Picking the right Making Tax Digital software shouldn’t feel like guesswork, but with three ACE options available, one of the questions I’m asked most often is: which one do I actually need? So let’s go through it properly, one by one.
What every ACE product gives you
All three start from the same place. A proper Excel-based bookkeeping system, designed to help you maintain the digital records required for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, for a one-off cost with no monthly subscription. Buy it once and it’s yours. No ongoing fees, no tie in, and you’re not stuck renting access to your own records the way you would be with other online software.
ACE Essentials: built for straightforward sole traders & landlords
This is where most sole traders / landlords start, and for good reason. Record your income and expenditure as it happens and ACE Essentials handles the rest: invoices generated automatically, a monthly profit and loss report, an estimated tax liability, and a trial balance, all done inside Excel. If your bookkeeping is fairly simple, with or without a business bank account, Essentials gives you everything you need to manage your day-to-day bookkeeping.
ACE Professional: for sole traders & landlords who want more control
Professional builds on everything in Essentials and adds bank reconciliation for up to three accounts, along with automated reconciliation tools and a stronger audit trail. It suits landlords with more complexity and small businesses that want more control over their bookkeeping. It gives the additional reassurance of reconciling your records back to your bank, without needing to jump straight to Complete.
ACE Complete: for VAT registered businesses
Complete is the most comprehensive of the three. You get everything in Professional plus an interactive dashboard, deeper management reporting, and MTD compliant VAT return preparation. This one is built for VAT registered businesses that have properly outgrown a simple spreadsheet but still don’t fancy a monthly subscription for the privilege.
A real example from my own clients
One of my clients runs a small cleaning business and Essentials covered everything she needed from day one, and more importantly, kept it simple.
Another client, a landlord with two rental properties and lots of expenses, needed Professional purely so the bank reconciliation would ensure that everything had been captured.
The right option isn’t really about how big your business is. It’s about how much bookkeeping you have to manage, whether you need bank reconciliation, and whether you’re VAT registered.
What about submitting to HMRC?
Because ACE is Excel-based, you’ll also need HMRC-compatible bridging software to submit your MTD information to HMRC. Think of this simply as the link between your ACE bookkeeping file and HMRC. You manage your bookkeeping in ACE, and the bridging software handles the submission. This means you can keep the simplicity and flexibility of Excel without needing to move your entire bookkeeping system into subscription-based accounting software.
Questions I get asked about the ACE range
Can you move up a tier later? Yes, plenty of people start on Essentials and step up to Professional if their bookkeeping gets a bit busier. So you’re not locked into the choice you make today.
Do you need to be good with Excel already? Not at all. Each product is built so the formulas and structure do the heavy lifting (and they’re all locked and hidden so you don’t need to worry about accidentally changing or breaking them), you’re just entering figures as you go, the same way you’d fill in any spreadsheet.
What happens once HMRC’s rules change again? That’s exactly what the optional annual compliance and update plan covers. You’re not left holding a product that quietly falls out of date the moment the rules shift.
Can you try before you commit? Yes, book a FREE Bookkeeping Demo and I’ll show you around the actual product rather than just a sales page, and answer any questions, so you know exactly what you’re paying for before you do.
Getting your bookkeeping ready before your MTD date arrives
The businesses that find MTD painless are almost always the ones who set their system up properly before their start date lands, rather than scrambling once the first quarterly deadline is already looming. Whichever ACE product fits your situation, the earlier you get comfortable using it day to day, the easier each quarterly update becomes, and the less stressful MTD feels.
Still not sure which one you need? Book a FREE Bookkeeping Demo and I’ll show you the different options, ask a few questions about how you currently manage your bookkeeping, and help you work out which ACE product actually fits your business. And if Essentials is all you need, that’s exactly what I’ll tell you.
