Send quarterly updates
How and when to send quarterly updates, based on your accounting period.
Every 3 months, your compatible software will add together your digital records to create totals for each income and expense category. These summaries are known as quarterly updates.
After submitting an update, you will be able to see an estimate of your tax bill for your business income in your compatible software.
You do not need to make any accounting or tax adjustments before sending an update, but you can if you would like your estimated tax bill to be more accurate.
If you have chosen to keep digital records of personal income sources in your software, you may be able to report them during the tax year but they will not be included in your quarterly updates.
After your compatible software is authorised, you need to send updates for each business income source to us every 3 months. Your software will tell you when and how to send updates.
You can send updates more frequently, for example, if you want to understand how a significant business receipt or expense affects your estimated tax bill. Most compatible software will allow you to send an update on any day.
If you do not expect to have any additional transactions to record, you can send an update up to 10 days before the end of the update period. For example, if you’re going on holiday and know that you will not be working for the remainder of the period.
After each 3 month period has ended, you need to send your update within one month. If you do not send it by this deadline, you may need to pay a late submission penalty. These penalties do not apply during the testing phase.
This means that during testing, you can sign up partway through the tax year and will not receive penalties for submitting quarterly updates after the deadlines. You can read more about catching up in the Introduction.
The standard update periods are based on the tax year and the deadlines are given in the following table.
| Update period | Update deadline |
|---|---|
| 6 April to 5 July | 5 August |
| 6 July to 5 October | 5 November |
| 6 October to 5 January | 5 February |
| 6 January to 5 April | 5 May |
Alternatively, you can choose to use calendar update periods which end on the last day of the month. This may make your record keeping simpler if your accounting period does not align with the tax year.
You must select calendar update periods in your compatible software before the first update is made for the tax year.
You’ll need to meet the same deadlines as standard update periods.
Calendar update periods will continue to apply unless you decide to change back to standard update periods.
If you choose to return to standard update periods, you need to select standard update periods in your compatible software before the first update is made for the tax year.
| Update period | Update deadline |
|---|---|
| 1 April to 30 June | 5 August |
| 1 July to 30 September | 5 November |
| 1 October to 31 December | 5 February |
| 1 January to 31 March | 5 May |
After you have submitted your final quarterly update for the tax year, you should check if you need to make any adjustments to your business income.