Free MTD Spreadsheet Template (and What Bridging Software Really Costs)
A free MTD-ready spreadsheet template in CSV and Excel, with live quarterly totals, plus an honest look at what bridging software actually costs and when a spreadsheet is a false economy.
Making Tax Digital does not make you give up your spreadsheet. It makes you connect it to HMRC. Those are very different requirements, and the gap between them is where most of the confusion, and most of the money, sits.
So here is the spreadsheet, free, with nothing to fill in first.
Download the template as CSV if you want the plainest possible file that opens anywhere and imports into anything.
Download the template as Excel (.xlsx) if you want the version that does the arithmetic for you: three sheets, live quarterly totals, and a read-me that explains the dates.
No email address, no signup, no wall. If it is useful, use it. The rest of this page is about the part nobody tells you when they hand you a template: what it takes to get the figures out of it and into HMRC, and what that costs.
- A spreadsheet is a perfectly legal way to keep MTD digital records. It is not a legal way to file. The figures still have to reach HMRC through compatible software.
- That means one of two things: bridging software that reads your spreadsheet and submits from it, or a record-keeping product you put the figures into.
- On the 9 August 2026 scrape, 70 of the 127 products on HMRC’s directory can bridge from a spreadsheet, so the spreadsheet route is well supported and not a fringe choice.
- Bridging is the cheapest paid MTD there is, roughly £30 to £40 plus VAT a year for one taxpayer and free from two products, all checked August 2026. Headline per-taxpayer figures are usually multi-taxpayer licences divided up.
- 23 of those 70 products do bridging only, which means they cannot keep your records. Your spreadsheet is then the only copy of your records, and that is a decision, not a detail.
What is in the template
Both files carry the same six columns: Date, Description, Category, Money In, Money Out, Notes. Income goes in Money In and costs go in Money Out, so you never type a negative number and never have to remember which sign means what. Dates are DD/MM/YYYY, which is what you would type anyway.
The Excel version adds two sheets on top of that.
Transactions is where you work. One row per transaction, eight sample rows to delete, a frozen header row, filters on the columns, and formatting that carries down to row 500 so your own entries inherit it.
Quarterly Summary is the sheet that earns its place. It has one row for each of MTD's four update periods, with the period start and end dates, money in, money out, the net figure for the quarter, a cumulative year-to-date column and the submission deadline. The totals are live SUMIFS formulas reading the Transactions sheet, so they move the moment you type a row. There is a full tax-year total underneath.
Two details in that sheet are deliberate. The year-to-date column exists because MTD quarterly updates are cumulative: your second update is not "July to September", it is the whole year so far, restated. Getting that wrong is one of the most common first-year mistakes, so the template shows you the number you actually submit rather than the one you might assume. And the formulas point at the start and end date cells rather than at hard-coded dates, which means switching to calendar update periods is a matter of editing two cells per row rather than rewriting eight formulas.
Read me covers the rest: how to enter transactions, the 2026-27 update periods with their deadlines, the calendar-quarter variant, how long HMRC expects you to keep the records, and how to get the file into TapTax.
The four standard update periods the summary sheet is built around are these.
| Update | Period covered | Submission deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Quarter 1 | 6 April to 5 July | 7 August |
| Quarter 2 | 6 July to 5 October | 7 November |
| Quarter 3 | 6 October to 5 January | 7 February |
| Quarter 4 | 6 January to 5 April | 7 May |
The CSV has no explanatory preamble row on purpose. Any comment line above the headers becomes the header row as far as an importer is concerned, which breaks automatic column detection at exactly the moment you want it to work. The guidance lives in the Notes column and, in full, on the Read me sheet instead.
A spreadsheet is legal. A spreadsheet does not file.
This is the single most misunderstood point in the whole category, so it is worth being blunt about it.
HMRC does not require you to abandon spreadsheets. Keeping your digital records in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets is compliant, and there is nothing second-class about it. What HMRC does require is that the figures reach it through compatible software, digitally, without you retyping them into a form.
Downloading this template gets you the first half. It does nothing at all about the second half. You still need one of two things:
Bridging software, which reads your spreadsheet and submits from it. Your spreadsheet stays the system of record, and the bridging product is a pipe.
A record-keeping product, which keeps the records itself. Your spreadsheet then becomes either a starting point you import once or a habit you retire.
Neither is more compliant than the other. They are different workflows with different costs, and the honest version of this page is the one that prices both.
