Category Archives: accountants

To Excel or not to Excel?!

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How sad is it that (i) I love nothing better than tapping away on a spreadsheet and (ii) I OWN that mug?!!!

“The spreadsheet has been declared dead more times than Bitcoin. But the tool, specifically Excel, marches on.”

From: Francois Badenhorst, AccountingWEB’s business editor:

It’s difficult to think of another piece of software which has enjoyed the longevity of the electronic spreadsheet. The tool, specifically Excel, has been a steady companion for AccountingWEB members.

The spreadsheet’s enduring popularity hasn’t come without controversy: it has been under sustained PR assault for as long as I can recall. The criticism seems to stem from a reasonable source: the never-ending stream of spreadsheet errors which have caused all manner of calamity.

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What accountants can learn from Pokemon Go?!

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pokemon go

 

Great food for thought in this article – albeit tongue in cheek?! – from the latest craze.

Yes, even I’ve been seen chasing a Spearow around the local allotments, much to my Son’s rueful disapproval… 🙂

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FROM: Carl Reader is a director of Wiltshire-based firm d&t, which won the 2013 British Accountancy Award for Independent Firm of the Year-Wales and South West England / Accountancy Age 19 July 2016

ALMOST seems too bizarre to be true, right? Accountants, Pokemon Go, learning something we don’t know… But trust me. Persevere with this article. It will help both your client and your staff engagement.

I took up the challenge to write an article on this, and at first the link seemed tenuous at best. Trying to become a “gym” or a “PokeStop” would just lead to crowds of pre-pubescent kids milling around in our car park. Talking to the team, they suggested that it could be used for staff morale… maybe, just maybe, tying it in with a FitBit centric staff welfare programme could work.

But that’s what opened my mind.

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HMRC and clients: The troublesome triangle

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HMRC and clients: The troublesome triangle

Judging from recent comments coming out of HMRC, it appears that there are three parties involved in the accountant-client relationship, writes Rebecca Cave.

Jim Harra, HMRC’s Director General for business tax, recently commented in an interview with Tax Journal “The key thing for me… is making sure we’ve got maximum value from having an agent in the relationship between HMRC and the taxpayer.”

He went on to say, “When an agent represents a taxpayer, we will want to know what services the agent is providing. This could be a perfectly professional basic service or it could be one which offers lots of added value… so that an agent’s client presents to us as compliant or low risk.”

I think most accountants would not see themselves as being in a relationship between HMRC and the taxpayer, but perhaps that is the reality. Do you feel you are playing the piggy-in-the-middle between your clients and HMRC?

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