Managing employee payroll records and the art of ballet
Payroll entry is a collaboration between accountants and their clients. It’s like an intricate dance, each relying on the other’s poise and grace.
The problem is the client only did one ballet lesson back when they were seven, and they are stepping on your toes.
The current back and forth system is clumsy and time consuming.
Clients keep track of their employees’ hours on timesheets (*shudders*), spreadsheets, word documents or sometimes even a napkin.
Then they send it to the payroll bureau who is then required to input the same data manually into their own system and no matter how perfect accountants are, they are mere humans and also make mistakes. So the margin for error is maximised by this manual duplication of data entry.
Not only that, but it takes for ever and let’s face it it’s boring. Those ballet classes are starting to look appealing. Hours are spent on this menial task of inputting payroll information into payroll systems.
More often than not there’s at LEAST one thing that needs to be redone because Dean forgot to tell you that one of his employees died three years ago and that Niamh (who’s 37) should have been paying student contributions all this time but this is of course all your fault because you are the bureau, how could you have let this happen?! How dare you!
The problem is that you are normally drip fed this information and it can get so bad you have to hunt your client down, kick in their door in the middle of the night while pointing a shotgun in their face and screaming “WHAT WAS ABDULLAH’S OFFICIAL START DATE” to get any information around here!
Well you can finally put that gun down because I have some good news for you! Brightpay have designed a new bit of kit as part of their BrightPay Connect Bureau Feature and it is a game-changer.
This new feature - called Client Payroll Entry - is precisely what it sounds like; a feature that gives payroll bureau the ability to send payroll requests to their clients. The client, (yes the CLIENT) then enters hours worked, additions, deductions and can even add new starters and all their details into BrightPay Connect through their online employer dashboard. The information entered by the client will then seamlessly flow through the portal and sync with the payroll software on the bureau's end! So this means:
- No more manual data duplication.
- Hours saved of administrative time (which could be spent down the pub or catching up on reruns of Four In A Bed).
- Increased transparency - no more being blamed for errors made by the clients as they now have control over their own data entry.
- No more having to ‘chase’ information and risk being jailed for life in the process.
- Automation will eliminate the email document exchange (woohoo!) and provide a more secure and accurate reading of timesheets.
- Potentially more ballet lessons?
So there you have it. Your payroll entry nightmare is now a seamless collaboration between you and your dance partner who is now as graceful as a gazelle and prancing around the place on their tiptoes while the crowds roar and throw roses at your feet.
Book your free demo today at HERE
Accountex calls for women to Speak Up
Diversity and gender equality are always in the headlines and the world of accountancy is no different, whether it’s partners in practice or pay parity.
In 2018 Accountex made big steps towards increasing the number of women speakers on its agenda-setting theatre programme.
The line-up included: HMRC boss Theresa Middleton; accountant and author Della Hudson; marketing expert Amanda C Watts; AI authority Caroline Plumb; and Elaine Clark of CheapAccounting with her popular round-table sessions. To name just a few.
Women in accountancy
Earlier in the year, at Accountex Summit North, the Women in Accountancy group was set up, thanks in no small part to Elaine.
For 2019, accountancy and finance’s biggest event – at ExCeL London on 1-2 May – is taking even greater strides to boost the number of women on the speaker programme. With that in mind, it has launched the Woman in Accountancy “Speak Up” Campaign
Accountex portfolio event director Zoe Lacey-Cooper says: “One of the most interesting discussions that we had at Accountex was about the lack of women speakers on the programme, and how women are less likely to put themselves forward to speak and why women are hesitant to speak up.
Submit speaker sessions
“So, for next year’s Accountex programme, we want more woman in accountancy and finance to “Speak up” and encourage more woman to submit speaker sessions.
“There are many woman influencers and experienced accountancy professionals, and many have probably got some great case studies and experiences to share with their peers.”
Zoe, who is spearheading the campaign alongside Elaine adds: “Standing up and speaking to an audience can be daunting, but we want to help and support those who would like to try it out and offer guidance from an experience presenter trainer who is also familiar with the accountancy profession.
