864,000 sole traders and landlords must now keep digital records and submit quarterly updates to HMRC. The software most people are looking at costs £12 to £15 a month. QuarterlyHQ costs £3.99.
£3.99/month. Your first quarterly submission is free.
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Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is not optional. It is not a suggestion. It is a legal requirement from HMRC, and it takes effect on 6 April 2026.
If your self-employment or property income is over £50,000 (that is gross income, before expenses), you are affected. HMRC says 864,000 people fall into this category right now. And 70% of them have done nothing to prepare.
Here is what "doing nothing" actually costs you:
Every missed quarterly deadline earns you a penalty point. Four points triggers an automatic £200 fine. And the points do not reset easily — you need a clean streak of on-time submissions to clear them.
This is not like Self Assessment where you file once and forget about it for 12 months. MTD means four quarterly updates per year, every year, for the rest of your self-employed life. Miss one, get a point. Miss four, get fined.
Your accountant can still do your annual return. But the quarterly submissions are your responsibility unless you pay them to handle it — and most accountants are charging £200 to £500 extra per year for MTD compliance work. That is on top of their existing fees.
£50,000 is just the start. From April 2027 it drops to £30,000. From April 2028 it drops to £20,000. By 2028, roughly 3 million people will need MTD software. If you are not above the threshold today, you probably will be soon.
The good news: complying with MTD does not need to be expensive or complicated. It just needs to be done.
QuarterlyHQ does exactly what HMRC requires — digital records and quarterly submissions — and nothing else. No bloat. No learning curve. No features you will never use.
Enter what you earned and what you spent. Do it as you go, or sit down once a quarter and bang it all out in one session. No double-entry bookkeeping. No chart of accounts. Just simple categories that match what HMRC expects.
When the quarter ends, review your summary and hit submit. QuarterlyHQ connects directly to HMRC's Making Tax Digital API. Your data goes straight to HMRC and you get a confirmation back. Done.
A clear dashboard that shows your income, your expenses, and your estimated tax position. No accountancy jargon. No 47-page reports. Just the numbers you need to know, presented in plain English.
QuarterlyHQ tracks all four quarterly deadlines for you and sends reminders before each one. You will always know when your next submission is due and whether you are ready.
QuarterlyHQ is not Xero. It is not QuickBooks. It is not Sage. It is not trying to be.
Those are full accounting suites built for businesses that need invoicing, payroll, stock management, multi-currency support, and bank reconciliation. They are powerful tools. They also cost £12 to £15 a month, take hours to learn, and are massive overkill if all you need is MTD compliance.
QuarterlyHQ does one thing: it keeps you on the right side of HMRC's Making Tax Digital rules. Digital record keeping. Quarterly submissions. Final year-end declaration. That is the full scope.
If you are a sole trader, a freelancer, a landlord, or a tradesperson who just wants to comply without paying through the nose for features you will never touch — this is what we built for you.
And that is exactly the point.
Without QuarterlyHQ, here is what you are looking at:
For software packed with features you will not use
On top of their existing fees for your annual return
Per fine, plus penalty points and the stress of non-compliance
Clunky interface, limited support, and the feeling that you are on your own
| Software | Annual Cost |
|---|---|
| QuarterlyHQ (annual plan) | £39.99 |
| Sage Accounting Start | £144.00 |
| QuickBooks Simple Start | £144.00 |
| Xero Starter | £180.00 |
You save £100 to £140 every year by choosing QuarterlyHQ. Over 3 years, that is £300 to £420 back in your pocket. For software you use four times a year.
Billed monthly
£3.33/month — save £7.89
No setup fees. No hidden charges. No long-term contracts. Cancel any time from your account settings.
Both plans include every feature QuarterlyHQ offers. We do not gate features behind higher tiers because there is only one tier: full MTD compliance.
| Software | Monthly | Annual | You Save vs QuarterlyHQ Annual |
|---|---|---|---|
| QuarterlyHQ | £3.99 | £39.99 | — |
| QuickBooks Simple Start | £12.00 | £144.00 | £104.01 per year |
| Sage Accounting Start | £12.00 | £144.00 | £104.01 per year |
| FreeAgent | £14.50 | £174.00 | £134.01 per year |
| Xero Starter | £15.00 | £180.00 | £140.01 per year |
| HMRC Free Tool | Free | Free | £0 (but limited UX and support) |
Prices sourced from provider websites as of March 2026. QuarterlyHQ is purpose-built for MTD compliance only — the alternatives listed above are full accounting suites with significantly broader feature sets.
You are out on jobs six days a week. You did not become self-employed to spend your evenings learning Xero. You just need to record what you earned and what you spent, submit it to HMRC four times a year, and get back to actual work. QuarterlyHQ takes about 15 minutes per quarter. That is less time than it takes to brew a cup of tea and complain about the traffic.
You already track your income in a spreadsheet or your head. Now HMRC wants it in "compatible software" submitted digitally every quarter. You do not need a full accounting suite — you need a simple tool that takes your existing records, formats them correctly, and sends them to HMRC. QuarterlyHQ is that tool.
