Gathering the paperwork first makes the appointment shorter and the figures better, and how your payment is worked out explains what happens to them afterwards.

There is one Scottish point nobody makes, and it is worth knowing before you start. The tool a money adviser uses for a statutory solution is prescribed, and the tool a plan provider uses is not.

Income, essential expenditure and debts. Everything else in a budget conversation is detail hanging off one of those three.

What to gather

National Debtline’s Scottish guide describes the exercise as household income, minus essential expenses, with the remainder available for debt repayment.

Start with what is already in the house

Most of this exists already, in a drawer or in your banking app. The job is collecting it in one place rather than finding anything new.

Anything you cannot find can be asked for. Creditors have to be able to tell you what you owe and how the figure is made up.

Three months rather than one

One month is a snapshot and rarely a fair one. Three months of statements shows the pattern, including the costs that only arrive quarterly.

Where your pay varies, take a realistic average. A budget built on your best month collapses in your worst one.

For a plan, whichever one the provider uses. For the Scottish statutory routes it is prescribed by regulation 15(1), which names the Common Financial Statement.

Two names that are not the same document

Most sources name the Standard Financial Statement, which is the tool used elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Regulations that would have moved Scotland to it were drafted in 2018 and never made.

Guidance that treats the two names as interchangeable is describing a document that does not exist. In Scotland they behave differently and only one of them is prescribed.

Why it matters here

A programme under the Debt Arrangement Scheme may only be approved in accordance with the common financial tool under regulation 24(1A), in force since 1 April 2015.

Regulation 16 of the same Scottish regulations deals with how the assessment is carried out, and there is no equivalent for an informal plan at all.

The practical difference

A prescribed tool gives everyone the same starting point and the same allowances. An unprescribed one means the answer can differ between providers on the same figures.

So ask your provider

Ask which tool it uses and which spending guidelines sit behind the figures. The answer tells you how much room the budget really allows.

The comparison between the two routes sets out what else changes with the tool.

Everything that reaches the household, not only your wages. Leaving something out produces a surplus the budget cannot actually sustain.

The list

• Wages or salary, taking the net figure that lands in your account.
• Benefits and tax credits, with the award letters.
• Pensions, including any private pension in payment.
• Maintenance received, and any contribution from another adult in the home.
• Self-employed income, with the most recent accounts or tax return.

Take the figure that actually arrives

Use net pay after tax, National Insurance and pension contributions. The gross figure on the contract is not the money the household lives on.

Overtime, bonuses and variable pay

Give the realistic figure rather than the best one. An offer that assumes overtime you cannot count on is an offer you will have to revisit.

Payments can be changed later when circumstances move, which changing your plan payment covers.

The costs of running the household, in full. Ongoing rent, mortgage, council tax and utility bills come first, before any surplus exists at all.

What goes in

• Rent or mortgage, buildings insurance and any factor’s charges.
• This year’s council tax, water and sewerage charges, gas and electricity.
• Food, toiletries and household goods.
• Travel to work, and the real cost of running a car if you need one.
• Childcare, school costs, care costs and health costs.
• Insurance, phone and broadband.

Housing costs come out in full

The ongoing rent or mortgage is paid in full before anything at all reaches a creditor inside the plan. No arrangement is worth putting the roof over your head at risk for.

What people leave out and should not

Annual and irregular costs are the usual casualties. School uniforms, vets, dentists, car servicing and replacing a washing machine all belong in a budget meant to last for years.

So does a small buffer for the unexpected. A plan with no room in it breaks at the first repair.

Be honest about the difficult ones

Tobacco, a pet, a subscription that keeps the family sane: leaving them out does not make them stop happening. A budget that hides them fails quietly a few months later.

Ongoing bills are never inside the plan

This month’s rent and this year’s council tax are living costs rather than debts. Which debts can go into a plan sets out what belongs inside one.

The creditor’s name, the account number, the balance and who owns the debt now. A list with gaps in it produces an offer creditors cannot check.

Getting the list right

Debts get sold, so the company writing to you may not be the one you borrowed from. Ask for a statement if you are unsure what the balance actually is.

The offer to each creditor is normally proportionate to its balance, so an inaccurate list changes everybody’s share. How the payment is split shows the arithmetic.

Which debts stay outside

Those rules bind only firms the Financial Conduct Authority regulates. They do not reach your council for council tax, HMRC, or the Child Maintenance Service.

Council tax arrears, fines, tax arrears and child maintenance are priority debts in Scotland and are dealt with separately, which council tax arrears in a plan explains.

Debts that belong to somebody else too

Say which debts are joint and which somebody has guaranteed. The other person is still liable whatever you agree with the creditor.

And tell the provider about anything already happening

A decree, a charge for payment or a deduction already coming off your pay changes what the plan can do. None of it is a reason not to get advice.

Because the offer goes out in your name and creditors judge it. CONC 8.3.2 is a rule about the advice a firm gives and the action it takes for you.

What you should be given

CONC 8.3.1 is a rule requiring pre-contract information in a durable medium, and it runs to fourteen numbered limbs.

The Financial Conduct Authority’s definition of a plan assumes a third party administering it, so the paperwork is part of what you are getting.

Verification is normal

Expect to be asked for evidence of what you have said. A statement backed by documents is the one a creditor is most likely to accept.

Read the statement before it goes

It is being sent on your behalf and it is the document a creditor is assessing. An error in the expenditure column is the easiest way to end up with a payment you cannot keep.

No creditor has to accept a debt management plan, and nothing requires one to give a reason for refusing.

Free providers do this too

StepChange, National Debtline and Christians Against Poverty all work through the same figures at no charge, and how to set a plan up covers the rest of the process.

Anything a council or a sheriff officer has already done. Those are the things a plan cannot hold back and an adviser needs to know first.

The list to hand over

Where a deduction is already running, the figures come from the tables in Schedule 2 to the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 as substituted by SSI 2024/293 from 6 April 2025, and how much they can take works through them.

A plan does not reach any of it

Whether a plan stops a wage arrestment gives the answer, and it is the reason to raise an arrestment at the first appointment rather than the third.

Bring the letters, not a summary of them

The dates on a charge for payment or an arrestment schedule decide what options are still open. A summary from memory is rarely accurate enough to act on.

Where to get free help with the figures

Citizens Advice Scotland, StepChange, National Debtline and Advice Direct Scotland all do this at no charge, and National Debtline’s Scottish guidance screens for whether a plan fits before setting one up.