Two choices:
1) do lots of in person networking. Over time you'll get weird and wonderful enquiries from people who know and trust you. High variety of work.
2) decide on a niche. Focus your marketing on that. Tailor your website, decide where to comment etc. Be the expert in that. Low variety of work.
If you're a good people person and want high variety of work to keep it interesting/you on your toes, go for option 1.
If you're more business focused, happy with less variety so you can streamline/rarely be outside comfort zone technically, go for option 2.
Can't help directly, but have exactly the same situation with Senta -> Iris Practice Management. It's one problem after another, and they don't seem to care the negative impact each problem has on us/clients.
We use Taxcalc for all our various tax returns. I gather it's more expensive than Taxfiler is/was, but it's reliable.
With my MVL Online hat on we've wondered this, though not got a cast iron answer.
When appointed as liquidator we submit £nil CT return for brief dormant period between last trading one the client's accountant submitted and liquidation start date. 99% of the time this is fine.
However, we've noticed for clients that have previously been struck off (not that uncommon, where people leave their dormant company sitting there just in case they want to use it in future, refuse to pay an accountant as it's not doing anything), these submission attempts get rejected.
When we've got letters with the UTR, it seems to still be the "old" one, ie what we've tried to submit with.
We've ended up calling the HMRC helpline and getting them to agree to mark the periods as dormant their end, so no CT return expected. Doesn't answer your question...but you have my sympathies, you're not alone in having issues/confusion on this. Of course what we've done won't work if the company continued to trade!
When you talk about signing in the box, I'm guessing you mean a visible mock hand written signature? It doesn't do that, and TBF quite a few e-sig things don't. Legally I don't think it's the important bit, that's just for visuals/old fashioned folk who expect to see "a signature".
More generally, like cinnamint, we're long term Senta users. Iris PM (which for a sideline business I do use directly) is currently a poor immitation, with much worse support. Very frustrating.
If you're not tied in any way, I'd strongly recommend you look at other options.
It's basically a not as good version of Senta, which Iris bought a couple of years ago.
If you currently don't use anything like this, and have more than a handful of clients, you may find it a gamechanger (albeit after a bit of effort getting it set up how you want it).
We used Fastpay for many years. Generally v happy with them.
The main issue was relative to GoCardless they didn't integrate nicely with FreeAgent. So we'd have 2 separate systems. FreeAgent doing the invoicing, then us keeping a separate spreadsheet for the DD. We'd need to manually update it with any changes to clients/amounts due etc. We'd then need to manually allocate the big DD receipt across the various invoices on FreeAgent. Time consuming, and a source of human errors.
Moving to GoCardless for us was a slight increase in price, but not much. It was faff in the changeover. But now the collections and allocations are automatic. Big time saving, and no more scope for human error.
Anyway, I believe Fastpay integrates ok with things like Xero...so may be worth a look depending on your setup.
Typically to get the insurance, they'll want to do some kind of "audit" on your IT/working practices. I'm of the view this adds value (prevention is better than cure)...but if you trust your existing IT guys, you may already have that covered.
As for the insurance itself...not something we've gone for. If the worst happens, you may have lost a ton of essential data making continued work v hard, reputation in tatters, and possibly grief from the ICO. I don't see trying to make a claim from insurers who'll inevitably try to wriggle out of anything will help you much in this scenario.
My answers
Two choices:
1) do lots of in person networking. Over time you'll get weird and wonderful enquiries from people who know and trust you. High variety of work.
2) decide on a niche. Focus your marketing on that. Tailor your website, decide where to comment etc. Be the expert in that. Low variety of work.
If you're a good people person and want high variety of work to keep it interesting/you on your toes, go for option 1.
If you're more business focused, happy with less variety so you can streamline/rarely be outside comfort zone technically, go for option 2.
"Find a niche".
Ignored that advice, why eliminate lots of potential clients?!
Regretted ignoring that advice, struggled for a year, before falling into a niche.
Can't help directly, but have exactly the same situation with Senta -> Iris Practice Management. It's one problem after another, and they don't seem to care the negative impact each problem has on us/clients.
We use Taxcalc for all our various tax returns. I gather it's more expensive than Taxfiler is/was, but it's reliable.
With my MVL Online hat on we've wondered this, though not got a cast iron answer.
When appointed as liquidator we submit £nil CT return for brief dormant period between last trading one the client's accountant submitted and liquidation start date. 99% of the time this is fine.
However, we've noticed for clients that have previously been struck off (not that uncommon, where people leave their dormant company sitting there just in case they want to use it in future, refuse to pay an accountant as it's not doing anything), these submission attempts get rejected.
When we've got letters with the UTR, it seems to still be the "old" one, ie what we've tried to submit with.
We've ended up calling the HMRC helpline and getting them to agree to mark the periods as dormant their end, so no CT return expected. Doesn't answer your question...but you have my sympathies, you're not alone in having issues/confusion on this. Of course what we've done won't work if the company continued to trade!
I'd suggest you think of it more as part of your sales/marketing costs.
As others have said, trying to charge that to the client when others don't may well lead to them not joining you in the first place.
Senta -> Iris Practice Management = similar experience.
When you talk about signing in the box, I'm guessing you mean a visible mock hand written signature? It doesn't do that, and TBF quite a few e-sig things don't. Legally I don't think it's the important bit, that's just for visuals/old fashioned folk who expect to see "a signature".
More generally, like cinnamint, we're long term Senta users. Iris PM (which for a sideline business I do use directly) is currently a poor immitation, with much worse support. Very frustrating.
If you're not tied in any way, I'd strongly recommend you look at other options.
It's basically a not as good version of Senta, which Iris bought a couple of years ago.
If you currently don't use anything like this, and have more than a handful of clients, you may find it a gamechanger (albeit after a bit of effort getting it set up how you want it).
We used Fastpay for many years. Generally v happy with them.
The main issue was relative to GoCardless they didn't integrate nicely with FreeAgent. So we'd have 2 separate systems. FreeAgent doing the invoicing, then us keeping a separate spreadsheet for the DD. We'd need to manually update it with any changes to clients/amounts due etc. We'd then need to manually allocate the big DD receipt across the various invoices on FreeAgent. Time consuming, and a source of human errors.
Moving to GoCardless for us was a slight increase in price, but not much. It was faff in the changeover. But now the collections and allocations are automatic. Big time saving, and no more scope for human error.
Anyway, I believe Fastpay integrates ok with things like Xero...so may be worth a look depending on your setup.
Typically to get the insurance, they'll want to do some kind of "audit" on your IT/working practices. I'm of the view this adds value (prevention is better than cure)...but if you trust your existing IT guys, you may already have that covered.
As for the insurance itself...not something we've gone for. If the worst happens, you may have lost a ton of essential data making continued work v hard, reputation in tatters, and possibly grief from the ICO. I don't see trying to make a claim from insurers who'll inevitably try to wriggle out of anything will help you much in this scenario.