"Still need to give then the journal to fix the issue though."
But is it reasonable to assume that having had 4 sets of figures during the year, HMRC will require additional documentation over and above what's sensible, in order to allow an adjustment to fix the issue? Because the software must have been right in the first place, no?
As to why HMRC consulted the software companies and not the accountants, i had a strong suspicion when MTD VAT came in that it was being driven the other way round. That is, the software companies lobbied HMRC saying "our software could do X and so now you can mandate everyone to make frequent returns because they can always use our software to support and submit it". And HMRC having no interest beyond grabbing tax and no belief other than that every small business person is out to cheat them, thought "What a good idea" and went ahead.
So the real beneficiaries are the software companies who have made it so easy to prepare your accounts that all you have to do is take a photo of a receipt on your phone and the job is done. At least until the investigation comes in.
Correct. I have a new client at present where the previous bookkeeper didn't appear to notice that, for a period, Xero was happily doubling up income by booking it twice: once based on invoices from Woocommerce and again from receipts imported from Stripe. So much for "automation" making records more reliable.
Two thoughts:
1/ I have avague memory that Windows 10 was going to be the last version with a number as it would just be continuously upgraded. Or maybe that was the Excel & Office statement.
2/ What an amazing idea - to be able to undock the ribbon and move it around on your window! Fantastically convenient. And so similar to what one used to be able to do with toolbars before the ribbon was introduced!!! About 10 years ago. Sigh.
I'm afraid I'm still sulking after they pulled out of the UK personal finance software market years ago and left it to the inferior M'soft product. At that stage. adapting to the UK market was in the "too difficult" bracket. And yes, I do know that QuickBooks always was different to Quicken. Just let me have my gripes, ok?
If ever there was a clear example of the need for tax system simplification, this has to be it. When the tax administration cannot cope with specifying correctly how the system is supposed to work you have pretty much reached peak practical complexity. Which is not to say that further complexity isn't possible, just that beyond this point there's no hope of dealin with it properly.
As someone who's both an accountant and a small holiday based business (although not 7 days a week, thank God) I whole-heartedly endorse your comment. With the additional thought that in my sector we barely scrape a profit and that was before the business rate rise.
I'm in the happy position of having trained first as a developer then as an accountant. I agree with a lot of the above, particularly the "laziness" aspect and not reinventing the wheel.
Examples:
1 Years back when I was last consulting, my colleagues used to rewrite package requirement specs each time for every client. With the advent of the word processor I realised a lot of the text stayed constant and so I rewrote a typical spec as a template with clearly indicated slots for essential changes like client name, business sector, etc. Any really earth-shaking requirements outside the normal list went into a freshly drafted appendix - which also had the advantage of making them easier to find for the responding supplier. My colleagues adopted it without even being pressed.
2 To this day I hate doing aynthing overly reptitive and so I've developed a specialism in automating processes, either with Excel macros (eg to reformat the aged debtors report the same way every week) or scripting software (eg to take over the user's screen and work through the extract or update routines to documentation repositories, doing the same thing 50, 100, etc over and over without breaks).
My answers
"Still need to give then the journal to fix the issue though."
But is it reasonable to assume that having had 4 sets of figures during the year, HMRC will require additional documentation over and above what's sensible, in order to allow an adjustment to fix the issue? Because the software must have been right in the first place, no?
As to why HMRC consulted the software companies and not the accountants, i had a strong suspicion when MTD VAT came in that it was being driven the other way round. That is, the software companies lobbied HMRC saying "our software could do X and so now you can mandate everyone to make frequent returns because they can always use our software to support and submit it". And HMRC having no interest beyond grabbing tax and no belief other than that every small business person is out to cheat them, thought "What a good idea" and went ahead.
So the real beneficiaries are the software companies who have made it so easy to prepare your accounts that all you have to do is take a photo of a receipt on your phone and the job is done. At least until the investigation comes in.
Correct. I have a new client at present where the previous bookkeeper didn't appear to notice that, for a period, Xero was happily doubling up income by booking it twice: once based on invoices from Woocommerce and again from receipts imported from Stripe. So much for "automation" making records more reliable.
"Never be first; never be biggest" as one of my bosses used to say about both hardware and software.
I think we both actually know that means giving you news you don't want at times you don't want it.
Two thoughts:
1/ I have avague memory that Windows 10 was going to be the last version with a number as it would just be continuously upgraded. Or maybe that was the Excel & Office statement.
2/ What an amazing idea - to be able to undock the ribbon and move it around on your window! Fantastically convenient. And so similar to what one used to be able to do with toolbars before the ribbon was introduced!!! About 10 years ago. Sigh.
I'm afraid I'm still sulking after they pulled out of the UK personal finance software market years ago and left it to the inferior M'soft product. At that stage. adapting to the UK market was in the "too difficult" bracket. And yes, I do know that QuickBooks always was different to Quicken. Just let me have my gripes, ok?
If ever there was a clear example of the need for tax system simplification, this has to be it. When the tax administration cannot cope with specifying correctly how the system is supposed to work you have pretty much reached peak practical complexity. Which is not to say that further complexity isn't possible, just that beyond this point there's no hope of dealin with it properly.
As someone who's both an accountant and a small holiday based business (although not 7 days a week, thank God) I whole-heartedly endorse your comment. With the additional thought that in my sector we barely scrape a profit and that was before the business rate rise.
I'm in the happy position of having trained first as a developer then as an accountant. I agree with a lot of the above, particularly the "laziness" aspect and not reinventing the wheel.
Examples:
1 Years back when I was last consulting, my colleagues used to rewrite package requirement specs each time for every client. With the advent of the word processor I realised a lot of the text stayed constant and so I rewrote a typical spec as a template with clearly indicated slots for essential changes like client name, business sector, etc. Any really earth-shaking requirements outside the normal list went into a freshly drafted appendix - which also had the advantage of making them easier to find for the responding supplier. My colleagues adopted it without even being pressed.
2 To this day I hate doing aynthing overly reptitive and so I've developed a specialism in automating processes, either with Excel macros (eg to reformat the aged debtors report the same way every week) or scripting software (eg to take over the user's screen and work through the extract or update routines to documentation repositories, doing the same thing 50, 100, etc over and over without breaks).