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Bookkeeping blues

8th Apr 2018
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I'm working on the books of a client who insists on using his own hand-designed spreadsheets.

Every year I feel a very real sinking of my heart when his books come in.

His spreadsheets are never added up correctly. There are always casting errors, formulae missing out odd lines, VAT calculated at 20% of the gross instead of 20% of the net. To cap it all, he without fail misses out transfers between his bank accounts - of which he has about five - from the list of transactions.

With all that, it takes me several days to prepare a full working papers file.

Henry summons me to his office.

"Can you explain why it took you so long to complete this file, Alice?" he asks. "You're usually much quicker than this. I can't charge the client for all this time. What happened?"

"His records happened," I say crossly. "Honestly, Henry, it took me all that time to correct the errors on his spreadsheet. Has anyone ever taught him how to keep a set of books?"

Henry looks a bit nonplussed.

"Shouldn't we be giving him some guidance on that?" I push. "Especially with MTD coming over the horizon. He won't be able to use his spreadsheets in the very near future. Shouldn't we look at getting him on Xero, or FreeAgent, or Sage One? Something he can manage easily?"

"I'll think about it," Henry says.

I do wonder if we have a strategy for getting clients like this one ready for MTD. It's only a year away now and surely we need to be preparing our spreadsheet users and our farmers and pub owners who still keep their records by hand? But what do I know, I'm just an accounts senior.

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