Every business has important dates to remember!
VAT Quarterly (or Monthly), filed one month and 7 days later paid by one month and 10 days later
PAYE/CIS Monthly – tax period to 5th of the month, filed by 19th paid by 22nd (you should remember monthly tasks without reminders)
RTI/FPS/EPS everytime you pay employees (you probably don’t need to be reminded to do this)
Company Accounts – due 9 months after year end, corporation tax payable 9 months and 1 day after year end
Self Assessment payments on account in January and July
Annual Returns on the 12 month anniversary of when the company started
HMRC and Companies House apply tough penalties for filing late!
Its a common problem area, the fine comes in and then accountant and client blame each other
Its easy to understand how very large accounting practices simply lose track of when things need to be done
But it doesn’t have to be like this.
There are lots of ways your accountant could keep track of all the deadlines
Here is a list that I found on accountingweb posted by Howard Marks http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/anyanswers/question/practice-management-ultimate-list
AffinityLive (not accountant specific)
Work etc (not accountant specific)
My personal favourite is PracticeFlow, I have started using it for Bicknell Business Advisers.
Its not just dates you need to keep track of, if you are going to send out client reminders you will need UTR’s and amounts due. You Also need to track tasks and who has been allocated the work. PracticeFlow helps us do all of this and you can set sub-tasks and have 3 dates – start, planned to complete and deadline.
So why isn’t your accountant reminding you of important dates?
Last minute panics or penalties can be very stressful, makesure you know your deadlines or get reminders so that you can relax!