Help and support
“Accountex has found a professional presenter trainer who not only runs her own accountancy and bookkeeping firm but is who is a drama teacher for Disney!”
That is Alexandra Bond-Burnett who runs Bond Ambition and who is keen to get involved in training accountants to be more confident with public speaking.
So please Speak Up! And talk to us about how we can help you to join the Accountex programme in 2019. Sign up here.
Change the question to get a different answer
It’s frustrating when you want to help a client improve their business but they just won’t take your advice.
The explanations I hear range from “they don’t want to pay for it” to “they’re just not interested” but, while I accept that some clients aren’t really business people at all but simply workers doing a job, I don’t accept that the majority of a typical client base fall into this category.
We see business as important and so we see the advice that we give clients to improve their businesses as very important. However, clients don’t necessarily see it the same way.
To many, their business is not a priority in itself but more a means to an end.
Other dreams
They work hard at their businesses in order to fulfil other dreams. Typically these will be related to their family and to creating a better world for them but could equally be for a collectable car, a sick relative, a change of lifestyle.
Giving the client things to do within their business has little impact if their goals lie elsewhere. Indeed, they can be seen counter-productive to the client, taking up more time and money that they want to spend instead on other personal things.
To get a more positive response, you need to link your advise to what really matters to them so that they can see where the true benefits end up.
Business goals
For example, rather than asking a client about their business goals, ask instead what matters to them more than anything else in the world. Get them talking about their lives and sharing their personal goals. Then, by understanding those, you can introduce their business into the conversation but within the context of their personal world.
Advice to improve their cash flow becomes more about the money they can spend on the family holiday. The strategies for effective management become more about spending time with the kids.
The most effective strategy we ever used for ‘converting’ clients to a more business advisory mindset was to show them how to manage their resources in order to get a family holiday the following year. When advice equals tangible, meaningful benefits then clients will pay and come back for more.
Get to know their personal world, not just the business one.
IRIS widens education reach with BioStore deal
IRIS Software Group today announced the acquisition of BioStore, a leading provider of identity management and cashless catering solutions to UK schools and businesses.
BioStore’s solutions are used by over 3,000 UK schools and sixth form colleges to improve and streamline access control and how catering services are delivered.
The acquisition extends the IRIS education portfolio, providing solutions to manage all aspects of school management, including finance, assets and communications.
School efficiency
Its ability to deliver a step-change in school efficiency and achieve value for money in the use of resources is a prime objective of many Academy and Academy Trusts.
BioStore will sit within the IRIS Education Division, which includes PS Financials financial management; Results Squared asset management and communications; and ParentMail online payment and parent engagement, which includes the prominent messaging apps, Looked After Call and Truancy Call.
More than 11,000 education organisations use IRIS solutions, which provide essential software to 60 per cent of UK academies and 82 per cent of large multi-academy Trusts.
Four million parents
IRIS also connects schools with over four million parents and guardians and sends over 300 million messages each year from schools to parents and guardians, helping to keep them informed and process payments for dinner money and other school items.
Kevin Dady, IRIS CEO, says: “BioStore has developed some game-changing technology for the education sector and I’m delighted to welcome the business to IRIS.
"Our mission is to help all education establishments become more efficient and productive by reducing administration and delivering services that benefit schools, colleges, students and parents. This acquisition is yet another step in helping us achieve this goal.”
Innovate further
Nigel Walker, managing director of BioStore, says: “We’re delighted to be part of IRIS Software Group where we can create even tighter integrations between our respective award-winning portfolios and innovate further.
"Together with IRIS we can offer schools and businesses an end to end solution, which creates value by making budgets go further.”
Who's making it less taxing for 200,000 start-ups?
More than 200,000 start-up businesses have been given a helping hand by the HMRC.
A streamlined company registration service, set up by the tax office and Companies House, aims to navigate the red tape hampering entrepreneurial endeavour.
So, when registering with Companies House, groups can also sign up for tax and HMRC’s digital obligations.
