Under MTD do tills have to be integrated?

For retail clients do they have to integrate their tills with their accounts digitally?

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The whole MTD digital connectivity piece has left me with a question

Do shops and other outlets have to link their tills to their accounts or can they simply input the daily takings figures?

Replies (12)

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ALISK
By atleastisoundknowledgable...
25th Apr 2018 15:21

My understanding is that it’s only the link from the VAT workings to HMRC that has to be automated, how it gets into those workings is up to you.

If you think about it logically (admittedly not a strength of HMRC), if the sales had to be automated into the software, surely the purchases should as well, which would mean that we’d all have to use ReceiptBank or AutoEntry on all purchase invoices.
So my vote is for “no”.

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RLI
By lionofludesch
25th Apr 2018 15:29

I vote no.

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By ireallyshouldknowthisbut
25th Apr 2018 15:33

No reason you can use days books.

This is part of why they are struggling to define the terms.

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KCL
By davidakime
25th Apr 2018 15:50

Thanks

Shame we can't all be made to use digital all the way in my book

At least that way we would all know what we have to do

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Replying to davidakime:
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By Cheshire
25th Apr 2018 16:22

Personally I cant see any enhancements from the current process. All it will do is cost us/our clients more money to achieve exactly the same payments made to HMRC.

Only winners are the software houses, assuming they have 'wittered' to HMRC about why they should not provide free software as was the original suggestion by them!t.

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Replying to davidakime:
paddle steamer
By DJKL
25th Apr 2018 16:54

Oh the joys.

Feeds from the till to the accounts software but all the issues of cash bankings not matching, payments made from cash to avoid bank charges from lodging the cash, deductions at source from Amex receipts re their charges (boy do I hate Amex) and trying to ensure that all the above squares so takings reconcille to bankings/cash expenditure. Or do we not bother tracking the errors and just assume the differences each week/month all get written off somewhere?

Then couple this with clients who ring things through incorrectly and with the whole lot flowing into the accounting system ,what do you get, a real mess.

Clients in my experience have an amazing capacity to develop new ways of destroying accounting systems.

The accountant's ability to segment data so that one can say check each day that takings less credit cards cards taken less Amex taken less cash bankings less expenses equals zero, and then adjust bankings for Amex charges is imho key to controlling retail systems especially when one does not have an in house finance team who are day to day on top of what is happening.

As always, accounts software is only as good as the data input , there are sound reasons for having a stage where the data is held in summary form prior to its entry into accounting software.

Of course my approach of designing excel sheets for my retail clients to input the data for my review appears to be heading for extinction, seems to me MTD will possibly result in a lot of cases with less accurate records and severe difficulties tracing errors, however may no longer be my problem as I possibly head for the hills shouting "I'm free"

The problem is you might know what you have to do, I might be able to learn what I have to do but I doubt a lot of my clients will ever learn or cope.

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Replying to DJKL:
RLI
By lionofludesch
25th Apr 2018 17:04

DJKL wrote:

Oh the joys.

John the Plumber is back !!!

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Replying to lionofludesch:
paddle steamer
By DJKL
25th Apr 2018 17:15

And I did not even mention the annoyance of having to input takings daily into software coupled with cash banking done weekly (as certainly five of my retail clients do), this then means will need to get them keeping a daily takings sheet showing what was taken, what was banked, what was spent, what cash carried, and pray with the cash carried forward they do not have an add error with the seven individual days or the c/fwd cash from one sheet to the next does not transpose digits on the way.

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Replying to DJKL:
RLI
By lionofludesch
25th Apr 2018 17:23

To be fair, HMRC have always required retailers to record takings on a daily basis.

On the other hand, I can't recall any sanctions against those who recorded weekly.

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Replying to lionofludesch:
paddle steamer
By DJKL
25th Apr 2018 17:33

Record Z daily onto an excel sheet for month then post sheet totals into accounts with each line on sheet squaring to the, cash movement for day, cash b/fwd and cash c/fwd and then bank the cash weekly. Works fine.

What we are getting is daily postings into the software where cash balance carries within same, fine if you understand systems and can check, lay people will however likely get lost in the system with its myriad transactions.

To my eye pushing daily posting into the accounts software is a recipe for disaster, yes I did it when I worked with Benetton in my early thirties (10 shops) back in the early 1990s but I knew what I was doing, we banked daily at each shop, no money was ever spent out of the till etc and we had distinct bank accounts for each shop to isolate errors, but for those not conversant with their debits and credits once mistakes happen they will likely compound unseen until the differences are too big to ignore.

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Glenn Martin
By Glenn Martin
25th Apr 2018 16:44

You don't need have them physically linked for MTD, although there is benefits to the owner/you of doing that from an operational point of view, I suspect that will become the norm over time.
(Ie so you benefit from it not just to comply with MTD)

I did attend one of the HMRC workshops though and they did say that sales needed to recorded daily as oppose to longer periods.

Although why this matters is beyond me unless in future they expect the digital submission to include transactional level data.

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By Duggimon
26th Apr 2018 12:35

Rebecca Hutton from HMRC was at Sage Sessions and stated that you can print out your Z readings and manually enter your daily totals, it's only the link from that point on that has to be digital.

She also confirmed that the magical software that will let you use Excel as your digital record will exist in time for April 2019, though since Sage aren't making it she didn't confirm who is.

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