From April 2022, small businesses must join MTD for VAT. Here’s what you can do to help your clients prepare for the switch.
This month
Though technically busy season is over many accountants are still working through Self-Assessment returns, so let’s keep things simple this month.
As many of your Self-Employed clients are likely to be those affected by the MTD for VAT phase 2 mandation in April, use your comms this month to remind them of the change coming up.
If you’re using BTCHub, onboarding small businesses to MTD for VAT will be simple. There’s no need for your clients to migrate away from their current bookkeeping software as our flexible solution handles data from multiple sources, including Excel.
But if you’re using alternative MTD for VAT software, you may need to let your clients know that they’ll have to make a change to how they keep their records so that you can easily handle their digital data. If that’s the case, you’ll likely need to prepare a Q&A that justifies the requirement for change – and be ready for pushback.
The main issue this month will be convincing your small business clients that this change to MTD will be painless. After all, it’s human nature to want to take the quickest and easiest route to your goals and at first glance MTD for VAT is an additional step. Reassure clients that this is a simple switch that your larger clients have been handling with ease for a couple of years now – and if the switch doesn’t feel simple, take a look at alternative software (like our flexible BTCHub!)
Next month
This is it – one month to mandation!
Give your clients a nudge (though it might be more of a shove at this stage…) with an email at the start of the month. Use potential penalties to make your point stick and if you’re charging an onboarding fee consider a small discount offer on condition that they are prompt in acting on your advice.
Hopefully your clients are technically literate with their record-keeping but if you’re running into resistance then remember that you can offer them a spreadsheet option too – BTCHub provides a template that they can use in the familiar environment of Excel.
We’re here to help
Over the coming weeks we’ll be posting plenty of content here on AccountingWEB to help you get your small business clients underway with Making Tax Digital for VAT – follow us on Twitter where we’ll share new articles!
And if your practice is done with MTD for VAT headaches, we’d love to show you a different way, so book a demo to see more!