Industrial strategy
The change, which launched last year, removes the need for businesses to send duplicate information to both offices.
It's part of the government’s industrial strategy to reduce administrative burdens on small businesses.
Mel Stride, financial Secretary to the Treasury, says: “It’s never been easier to set-up a business in the UK. Reducing the administrative burden on small businesses is all part of this government’s commitment to support small business growth and cement Britain’s standing as a ‘Global Britain’.
Simplified process
“HMRC and Companies House are working hard to make business registration and tax easier. Previously the same information would need to be entered into a number of different platforms to register a company and register for tax, we have simplified that process.
"The government is committed to ensuring we can deliver a modern, digital tax system for all businesses and their agents supporting them to get their tax right and reducing the amount of tax lost through avoidable error.”
Backbone of the UK
Small business minister Kelly Tolhurst adds: “British small businesses, and the entrepreneurial spirit behind them, are the backbone of the UK economy employing over 16 million people up and down the country.
“Through our modern industrial strategy we are making it easier for small businesses to grow and flourish by investing in modern industries, infrastructure and skills, and making it easier to access finance.
"Anyone thinking of starting a new business in 2019 should check out the huge wealth of government advice and support available, and go for it.”
How wealth tax tweaks could raise £7bn a year
It's rare in polite circles to hear talk of tax rises. The idea of charging richer people extra for good public services (certainly as a mainstream concept) pretty much bit the dust at about the same time Margaret Thatcher hit the scene.
So it was interesting today to see a discussion about wealth taxation in Accountancy Daily. I mean, it's not exactly a bastion of left-wing politics!
Philip Hammond could raise £7bn a year by 2022-23 just by making tweaks to five wealth taxes according to Torsten Bell and Adam Corlett of the Resolution Foundation.
Significant progress
They say: "Raising taxes is never easy. Raising taxes with the government’s slim parliamentary majority is harder still, and raising taxes on wealth in those circumstances, given our diverging senses of fairness, is not a walk in the park. But that does not mean it does not need doing, and the good news is that significant progress can be made despite these constraints.
"There are three reasons it is needed. First, one of the biggest challenges facing our country is how to fund the rising cost of public service provision as the population ages.
"This demographic headwind and wider health cost pressures are set to increase the price tag of the current welfare state by £36bn a year by 2030, and £84bn by 2040.
"Second, we need to manage those pressures while avoiding the danger of further suppressing living standards growth for the working age population, which has already been the main victim of both the financial crisis and the long-lasting productivity slump that has followed.
Completely flat
"Third, wealth in the UK has grown significantly in recent decades while tax on it has remained completely flat. Since the 1980s wealth has surged from three to nearly seven times our GDP (or £13 trillion). It is simply a bigger feature of the modern UK, relative to income, than our political economy likes to admit."
Torsten and Adam believe progress can be made across five areas. Here are their views:
1. Limit entrepreneurs’ relief
"Entrepreneurs’ relief has cost £22bn over its first 10 years, giving a very small minority huge capital gains tax cuts with no evidence of anything to show for that huge bill. Worse still, new figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) show that the annual cost is now projected to rise from £2.6bn in 2018-19 (more than is spent on school sixth forms) to £3.9bn in 2023-24."
2. Tweak council tax
"Everyone knows council tax is in need of reform or – in our view – replacement, being more like the poll tax it was meant to replace than a genuine property tax. In Scotland the Greens have said that (further) reform of the tax would be the price of their support for an SNP Budget. Indeed Scotland has already made baby steps in the direction of a fair (proportional) property tax, with increases for the top bands of council tax and an increase in deductions for low earners.
England, they say, is stuck with the most regressive system in Britain. "Even just copying the marginally improved Scottish structure in England and Wales, would have raised an extra £1.1bn in 2015-16, while £0.7bn could be raised by removing the single person’s discount from the top bands. If those options are too scary, councils could also be given their own flexibility to increase the relative taxation of more expensive properties in their area (with some power over the multipliers that determine council tax rates for different bands of properties)."
