• By Annabel Kaye

Are you keeping  your receipts in a bag  for your bookkeeper?

Do you write on them carefully so they can be allocated to the right budget?
Do you send them by recorded delivery so they don't get lost?

What a pallaver

Most of us don't like admin and if books are not your thing the last thing you want to do is spend time doing the books.  You could be out selling or creating and making money rather than counting it!

Then there's the good old spreadsheet option​​

Do you put it all on a spreadsheet?
Or pay someone to do that for you?
Then someone puts it in your accounts?

Is your bookkeeper pushing you to change?

I see a lot of business friends saying they are being pushed towards cloud accounting​
My book-keeper wants me to convert to cloud based accounting in real time

There's a lot of uncertainty and concern about whether this means less work for the bookkeeper with no reduction in fee and whether this really is the way to go.

The government is changing the rules​

1. By 2018 you will have to report on your corporate profits 4 times a year
2. By 2019 you will have to report on your personal tax 4 times a year.
3. By 2020 your books must be kept digitally. 

​Most bookkeepers will be forcing their clients onto a cloud-based package 


Some will still do carrier bags and spreadsheets but the chances are it will cost extra!
It's not  all heavenly working in the cloud​There is a dark side to working in the cloud and you don't hear a lot of talk about it.

Most bookkeepers and accountants are encouraging you to sign up on their group packages.  

They get a cheaper license for you than you can get for yourself.
Some will pass the lower cost onto you and others will make a small profit on the subscription.

Don't let your bookkeeper set you up on their account​

What no-one is telling you is that if you are not the 'master' user then you will need your bookkeeper or accountant to agree to transfer your books to your next service provider.
You will also need them to do more than agree - you will need them to activate the process
The transfer can takes weeks and I hear horror stories of months even a year!

That's not funny if you need access to your financial data to submit one of those new quarterly updates, or a VAT return, or even your end of year accounts​

​Digital bookkeeping needs digital agreement

​If you are moving your bookkeeping into the clouds you need to have secure log-ons that aren't shared, primary data access (so you can turn off your bookkeeper not the other way round) and a lot more than that.