scope 4 is?If you work in sustainable construction, you are probably very familiar with Scopes 1, 2 and ...
07/05/2026

“Who knows what Scope 4 is?

If you work in sustainable construction, you are probably very familiar with Scopes 1, 2 and 3. Quick recap for anyone newer to this:

Scope 1 is direct emissions eg. fuel burned on site, company vehicles, that kind of thing.
Scope 2 is indirect emissions from bought-in energy, mainly electricity.
Scope 3 is everything else in the value chain, supply chain, business travel, waste, the embodied carbon in materials.

Scope 4 is different. It does not have a formal place in the GHG Protocol yet. It’s an emerging concept, sometimes called avoided emissions. It is not about what you emit. It is about what you prevent from being emitted because of a decision, a product, or a service.

A building designed and built to a high energy efficiency standard doesn’t just perform well. It avoids the emissions that a standard build would have produced over its lifetime. That is Scope 4 thinking.
And here is why I find this so exciting, particularly for this industry.

Buildings account for a significant share of global greenhouse gas emissions. The people designing, building, advising on and financing them have a genuine opportunity to change that. Not just to reduce their own footprint, but to actively influence what gets built, how it gets built, and what impact it has for decades to come. That’s enormous!

Most of my clients are in the sustainable building space and are already doing exactly this. Educating, advising, pushing for better standards. They are not waiting for the regulation to catch up. They are ahead of it.

Scope 4 is not yet formal. But the impact it describes very much is and I am here for it.”

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