Consolidated expenses: sending HMRC one expenses total

Each Making Tax Digital quarterly update normally splits your business costs into HMRC’s categories, such as cost of goods, travel and admin. Smaller businesses can skip that. If your turnover is under the VAT threshold, currently £90,000 a year, you can send all your expenses as one figure, which HMRC calls consolidated expenses.

What changes

Only the expenses side of the update. Your income is reported as before, and the update still covers the tax year so far. Where an itemised update lists a figure for each category, a consolidated one has a single line for all your allowable expenses added together.

It’s one or the other within an update: HMRC won’t accept a total alongside category figures. You can still change your mind during the year. Because each update replaces the last with your figures for the year so far, the next one simply goes in the new form.

The records you still keep

Consolidated expenses change what you send HMRC, not what you keep. You still need a digital record of your sales and costs, with the date and amount of each, and a spreadsheet counts. The difference is that you don’t have to sort the costs into categories. Only allowable business expenses go into the total, as before.

Setting it up in Quarterwise

1. Open your self-employment business and go to Settings.
2. Tick “Send expenses to HMRC as one total” and save.

From then on, your quarterly updates send one expenses figure, and the filing page shows exactly that before you confirm. Your expense entries no longer need a category, though you can still give them one for your own records. Year-end adjustments work on the same single figure.

If your turnover for the year passes £90,000, Quarterwise stops before sending and asks you to switch the setting off and give your expenses categories, because a consolidated update would no longer be allowed.

Bringing in totals from a spreadsheet

If you keep your records elsewhere and only want to bring the totals across, you can import them. A file with one row per quarter works, with a date, the quarter’s income and the quarter’s expenses:

Use each quarter’s own figures, not running totals for the year: Quarterwise adds the quarters up into the year-to-date figures HMRC expects. Upload the file under Imports, choose which column is the date, which is money in and which is money out, then add the entries to your business and confirm. Our spreadsheet template has the same layout if you would rather record each payment.

Common questions

Last updated 19 October 2026. Quarterwise is software, not a tax adviser — if you’re unsure how the rules apply to you, check with HMRC or a qualified accountant.