The launch of the HMRC’s Making Tax Digital project is around the corner and is due to start applying to businesses satisfying the minimum threshold requirements from 1st of April this year and to other VAT registered businesses from October onwards.

So, whether you are a big business or small business or are providing VAT compliance services to your clients, it is time to analyse the law as it stands today and prepare yourself or your clients for the change. We have in this post covered the possible “things to do” for VAT service providers:

Stay updated

Firstly, with constant changes in HMRC’s plan to implement MTD, it is important to stay updated with the latest developments on this front.

Know your clients

Take a stock of all your existing clients irrespective of whether they have digitized their accounting systems. You can get a sense of the amount of work lying ahead of you with a significant number of business maintaining financial records on paper even today. Once you have this clarity you could start reaching out to clients, explain the impact of the MTD initiative on businesses and understand what they require from you as an accountant.

Find and develop your USP

Every product or service needs a great USP to stand out in the market today with the ever-growingonline market place and cut-throat completion. While the MTD may be new and difficult to get used to initially, it is a great opportunity to reach out to larger markets and expand your client base significantly. Develop a good workable plan before pitching to prospective clients with your service offering.

Pick the perfect software

There are several vendors offering software that is compliant with MTD and connected to the HMRC’s website for online submissions. It is however crucial that you pick a software that is not just MTD compliant but easy and simple to use and is yet effective. It is also important that the software you pick has all the features that you are pitching to your clients in a user-friendly format. It may be useful for the software to be scalable so that a growing client base does not impact the efficiency of the software or your service offering. Lastly, a software that integrates with some of the popularly used accounting tools such as Quickbooks, Xero or Sage may be ideal and will substantially reduce the time taken by you to review transactionsinhouse.