In your journey to get clients ready for Making Tax Digital (MTD), you may have noticed this distinct camp of people.

Those who feel that their current set-up, mostly spreadsheets or very old software, should be perfectly sufficient for meeting HMRC’s new standards.

It can be frustrating when you can clearly see the issue with current systems, but feel unable to convince someone to completely abandon what has worked for years.

There may be a way for both you and your client to reach a compromise that does not saddle either of you with an extra mountain of work.

What is the problem of using existing systems when trying to get MTD ready?

High-income earners are unlikely to have got to the position they are in today with a shoe box full of receipts and prayer.

Instead, they will have curated careful records over many years of business and devised their own ways of managing budgets and tax obligations.

For accountants, these clients may have been good to work with before, given that their efficiency means that you can understand their financial position more effectively.

The advent of MTD has unfortunately turned many of these strengths into challenges, as existing systems that have allowed people to work with confidence are now non-compliant.

Whether your client sees HMRC as being needlessly fussy about what software to accept is irrelevant – they will need to adapt.

Selling entirely new systems can feel like a losing argument, as there is very little that can be said to convince your clients beyond threats of noncompliance.

With penalties not taking effect until next year, this argument has a lot of its potency taken out of it for the time being.

Can existing systems be made MTD ready?

Rather than getting clients to bin off the systems that they have spent years perfecting, there is another option to getting them MTD ready.

Bridging software can be used to connect existing systems with HMRC-recognised submission tools.

Our MTD Assist is the ideal option for ensuring that your clients do not need to change how they work.

Instead, they can use bridging software to make what they are already doing MTD-compliant.

MTD Assist can link to your clients existing spreadsheets, not matter what format they are in, and automatically pass the information back to MTD Assist, which is fully HMRC approved.

This allows your client to stay independent, using the systems they have built and trust, while all compliance measures are met.

MTD is supposed to make life easier and MTD Assist ensures that becomes the reality for you and your clients.

Book a demo to see how MTD Assist can bridge the gap in MTD compliance for your clients.