3. Tighten up inheritance tax
"Inheritance tax manages to be a hot potato despite only a tiny minority ever having to pay it: one of the reasons why we’ve suggested replacing it entirely. But some changes could be made in the here and now without affecting most people. In 2020-21 people will be able to pass on £1m tax-free. Stopping there rather than continuing to increase the thresholds with inflation would be very sensible and raise £200m a year by 2022-23."
5. Fairer pensions tax relief
"There’s a case for completely reforming pension taxation, such as moving to flatter rates of tax relief or looking at the £17bn employer national insurance tax break for pension contributions.
"But a smaller change would be to reduce the maximum generosity of the tax-free lump sum. The current ability to take over £250,000 tax free is worth up to £119,000 to an additional rate taxpayer, £105,000 to a higher rate payer, £53,000 to a basic rate payer and nothing to lower income pensioners who’d be below the personal allowance each year anyway.
"That’s very generous, very regressive, and a strange incentive not to stagger your retirement income. Capping the tax-free lump sum at £40,000 would raise £2bn a year while leaving three quarters of future pensioners unaffected."
Sir Jon Thompson, knight of the HMRC
A new year's honours list that recognises 1960s model Twiggy and ex Monty Python globetrotter Michael Palin also has space for the country's top tax official.
Arise Sir Jon Thompson, who took on the £200,000-odd-a-year chief exec job at HMRC in 2016.
Incidentally, I'm not sure how that salary stacks up with the "services" to the taxpayer knighthood tag. (Although if you compare £200k with the eye-watering £5.7m average annual bonanza for an FTSE 100 company CEO, it does start to look like a real pittance.)
Anyway, I'm sure the knighthood will give Jon some much needed momentum as he attempts to steer MTD for VAT through the Brexit labyrinth and absorb some of the criticism of the "unfair" and "pernicious" retrospective loan charge. Among other HMRC challenges in 2019.
Tax chief in the prizes
In other HMRC news, 5,542,000 or-so taxpayers have about three weeks or so to complete their self assessment tax returns before the 31 January 2019 deadline.
More than 11.5 million 2017-18 tax returns are due and HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) expects the vast majority of taxpayers to complete their returns and pay any tax owed by the end of the month.
Returns online
About 52 per cent of taxpayers have already filed their returns, as of 31 December 2018, and more than 5 million have completed their returns online.
Financial secretary to the Treasury, Mel Stride, says: "It is encouraging that around 52 per cent of taxpayers have already completed their self assessment tax returns. With less than one month to go before the deadline, there are still many people that need to act now. HMRC is encouraging all Self Assessment filers to complete their returns by 31 January and is offering support every step of the way."
Angela MacDonald, HMRC’s director general for customer services, adds: "The self assessment deadline on 31 January is fast approaching, but there is still time for customers to file their tax returns online and on time to avoid any unnecessary penalties.
If you are completing self assessment for the first time or are yet to start your 2017 to 2018 tax return, there is a wide range of support and guidance available on GOV.UK to help at every stage of the tax return process.
Accountants search for an intelligent solution
We are experiencing a digital transformation that means in accounting, as with many areas in life, it's standard practice to order many services online.
It's so easy to "Google" information and quickly compare reviews and competencies for accounting firms.
In addition, today's customers often need more than "just numbers" - they want business advice based on their financial data.
Business intelligence solution
Therefore, it is important to ask the following question: “Can we/you offer a complete digital business intelligence solution for our customers?”
Time is usually considered to be one of the most valuable assets for accountants.
A good BI solution will reduce manual tasks so that you can free up time to become your customer's No 1 financial adviser.
Key figures
With a good BI solution, you should be able to present reports and key figures to your clients at any time, so they always have access to fresh data. A complete online solution makes this possible.
A flexible BI solution that provides great opportunities for creating customised reports is also essential to meeting your client demands.
Sound basis
Customised reports give clients better financial control and a sound basis for decision-making.
They also help to emphasise factors that are particularly important to your customer's success.
