Further to my question on which software to advise clients to use I just wondered how all this is going to work!
My clients in the main do not keep books nor do they wish to! I am going to have to do their books myself using some simple software.
I am concocting a plan on how to manage say 100 clients and I suppose it looks like this.
1) Make a list of clients that this applies to and disregard the tax return only clients (other than landlords).
2) Make a very short list of those who could manage their own software - 5%?
3) Get the rest to pay everything through the bank where possible and get the bank transactions downloaded monthly onto my software.
4) I choose monthly so I am only a month behind hopefully.
5) After the first month or so software knows where to put stuff (I can see problems there!)
6) I (with help!) go through each client and ensure the transactions are more or less perfect. Get client to email cash and credit card info (nightmare).
7) Quarterly upload to HMRC and botch where necessary. The botching should reduce as we go on but their will be botching I am sure.
8) Quarter 5 do the accounts properly which shouldnt take too long but will have months to do that?
9) Bill monthly my time and software cost. I will probably start from April 2022 with the better clients just to get used to this scheme. Any ideas would be helpful. No abuse thanks!
Is anybody thinking the same way as me? My clients generally just leave a bag and some bank statements. They pay £400 or less in the main - I think the may have to pay £60 a month inc VAT so I make more money but possibly die early of stress! I detest deadlines!
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I am of the view that for the smaller businesses the cash basis of tax reporting has to be a much simpler approach. What I am suggesting personally is that getting the tax quarters and tax year aligned makes things a lot easier. I have one person doing monthly VAT and ITSA accounts, but I think quarterly is probably best.