Why doesn’t my accountant remind me to do things?

Calendar with thubmjacks

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

Late Filing Stats

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

businesswoman is very multitasking

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)

BTC PM Solution

Capium Practice Management

CCH Practice Management

CentreCRM

Digita Practice Management

Firmzen

Glide

HQ4A

Iris Practice Management

Logical Office

MB Practice Manager

OMS

Practice Flow

Practice Launchpad

Work etc (not accountant specific)

WorkflowMAX

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!

Working by the sea

 

steve@bicknells.net