To Mtd And Beyond

So after all the hype MTDfV is finally here and businesses have their shiny new digital software, to enable them to file their VAT returns.

All that fuss just for an API which you can’t even see and (as long as it works) you would never know was there.

But that’s not all you can do with this digital revolution. Take that shining example of construction above and here I must add my thanks to Oscar for letting me share this amazing engineering feat with you. It’s always great to make a sale but do you know how much profit you have made on a particular job? If there are 18 red bricks and 2 window blocks and that crane on top looks pricey…Using the analysis function in your digital software you can assign all of those costs of a particular job to a project and produce a profit and loss account so you know how much profit you have made.

And don’t forget the other costs. All those toddler labour hours, PPE, insurance, admin costs, snacks, consultants fees (you can’t just knock up a construction like that without proper drawings and calculations) and everything else that has been spent in bringing this to fruition. All recorded by your digital software. But on a more serious note digital software is not just for MTD. It can make your life easier in so many ways. By linking with your bank accounts it will automatically import transactions so you don’t miss anything. If it’s cloud based you can access it anywhere you have an internet connection and you can use your app to easily access information. You can raise an invoice while you are with a customer and take payment and you can photograph your petrol receipt before you leave the garage and record it in the software.

Keeping track of your sales is easy too. You can analyse them by product, salesperson, area, business type, distribution route etc. You can see details of what has been invoiced, which customers haven’t paid and some software will even email a statement to those customers while you sleep peacefully.

By setting up products you can also keep an eye on stock levels and generate stock level warning messages. Stock will keep track of cost and sales prices with the ability to set different sales prices for say trade and wholesale. You can also analyse which products your customers buy so you can more effectively target your marketing.

If you are a voluntary organisation or a small charity it is very important to be able to keep track of your funds and also to be able to report on them. By using the analysis function in your digital software you can keep track of various funds and also run reports to show your funders how the money has been spent.

Then there’s the reporting. Your software will have basic reporting built in so you can easily see information like outstanding supplier invoices or last month’s profit and loss account. But you can do so much more with the facility to export to Excel or using Power BNI or…Don’t get me started on reporting, I get quite geeky about reports!

There is also a whole array of apps related to specific businesses and requirements that will link with your software to help your business in all sorts of ways. So your digital software can tell you all about your business and give you whatever information you would like to have to make your business easier to run and more profitable. And if it’s cloud based your accountant can also have 24/7 live access so they can keep an eye on how things are going or just help out if you get stuck on something.

Of course, that old saying applies – ‘rubbish in = rubbish out’ so you need to think about what you would like to know, what would be beneficial to you in running the business and then make sure that the system is set up to be able to give you that. That’s the part that we love getting involved in.