MTD applies to property income, not just self-employment. If your combined rental income crosses the threshold, you are in scope. QuarterlyHQ handles property income reporting without forcing you into a full accounting package designed for active businesses. Record your rental income, log your allowable expenses, submit quarterly, done.
If you have a day job and a side business, only your self-employment income counts towards the MTD threshold. But if that side income pushes you over £50,000 gross, you need MTD software — even though you are already taxed through PAYE on your main salary. QuarterlyHQ handles just the self-employment piece without complicating your PAYE situation.
QuarterlyHQ connects to HMRC's official Making Tax Digital APIs using the same secure connection that Xero, QuickBooks, and every other recognised MTD provider uses. When you submit a quarterly update, your data travels directly from QuarterlyHQ to HMRC over an encrypted connection. You receive a confirmation from HMRC that your submission was accepted.
Built by Overpass Apps Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales. We are a UK business building software for UK taxpayers. Your data is stored on Google Cloud infrastructure in the UK and EU, encrypted in transit and at rest.
Your submissions go straight to HMRC through their official Making Tax Digital interface. The same API used by Xero, QuickBooks, and Sage.
All data is encrypted using industry-standard TLS in transit and AES-256 at rest. Your financial information is protected to the same standard used by banks.
QuarterlyHQ is built and maintained in the UK. Your data is stored on Google Cloud infrastructure within the UK and EU. We are subject to UK data protection law and GDPR.
Export your data at any time in standard formats. Delete your account and all associated data whenever you choose. We never sell, share, or monetise your information.
This is not scaremongering. Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is a legal requirement from HMRC, confirmed by Parliament, and it takes effect on 6 April 2026. If your gross self-employment or property income exceeds £50,000, you must keep digital records and submit quarterly updates using compatible software. This is not optional.
The good news: the first year (April 2026 to April 2027) is penalty-free. HMRC will not issue fines for late quarterly updates during this grace period. But you still need to register and start submitting — the grace period covers late submissions, not non-compliance.
If your income is under £50,000 today, keep an eye on the threshold. It drops to £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from April 2028.
No, and this is the most common misunderstanding about MTD. A quarterly update is a simple summary of your income and expenses for that quarter. It is not a tax return. You are not calculating your tax liability four times a year.
Think of it like this: you tell HMRC "I earned X and spent Y this quarter." That is it. The numbers are totals, grouped into basic categories. Most sole traders can complete a quarterly update in 10 to 20 minutes if their records are up to date.
Your annual Self Assessment return still exists, but the quarterly updates mean most of the data is already with HMRC by the time you get to year-end.
The tax year is split into four quarters. Each quarterly update is due one month and two days after the quarter ends:
| Quarter | Period | Deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 | 6 April – 5 July | 7 August |
| Q2 | 6 July – 5 October | 7 November |
| Q3 | 6 October – 5 January | 7 February |
| Q4 | 6 January – 5 April | 7 May |
After Q4, you also submit a final declaration (your year-end summary), which is due by 31 January of the following year — the same deadline as the current Self Assessment.
QuarterlyHQ tracks all of these deadlines and sends you reminders before each one.
From April 2027 onwards (the first year is penalty-free), HMRC uses a points-based system. Each late quarterly submission earns you one penalty point. When you accumulate four points, you receive an automatic £200 fine.
To clear your points, you need to submit on time for a continuous period (the length depends on how frequently you submit — for quarterly filers, it is 12 months of clean submissions).
There are also separate penalties for late payment and for the late annual final declaration, which work differently from the quarterly points system.
The simplest way to avoid all of this: submit on time. QuarterlyHQ sends reminders and makes the submission process quick enough that there is no reason to be late.
Absolutely. QuarterlyHQ handles the digital record keeping and quarterly submissions that HMRC now requires. Your accountant can still prepare and file your annual Self Assessment return, advise on tax planning, handle correspondence with HMRC, and do everything else they currently do for you.
Many accountants actually prefer their clients to use a simple, dedicated MTD tool rather than a full accounting package — it means cleaner data and fewer opportunities for things to go wrong.
We are also building an accountant portal so your accountant can view your submissions and data from their own dashboard. If your accountant wants to see a demo, point them to quarterlyhq.co.uk/accountants.
Because we do less. That sounds like a weakness, but it is actually the entire point.
Xero and QuickBooks are full-featured accounting platforms. They handle invoicing, payroll, VAT, bank reconciliation, project tracking, multi-currency, inventory, and much more. They charge £12 to £15 per month because they have to maintain all of those features, the staff to support them, and the infrastructure to run them.
QuarterlyHQ does one thing: MTD compliance. We built it from scratch for this single purpose. We do not have invoicing code to maintain. We do not have payroll engineers on staff. We do not have VAT servers to run. So our costs are lower and we pass that on.
If you need those other features, Xero and QuickBooks are genuinely good products. But if all you need is MTD compliance, paying £15 a month for it is like hiring a removal van to deliver a letter.
864,000 sole traders and landlords need MTD software before April. Most of them have not started looking yet. You are ahead of them just by reading this page.
QuarterlyHQ launches soon. Join the waitlist and you will be among the first to access the simplest, most affordable MTD software on the market.
Your first quarterly submission is free. No credit card required to sign up.
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£3.99 per month. Less than a coffee. More than enough for HMRC.