We were talking with a potential client a few weeks ago. We’d closed the door to accepting new limited company clients with 31 March 2021 year-ends at that point – they need their accounts and tax returns done by the end of December, and we’re comfortable that we’ve enough to fill the month as it is. We’ve some existing clients with that year-end where everything still needs to be finished and signed off before the end of the month. We’ve clients where we need to help them prepare for their approaching 31 December year-end. There are Self-Assessment Tax Returns to do (we’re pretty good at getting those done well before the 31 January deadline, but end up doing plenty in December and January anyway). And we’ve got other underlying work too. So, if we took anything new on, we’d have to drop or delay something that we’re currently intending to do in favour of the new commitment, or work overtime, and we don’t want to do either of those things.
In this case, the potential client didn’t mind if we didn’t do his accounts in December. He was happy for us to do them late, in January, and he was willing to pay any fines that arose as a result. The problem is, we’ve January things to do in January. Self-Assessment Tax Returns are a big thing of course. Well, can’t we do it in February or March? We’re doing February and March things in February and March (the first week of February is very committed to VAT return work because of the tax return focus in January, and then we’re spending a lot of time both on preparing our clients with 31 March 2022 company year-ends (which is most of them) for their year-end, and checking in on their tax planning for this year to check that they’re going to be where they want to be by 5 April.
And in April, guess what? We’re doing April things, and so on and so on.
From the outside, it’s a completely understandable and reasonable request to chuck a bit of work into the machine at a point where it doesn’t naturally fit. There are certainly accountants who do see their work as more of a transactional conveyor belt where the work is the work, and you can just add it to the queue. But for firms like us, accompanying clients through the year in a considered way, then – unless the firm happens to be running below capacity - it unfortunately just doesn’t work. You need to try and jump into the machine at the right time (which, for a limited company, is very likely to be before its year-end, not after it!).
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