How do you do it

How do you do it

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My problem is the drive towards the digital age and whilst I am all for it there are serious problems - Take RTI (I wish somebody would!!!).  As I say I think it is wonderful that we can do something, click a few buttons, transmit it round the World and a few seconds later have a reply back stating it has been receceived. Brilliant but what happens when the wheel comes off the wagon.  I mention RTI in particular because there are a whole serries of hurdles for the small practice.  First of all you have the problem of obtaining the hours.  No matter how hard you jump up and down there is always someone who forgets to send the hours through on the day in question or the person is rushed into hospital - the result is the RTI is late.  In my practice I also rely on two major ingredients: Electricity and an Internet connection - these are things we take for granted but these days I am struggling with them.  Every day now I seem to have people complaining they cannot get on the internet for one reason or the other.  It is not surprising when every street I seem to drive down has Telecom engineers installing Super Fast Broadband (if only!!).  They also use those funny diggers and what do all the operatives tell you, "I was digging this trench the other day and there was this flash and I hit a cable that was not supposed to be there".  Where do we stand?  As far as the client is concerned they expect us to stop them getting fines.  Okay if they are late then we have a slight chance but with the intenet there is virtually no evidence that we cannot file when we require to file.  My internet would just not connect the other day.  You are going through that many servers who knows which one is not connecting with which.  Of course if you are using a desk top you need electricity - it tends to go off with me quite frequently but on the larger picture is not off for long and it is on virtually most of the year but it always seems to be just when you don't want it the most.  Also there are software problems, I buy a single licence so I could bundle my equipment in the back of the car and take it to the otherside of town and set it up there and see if it would file - problem is who is paying for this????  As far as HMRC are concerned they will issue a penalty and expect 'Their Customer' to pay it who will immediately pass it on to me and I in one sense will feel obliged to pay it but then if if cost me a fortune to get it there in the first instance then I am tempted to throw a wobbler.  Of course there is always "Reasonable Excuse"  but of course most of the time I have no provable evidence.  I am greatly concerned that under due diligence I am sending highly sensitive information all over the place - I did try encryption but most of my clients could not get their heads round it.  Digital is great when it is working well!  Mind you I never really trusted the post office and before computers took off I used to hand deliver stuff to my local tax office - I do not fancy walking to my nearest tax office now because no one will tell me where it is!  This is all keeping up with progress BUT HOW DO I GUARD MY OWN BACK SUCESSFULLY especially when there are so many areas I have no control over whatsoever?

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By Sarah P
28th Apr 2015 12:29

It's all about mitigating risk

You can't operate completely risk-free, you just have to assess what the significant risks are and try to mitigate against them.

Taking your two particular points:

Online filing - I always make it clear to clients that they have to provide the information in time if they want to guarantee it will be filed on time.  For RTIs, they have to give me timesheets by the 15th if they want to make payments on the 20th for example.  That gives me 5 days to get the RTI done, which should deal with any internet issues.  Self-assessment - they have to provide all the information by 30th September to hit the 31st January deadline.  Clearly there are clients who never hit the deadline, but then it's their look-out if the filing is late.

Emailing and encryption etc - I give clients a password and then password-protect email attachments.  If they moan because they keep forgetting the password, then they can ask me to send them unprotected - then that's their risk not mine.

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