Often, a lot of time is spent on daily operational tasks that make it easy to forget the overall goals.
Personalised dashboard
With a personalised dashboard that displays updated figures, the client can easily locate, for example, outstanding claims, balance year-to-date, actual to budget, which customers are most profitable.
A powerful BI solution enables the accounting firm to meet today's customer preferences and create added value for both the customer and the accounting firm.
OneStop Reporting will be exhibiting at Accountex on May 1-2 2019 at ExCeL, London... Stand 526.
HMRC's top 10 prosecutions
HMRC has revealed some of the more extreme cases of tax crime that it tackled last year. It makes for interesting reading.
Fraud investigations led to 671 people being convicted over the past 12 months. In addition, HMRC has charged another 919 people and taken on 746 criminal investigations.
This year’s top 10 prosecutions:
- One of the UK’s most wanted tax fugitives, who spent more than 11 years on the run and owes more than £53m, ended up in jail after he was caught in Canada.
- Five fraudsters falsely claimed £13m in tax repayments and facilitated around 900 bogus visa applications, were sentenced to a total of more than 31 years in jail.
- An eight-strong tobacco smuggling gang that brought more than 2 million illegal cigarettes into the north-east were jailed for a total of more than 26 years.
- A tax consultant, who fled the UK before he could be arrested for masterminding a conspiracy to steal £6.9m from construction workers’ pay packets, is finally in prison. David Michael Hughes travelled to Chile, Dubai and Cyprus to evade justice but was eventually arrested at Heathrow airport after arriving from Istanbul.
- Father and son tax fugitives are behind bars after being captured in Spain and extradited to the UK. The £1m VAT fraudster son tried to avoid jail by fleeing to France in a light aircraft, while his accomplice father escaped by ferry, before they both headed to Spain.
- A company boss who was jailed for trafficking fighter jet parts to Iran in violation of weapons of mass destruction controls. Alexander George shipped military items, including Russian MiG and US F4 Phantom parts, to Iran through various companies and countries.
- The manager of a well-known male stripping troupe, who was sentenced in her absence for tax and benefit fraud is now behind bars after more than a year on the run.
- A church leader from Luton who lied about charity donations to fraudulently claim £150,000 Gift Aid repayments, was jailed for four years.
- A businessman who masterminded a £9.8m VAT fraud to fund his lifestyle of flash cars and a luxury Spanish home, was jailed for nine years. Jason Butler used money from the fraud to fund his collection of supercars, including a Ferrari Fiorano FI, a Ferrari 360, a Mercedes SL350 and a Lamborghini Murcielago. He also 'owned' a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, a speedboat, a home in Marbella and 96 properties in Leeds
- A company director who funded his hobby, racing high-powered sports cars in races across Europe, through a £450,000 tax scam. Simon Atkinson was already under investigation by HMRC for anti-money laundering offences when officers unearthed the six-figure tax fraud, which he used to finance his passion for racing Lamborghinis in competitive motor tournaments
The official press release says: "HMRC’s Fraud Investigation Service continues to bring in around £5 billion a year through civil and criminal investigations."
Mel Stride, Treasury financial secretary, says: HMRC’s investigative teams have been working hard to crack down on tax crimes in the UK, and hold those who would cheat the public revenue to account. The range of cases in this year’s list demonstrates how HMRC will always tackle fraud and can prosecute anyone who steals from the public or breaks the rules - from smugglers to potential arms dealers.
Simon York, director of the fraud investigation service, says:As these cases show, HMRC can and will tackle the most serious tax crime and breaches of sanctions whether committed by organised criminals, professional advisers or wealthy individuals.
We remain resolute and relentless in our determination to level the playing field and bring tax criminals to justice on behalf of the majority of citizens who pay their tax to fund vital public services.
HMRC uses the full range of both criminal and civil powers to investigate tax cheats and continues to be successful in around 90 per cent of criminal cases it brings to trial. However, work doesn’t stop there – HMRC always looks to recover the proceeds from any crime committed to secure the funds for the public purse.