104of 127 (82%)keep digital records natively, so you would move off the spreadsheetHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026 70of 127 (55%)can bridge from a spreadsheet, so you would keep itHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026HMRC lists what each vendor declares. Feature flags, mobile-app support in particular, are vendor claims rather than verified facts, and listings change. Check with the vendor before you buy. Data: HMRC find-MTD-software service (tax.service.gov.uk), scraped 9 August 2026.
The bridging figure is the reassuring one for a spreadsheet person. Bridging is not a niche corner of this market that HMRC tolerates. It is more than half the directory.
| Product | Free | Digital records | Foreign property | Return items |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nomi | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 0/16 |
| Avona | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 0/16 |
| AbraTax MTD for Income Tax | Not included | Not included | Ready now | 15/16 |
| Coconut | Not included | Ready now | Not included | 0/16 |
| VitalTax | Not included | Not included | Ready now | 9/16 |
| Otis Tax | Not included | Not included | Ready now | 4/16 |
| Nexus by Landlord Studio | Not included | Ready now | Not included | 0/16 |
| Taxzap | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 0/16 |
| SimplifyMTD | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | 14/16 |
| Absolute Excel Income Tax Filer | Not included | Not included | Ready now | 10/16 |
| MTD Sheets | Not included | Not included | Ready now | 0/16 |
| Basetax – Making Tax Digital for Income Tax | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 0/16 |
| DIY Tax | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | 3/16 |
| Neevii | Not included | Ready now | Not included | 0/16 |
| KinderStart: Childminding App | Not included | Ready now | Not included | 0/16 |
| Aligned.tax MTD for Spreadsheets | Ready now | Not included | Ready now | 0/16 |
| Property Income eReturn | Not included | Not included | Ready now | 0/16 |
| Affordable MTD | Ready now | Ready now | Not included | 0/16 |
| Self Assessment Direct | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | 9/16 |
| ANNA Self Assessment | Not included | Ready now | Not included | 0/16 |
| Bosh | Not included | Ready now | Not included | 0/16 |
| 123 e-Filing MTD for Income Tax | Not included | Not included | Ready now | 10/16 |
| Abridge (MTD for Excel/Sheets) | Ready now | Not included | Ready now | 15/16 |
| Acorah Software Products Ltd (TaxCalc) | Not included | Not included | Ready now | 0/16 |
| MTD Companion for macOS | Not included | Not included | Ready now | 16/16 |
| TaxUpdates | Ready now | Not included | Ready now | 15/16 |
| 123 Sheets | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 5/16 |
| MTDsorted | Not included | Ready now | Not included | 0/16 |
| flonancial | Ready now | Not included | Not included | 0/16 |
| Acxite | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | 0/16 |
| Deductic MTD | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 0/16 |
| WaterLily MTD Bridge | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 0/16 |
| untied | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 15/16 |
| suiteSheets | Not included | Not included | Not included | 0/16 |
| Hammock for landlords | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 0/16 |
| TaxBridge UK MTD by Amelia GB | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | 0/16 |
| My Tax Digital (Free) | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | 15/16 |
| ApariSolo | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 3/16 |
| @1TaxFiler | Not included | Not included | Ready now | 0/16 |
| Forbes MTD | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 15/16 |
| RentalBux Free | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | 15/16 |
| Andica MTD ITSA Software | Not included | Not included | Ready now | 0/16 |
| Capium Limited - MTD for IT | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 14/16 |
| TaxNav | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 0/16 |
| 100PcMTD | Not included | Not included | Ready now | 0/16 |
| Pandle | Ready now | Ready now | Not included | 0/16 |
| Coconut Free | Ready now | Ready now | Not included | 0/16 |
| TaxHeaven | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | 15/16 |
| Qyon Software Ltd | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 0/16 |
| HyperTax | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 0/16 |
| Tax Mouse | Ready now | Ready now | Not included | 0/16 |
| MTD Companion for iPhone & iPad | Not included | Not included | Ready now | 16/16 |
| VT Software | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 0/16 |
| @Taxd MTD | Not included | Not included | Not included | 0/16 |
| Acctax (Online) Ltd | Not included | Not included | Ready now | 0/16 |
| GetGround | Ready now | Ready now | Not included | 0/16 |
| NJT Tax Return Manager | Not included | Ready now | Not included | 0/16 |
| Clients Assistant | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 0/16 |
| Simple File for Excel Users | Not included | Ready now | Not included | 0/16 |
| RentalBux | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 15/16 |
| Ablegatio Ftax MTD for IT | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 0/16 |
| Simple Tax Flow | Not included | Ready now | Not included | 4/16 |
| MTD 4 Income Tax | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 16/16 |
| 1 1 MTD Bridge | Not included | Not included | Ready now | 0/16 |
| CHM ITSA BRIDGE | Not included | Not included | Ready now | 0/16 |
| Provestor for Landlords | Not included | Ready now | Not included | 14/16 |
| ApariPro | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | 3/16 |
| #GoFile | Not included | Ready now | Not included | 13/16 |
| Taxtool for Income Tax | Not included | Not included | Ready now | 3/16 |
| Landlord Studio | Not included | Ready now | Not included | 0/16 |
What bridging actually costs
Prices are not on HMRC's directory, so we researched them separately from vendor pricing pages. Everything below was checked in August 2026, prices move, and you should verify before you pay. If you want the same treatment applied to the whole market rather than just the bridging corner of it, how much MTD software costs walks the full price curve, and the cheapest and simplest MTD options covers the budget end.
