How Covid-19 has highlighted the benefits of being in the cloud for your accountancy services – “The Secret Diary of Gillian Yeomans, Accounting Technician, age 65 1/12”

At the ‘ripe old age’ of 63 I joined the forward thinking Carthy Accountants team two years ago, with my six years of accountancy experience. I came from a small traditional style accountancy firm, where most standard accounting processes e.g. bookkeeping and VAT were completed manually, with very few using computer-based software. Most sets of accounts relied heavily on large piles of paper records.

However, with the advent of Making Tax Digital (MTD), it became clear to me that we were now in the age of cloud accountancy software, and whilst I can’t deny it was a big shock to my system, I knew I needed to embrace the change and the challenge and quickly strode forward learning new skills so I could support clients.

The first few months went by in a complete blur as I got to grips with the new cloud-based systems, Xero, Free Agent and Receipt Bank to name but a few. However, surfacing at the other end, I now feel personally accomplished having learned these new skills at such a tender age, and I am now a “complete convert”.

When the Coronavirus pandemic hit us without warning, I was able to appreciate an even more important benefit to clients being ‘on the cloud’. Our forward-thinking firm were able very quickly to arrange for us to work from home with minimal disruption to either us as employees, and our clients.

Therefore, my mission now is to encourage and persuade you to see the huge benefits of going digital:

• Provided the bookkeeping is done on a regular basis, information is available at the touch of a button. There is no more waiting until the end of the year to know how your business is doing in terms of profitability. Decisions can be taken about your business much more quickly based on sound financial information.

• Records are kept securely in ‘the cloud’ not on a stand-alone computer and therefore they can be accessed by both the client and their accountant simultaneously.

• You do not have to provide accountants with mounds of paper to be processed in order to sort our simple things like a VAT return.

• Once a bank feed is up and running. transactions are automatically downloaded daily from your bank into the software.

• You can scan or use the app to photograph your receipts and invoices and upload them to an invoice capture software like Receipt Bank or Hubdoc where they will be processed and, with a little help from your accountants, they are published into the software.

• Then all you need to do is reconcile your bank transactions to the invoices and bills in the software, then, “Voila”, at the end of the month all your information is in the software and you will know exactly what your income and expenditure and profit is for that period.

• You will save huge amounts of time on simple accounting processes, freeing you up to focus on other parts of your business or even putting your feet up.
• In the current climate businesses will need easy access to business financial information for the Government Business Interruption Loans, this information is readily available when using the cloud.

• If the country experiences a further lock down situation there will be no concern needed about how you will get information to your accountant.

Our clients who have so far avoided going digital are now realising the challenges they are currently facing getting their information to us and therefore them meeting their statutory obligations. On the positive side, we have seen an upsurge in requests to get them converted to digital, which can be done remotely. It is a shame it has taken such a catastrophic situation to prompt this, however I am totally confident that once they have been set up, they will kick themselves for not having done it sooner.

So finally……. come and embrace cloud-based accountancy software, it will make a huge difference to your business and your life, and if I can do it at my age……… anyone can!