Sage, the UK's biggest accounting software company, is hosting a UK Summit in East London this week.
The event taking place at ExCel in London Docklands on 5-6 April is a new initiative for the company. Previously, it put on global Sage Summits in North America that attracted thousands of Sage customers from around the world.
But bigger isn't always better when it comes to accounting software. As Xero and QuickBooks have also done, Sage is taking its message to people in their home countries, with a spring 2017 tour that will take in Paris, Madrid, Melbourne, Berlin, Johannesburg, Singapore, Atlanta and Toronto as well as London.
For UK businesses and accountants, the “act local” element of the UK Sage Summit will home in on the issue dominating many accountants' lives at the moment: Making Tax Digital
Like other developers, Sage has been working with HMRC to embed the application programming interfaces (APIs) in Sage tax and practice tools that will let accountants access client data from their personal tax accounts.
“We’ve been working alongside HMRC on this for some time and will use Sage Summit to give our customers more information about what will be required,” said Coulson Grieveson, Sage’s product marketing manager for Making Tax Digital.
Sage has invited HMRC's MTD programme director Theresa Middleton and her colleagues to take part in two MTD panel discussions at its summit; one on Wednesday for practitioners chaired by AccountingWEB's John Stokdyk and one for business delegates chaired by our business editor Tom Herbert.
“Accountants, [Sage] partners and customers need to be ready for this change,” said Grieveson. “You’ll be able to pitch your questions to our panel of experts to find out more about Making Tax digital, how it could impact your practice, how it could impact the way you manage your customers, and what it means to you as a small business.”
The event will also feature a dedicated MTD stand where visitors can get detailed help and support from HMRC and Sage Staff.
You can find out more about this spring's line up of accounting events from a lively recent debate in Any Answers.