| Product | Price for one taxpayer | What the licence actually covers | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self Assessment Direct | £0 | Unconditionally free, no tiers and no expiry | August 2026 |
| My Tax Digital | £0 | Free with no paid tier at all, bridging or full accounting | August 2026 |
| 123 Sheets | £19.75 + VAT first year | Per taxpayer, list around £39.50; several trades and properties each | August 2026 |
| VitalTax | £30 + VAT a year | One taxpayer; £54 for two, £72 for three, £198 unlimited | August 2026 |
| Absolute Excel Income Tax Filer | £40 + VAT a tax year | Covers five National Insurance numbers; £30 + VAT for NFU members | August 2026 |
| Forbes MTD | £40 + VAT a year | Single user; £195 + VAT a year for an agent licence, unlimited clients | August 2026 |
Read the free rows first, because they change the shape of the argument. Self Assessment Direct and My Tax Digital both bridge and both charge nothing, with no card and no expiry, checked August 2026. That is not a trial and it is not a bank promotion. If your only requirement is "get the numbers out of my spreadsheet and into HMRC", you can meet the whole obligation for £0 today. Whether either is pleasant to use is a separate question, and both are web-first with no app.
Now the paid end.
VitalTax
£30 + VAT/yr, one taxpayer(checked August 2026)
- Free version: no
- Android; Apple iOS: yes
- Sole trader income: yes
- UK property income: yes
- Foreign property income: yes
- Keeps digital records: no
9/16 tax-return items ready, 7 more in development.
HMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026. Feature flags are vendor-declared. Vendor site
An add-in that lives inside Excel itself, so you never leave the spreadsheet. £54 for two taxpayers, £72 for three, £198 unlimited. The first quarterly submission is free, which is a genuine try-before-you-buy rather than a trial that cannot file. Checked August 2026.
Absolute Excel Income Tax Filer
£40 + VAT per tax year, five NI numbers(checked August 2026)
- Free version: no
- No mobile app listed: no
- Sole trader income: yes
- UK property income: yes
- Foreign property income: yes
- Keeps digital records: no
10/16 tax-return items ready, 5 more in development.
HMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026. Feature flags are vendor-declared. Vendor site
The lowest per-taxpayer cost we found anywhere, but only if you use all five slots. One taxpayer pays the full £40 plus VAT. NFU members are quoted £30 plus VAT. Excel only, no mobile. Checked August 2026.
123 Sheets
£19.75 + VAT/yr, list about £39.50(checked August 2026)
- Free version: no
- No mobile app listed: no
- Sole trader income: yes
- UK property income: yes
- Foreign property income: yes
- Keeps digital records: yes
5/16 tax-return items ready, 11 more in development.
HMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026. Feature flags are vendor-declared. Vendor site
Per taxpayer, with the first year discounted by half, so budget for the list price at renewal. One licence covers multiple self-employments and properties for that taxpayer. Checked August 2026.
Forbes MTD
£40 + VAT/yr single, £195 + VAT agent(checked August 2026)
- Free version: no
- Android: yes
- Sole trader income: yes
- UK property income: yes
- Foreign property income: yes
- Keeps digital records: yes
15/16 tax-return items ready.
HMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026. Feature flags are vendor-declared. Vendor site
A Windows desktop CSV bridge for Excel, Sage and VT, with no mobile app and no landlord workflow. The agent licence is unlimited clients, which is why the single-user price looks high next to it. Checked August 2026.
