We often hear from accountants whose client has income from freelancing, investments, and rental properties and demands the same price for account filing as the simplest business models.
Despite the added complexity created by multiple income streams, these clients often pay the same price as any other, and expect their accounts to be filed accurately and on time too.
They fail to realise that each source of earnings has its own rules, quirks, and documentation needs that must be carefully managed to avoid mistakes and delays.
As an accountant, you understand well that when your client gives you a mix of bank statements, invoices, and tax documents, you’re the one who has to sift through the chaos – or at least an unfortunate member of your team gets the (dis)pleasure of doing so.
- Freelance income requires detailed expense breakdowns
- Rental income needs tracking of mortgage interest, repairs, and maintenance costs
- Investment income involves dealing with dividends, interest, and capital gains – each with its own set of rules
That’s just to name a few of the possibilities.
It’s a complicated mess that can leave you feeling overwhelmed and that’s before accounting for the domino effect.
Misclassify one stream, and you mess up the entire tax filing process – not to mention the potential for fines if HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) finds errors.
You’re constantly following paper trails, cross-referencing figures, and hoping you haven’t missed a crucial detail that could turn into a major issue.
It can feel like you’re trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces.
Meanwhile, your clients expect you to navigate the complexities of their financial lives flawlessly and when mistakes happen, it’s your reputation on the line.
The stress builds for you and your team as deadlines approach, and the sheer volume of data can be overwhelming.
Personal tax filing doesn’t need to be this hard!
You and your team probably dread doing work for the client we’ve alluded to above.
However, there’s always a solution and, perhaps surprisingly, it doesn’t involve hiring more staff or taking on less clients.
Neither of which are ideal solutions as they both cut heavily into your bottom line.
Rather, the solution is technological and takes the form of information-gathering technology and robust data and document management practices.
Essentially, you’re streamlining the process and creating a library to work from – a bank of all the documents, filed according to income stream, with which to populate the final statement.
You don’t need to rely on reams of emails flooding your inbox or a team of dedicated colleagues buried under a mountain of paperwork anymore.
Instead, you can simply send your client a checklist of the paperwork you need (with automated reminders so you don’t need to chase), which will be ticked off as you receive them.
These “information requests” can be sent individually, or in bulk, and require little to no effort on your part, once you get to know the system.
It’s much easier than the alternative and frees up a considerable amount of your time.
Start your journey to tax filing simplicity with Glasscubes.
