I would think that very much depends on your previous accounting knowledge, tech skills and time.My Accountant has recommended Xero and wants to set it up and give me training at a cost of £400. Do you think set up and training is needed.
£400 sounds excessive.My Accountant has recommended Xero and wants to set it up and give me training at a cost of £400. Do you think set up and training is needed.
Is the app with Quickbooks any good for taking pics and putting straight into the program. I’m on sage and use auto entry as an extra, and find it good, but it’s an extra cost, and my accountant is nudging me towards Quickbooks, saying it has the equivalent in the app? That would probably sway me to move to keep her happy, but otherwise I’d stick with what I am doing, as she says she’s not massively bothered.
That's what I use, have made my own spreadsheet based system that does the vat automatically and then end of year and from there into profit and loss, took a bit of time but once set up was easy to use, I'm too tight to pay an accountant to do tax returnsI use Cirrostratus Exedra (now called VAT Direct):
VAT Direct - Free Making Tax Digital bridging system and cloud cashbooks for smaller businesses
VAT direct offer a free service for submitting vat returns for making tax digitalwww.vat.direct
Allows you to upload the correct files (from your spreadsheet system) to HMRC yourself using their API. And the basic service is free..........
What exactly do the gov want, do you have to give them your digitised invoices or do they still only want the same boxes filling in on some other programme?
This is just the start of the process, the end game is your tax return will be done the same way and if I understood it correctly you will be paying tax quarterly( Ithink it was quarterly not monthly)in real time, which is fine if you have regulars bills and income but a real pain if it's very irregular.What exactly do the gov want, do you have to give them your digitised invoices or do they still only want the same boxes filling in on some other programme?
I don't have a problem with the gradual phase to digital. I am concerned by an increased frequency of tax returns though... tax returns are rather more complex than the VAT return, they cover far more than simply bank transactions. Tax is paid on profit not on turnover.... For starters a monthly tax return would mean having to make monthly valuation adjustments. I could easily find I owe £20,0000 tax one month and be owed £1000 back every month for the rest of the year!I understand that there is a timeline, from this July all VAT to be digital and next July all tax to be the same. As others say this is OK for business’s which have regular cash flows etc. but for people like farmers I am not certain how it will work
I totally agree, it is one thing the owner of Marks and Spencers calculating they sold £100,000,000 of which 20m is wages 10m is rent 30m to suppliers etc.I don't have a problem with the gradual phase to digital. I am concerned by an increased frequency of tax returns though... tax returns are rather more complex than the VAT return, they cover far more than simply bank transactions. Tax is paid on profit not on turnover.... For starters a monthly tax return would mean having to make monthly valuation adjustments. I could easily find I owe £20,0000 tax one month and be owed £1000 back every month for the rest of the year!
I am afraid this is what our business friendly Conservative chancellor has signed us all up to!I don't see accountants have got enough time in the year to do quarterly returns on behalf of their clients so to me that makes it a non-starter not really worth worrying about.