PaTMa Property Manager
£15/mo inc VAT (Pro)(checked August 2026)
- Free version: yes
- Android: yes
- Sole trader income: no
- UK property income: yes
- Foreign property income: no
- Keeps digital records: yes
0/16 tax-return items ready, 12 more in development.
HMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026. Feature flags are vendor-declared. Vendor site
Included here because it markets itself at spreadsheet users, but HMRC grades it not included for bridging: it is a record-keeper, not a pipe from your own file. Free covers one unit, Pro is five units with £1.50 per extra unit, and PaTMa’s own pages disagree about whether MTD filing is on the free tier, so get that in writing. Checked August 2026.
Per taxpayer, or per licence?
This is the distinction that makes published bridging prices misleading, including in summaries we have written ourselves.
Absolute Excel Income Tax Filer is widely quoted at about £8 a taxpayer a year. That figure is real, and it is arithmetic: £40 plus VAT divided by the five National Insurance numbers the licence covers. If you are one person filing for yourself, you do not pay £8. You pay £40 plus VAT, which is the top of the range in the table above, level with Forbes MTD.
The same trick runs in the other direction. Forbes MTD looks expensive at £40 plus VAT for one user until you notice the agent licence is £195 plus VAT for unlimited clients, which makes it the cheapest thing on the page for a bookkeeper with thirty clients and irrelevant to everyone else. VitalTax's £198 unlimited tier does the same job.
So before you compare any two bridging prices, fix the denominator:
- How many taxpayers? A licence covering five people is not comparable to a single-taxpayer price unless you have five people.
- How many businesses per taxpayer? 123 Sheets covers multiple trades and properties for one taxpayer. Some products count each business separately.
- Is it per tax year or per calendar year? A "tax year" licence and an "annual" licence renew on different dates and one of them will surprise you.
- What is the renewal price? 123 Sheets discounts the first year by half. The second year is the real price.
- VAT. Most bridging is quoted plus VAT and most sole traders using it are not reclaiming it.
When bridging is the right answer
Bridging genuinely is the correct choice for a lot of people, and the case is stronger than the marketing from record-keeping products suggests.
Your spreadsheet already works. If you have five years of history, formulas you trust and a layout that matches how you actually think about your business, replacing it with someone else's data model is a real cost with no tax benefit.
Your accountant works in spreadsheets. Plenty do. Handing over a file beats granting access to another portal.
Your business is unusual. Bookkeeping products encode assumptions about how income arrives. If yours does not fit them, a spreadsheet you control beats a product you argue with.
You want the cheapest compliant route. Free bridging exists. Paid bridging is roughly £30 to £40 plus VAT a year, against £7 plus VAT a month for Xero's entry Simple plan and considerably more for landlord platforms: Landlord Vision's entry tier is £21.97 a month. All checked August 2026. That is an order-of-magnitude difference, not a rounding one.
You file for several people. This is where multi-taxpayer bridging licences are simply unbeatable on price.
When a spreadsheet is a false economy
The honest other half.
When the spreadsheet is the work. If keeping it up to date takes you a Sunday every quarter, you are paying for bridging in hours instead of pounds. Bank feeds and automatic categorisation exist to delete that Sunday.
When you need it on your phone. Spreadsheet-first tools are overwhelmingly desktop and browser software, and most of the bridging-only products in the table further down this page list no mobile app at all. Receipts photographed at the moment of spending do not fit that workflow, and a shoebox of paper you will type up later is exactly what MTD was designed to end.
When formulas are load-bearing. A spreadsheet will happily accept a date typed as text, a figure in the wrong column, or a row pasted below the range your totals cover. Nothing tells you. The error surfaces at the final declaration.
When bridging is not the only thing you will need. Bridging moves your quarterly figures. It does not necessarily finish your tax return. Most of HMRC's directory cannot complete a single one of the 16 tax-return items, and if your bridging product is among them you will need a second product in the spring. That is legitimate, but it should be a decision rather than a surprise, and our guide to whether you need more than one MTD product walks through where the line falls.
When "cheapest" was never the real question. If two products differ by £30 a year and one saves you an afternoon a quarter, the £30 is not the number that matters.
Bridging-only: the thing to check before you pay
Not every bridging product is only a bridge. Some keep digital records as well, and can be your whole setup. Some cannot.
23of 127 (18%)do bridging only, with no digital record-keepingHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026That figure is the subset of bridging products graded not included for creating digital records. Practically, it means the product will take what is in your spreadsheet and send it to HMRC, and that is the entire relationship. Your spreadsheet is the only copy of your records. If you lose the file, corrupt a formula or mistype a date, the software has nothing to fall back on and no way to tell you.
