Why Are Some Figures Shown in Red in the Draft Accounts PDF?

• Other charges
• Tax on loss (or profit)

Balance Sheet:

• Creditors: amounts falling due within one year
• Creditors: amounts falling due after more than one year
• Provisions for liabilities
• Accruals and deferred income

Turnover, other income, fixed assets, current assets, and every bold subtotal or total row (Loss before taxation, Loss for the financial year, Net current assets, Total assets less current liabilities, Total net assets, Capital and reserves) are always shown in black, regardless of whether the figure is positive or negative.

Why Some Figures Show Red Even at £0

The red styling is applied by line type, not by the value itself. A cost, expense or creditor line is coloured red because of what it represents on the statement — not because TinyTax has detected a problem with it. This is why "Tax on loss: 0" or "Creditors: 0" can appear in red: the line is still an expense/creditor-type row, even though nothing is owed for that year.

This is not an error flag, entry warning or validation notice. TinyTax does not use red text anywhere in the accounts or CT600 documents to indicate a mistake, a missing entry, or something that needs correcting. If there were a problem with your figures, you would see it as a validation message on the form itself — never as red text in the generated PDF.

Does This Affect What Is Submitted to Companies House or HMRC?

No. The red/black colouring is a visual presentation choice in the PDF only. The iXBRL accounts filed with Companies House and the CT600 XML filed with HMRC both carry the underlying numeric values as plain, tagged data with no colour, font or styling information attached — colour exists only in the human-readable PDF you download, not in the data HMRC or Companies House receive.

Common Questions

Should I be worried if a figure is red?

No. Red simply marks the line as an expense, cost or creditor type. Check the figure itself is correct by comparing it to your own records — the colour is not telling you anything is wrong.

Why is a negative subtotal (e.g. Net current assets) shown in black, while a smaller expense line above it is red?

Subtotal and total rows use bold black text throughout, regardless of sign, to visually separate them from the individual line items that feed into them. Individual expense and creditor lines use red regardless of sign, to follow the same distinction. The colour reflects the row's role in the statement (line item vs subtotal), not whether the number is positive or negative.