VitalTax is a clear example: it is graded ready for bridging and not included for creating digital records, which is exactly what an Excel add-in should be. That is a feature if you want a pipe. It is a problem if you assumed you were buying a safety net.
| Product | Free | Digital records | Foreign property | Mobile app | Return items |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AbraTax MTD for Income Tax | Not included | Not included | Ready now | Not listed | 15/16 |
| VitalTax | Not included | Not included | Ready now | Android; Apple iOS | 9/16 |
| Otis Tax | Not included | Not included | Ready now | Not listed | 4/16 |
| Absolute Excel Income Tax Filer | Not included | Not included | Ready now | Not listed | 10/16 |
| MTD Sheets | Not included | Not included | Ready now | Not listed | 0/16 |
| Aligned.tax MTD for Spreadsheets | Ready now | Not included | Ready now | Not listed | 0/16 |
| Property Income eReturn | Not included | Not included | Ready now | Android; Apple iOS | 0/16 |
| 123 e-Filing MTD for Income Tax | Not included | Not included | Ready now | Not listed | 10/16 |
| Abridge (MTD for Excel/Sheets) | Ready now | Not included | Ready now | Android; Apple iOS | 15/16 |
| Acorah Software Products Ltd (TaxCalc) | Not included | Not included | Ready now | Not listed | 0/16 |
| MTD Companion for macOS | Not included | Not included | Ready now | Not listed | 16/16 |
| TaxUpdates | Ready now | Not included | Ready now | Not listed | 15/16 |
| flonancial | Ready now | Not included | Not included | Not listed | 0/16 |
| suiteSheets | Not included | Not included | Not included | Not listed | 0/16 |
| @1TaxFiler | Not included | Not included | Ready now | Not listed | 0/16 |
| Andica MTD ITSA Software | Not included | Not included | Ready now | Not listed | 0/16 |
| 100PcMTD | Not included | Not included | Ready now | Not listed | 0/16 |
| MTD Companion for iPhone & iPad | Not included | Not included | Ready now | Apple iOS | 16/16 |
| @Taxd MTD | Not included | Not included | Not included | Not listed | 0/16 |
| Acctax (Online) Ltd | Not included | Not included | Ready now | Not listed | 0/16 |
| 1 1 MTD Bridge | Not included | Not included | Ready now | Not listed | 0/16 |
| CHM ITSA BRIDGE | Not included | Not included | Ready now | Not listed | 0/16 |
| Taxtool for Income Tax | Not included | Not included | Ready now | Not listed | 3/16 |
Two practical consequences. Back the file up somewhere that is not your laptop, because HMRC expects your digital records to survive for at least five years after the 31 January deadline for that tax year. And read the return items column above before you commit: a bridging product with none of the 16 items ready will handle your quarters and leave you shopping again before your final declaration.
Taking the template into TapTax
If you decide the spreadsheet is a good starting point rather than a permanent home, the template is built to move.
Save or export the Transactions sheet as CSV and upload it to TapTax. The column headers in the template match a built-in import preset exactly, so the importer recognises Date, Description, Category, Money In and Money Out automatically and you are never asked to map columns by hand. Money In and Money Out stay as separate columns, so nothing has to be re-signed. Dates are read as DD/MM/YYYY. A unit test in our own codebase reads the published template and asserts the importer still recognises it, which is what stops the file you downloaded and the software you upload it into drifting apart six months from now.
CSV import is on the free tier, capped at ten imports and 10,000 rows a month with a 5,000-row limit per file, which is comfortably more than a year of a normal sole trader's transactions. Re-uploading the same file is a no-op rather than a double count, so you can correct and re-import without creating duplicates.
One thing to be straight about, because it should affect your decision: TapTax is MTD-compatible, built directly on HMRC's Making Tax Digital APIs, and going through HMRC's recognition process. It was not on the directory at the 9 August 2026 scrape, so it is not a row in any of the tables on this page. Every product named above is listed today and we are not. If a published HMRC listing before you commit is essential to you, that is a fair reason to choose from the listed products, and the full directory is filterable by bridging, free tier and return items.
And if the template is all you wanted, take it and go. It is genuinely free, it will not email you, and it works just as well feeding one of the free bridging tools as it does feeding us. What we would rather you did not do is keep records in a spreadsheet all year without checking, early, how those figures are getting to HMRC. That check costs nothing in August and quite a lot in January.
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