Creating a stress-free year-round tax return strategy

It’s September, the kids are back in school, you can breathe a sigh of relief, but then you remember what else September means, tax deadlines are around the corner. As deadlines draw closer, your clients begin to dump months and months' worth of paperwork on your desk. It’s stressful enough when one client does it, but when it happens with multiple clients, it can become a nightmare. As a result, for many firms, this time of year is synonymous with long evenings, stress, and frustration.

What can you do to combat this? One way of ensuring you have a smooth tax season is by implementing a year-round returns strategy. Rather than waiting for the pile of paperwork to land at your doorstep or leaving it to last minute to chase clients for missing receipts, you can adopt a strategy that will ensure you receive the documents you need throughout the year.

Adopting such a strategy is made possible with the help of technology. Data extraction tools, such as Dext Prepare, can be used by clients to submit invoices and receipts as soon as they have them. This helps to ensure paperwork never builds up.

How Dext Prepare can help create a stress-free tax season

1. Proactive clients

Tax deadlines don't have to be a source of stress - you and your clients can take a proactive approach and make sure everything is in order before the deadline strikes. Establishing firm deadlines for receipts and invoices to be sent to you from clients is a great idea in theory. However, in reality, most clients are unlikely to always stick to the deadlines.

Clients will be a lot more likely to stick to your deadlines when the process is made as simple for them as possible. Your clients can use the Dext Prepare mobile app to photograph their receipts and invoices and upload them to the system, eliminating the need for last-minute scrambles. Plus, all documents are securely stored on the platform throughout the year, so they'll be ready and waiting for you when tax season comes around.

2. Give clients a real-time view of their finances

Adopting a year-round strategy can also help you deliver strong and actionable advice to your clients. Advising clients on their cash flow requires accurate and up-to-date financial records, clearly organised for each client. Receiving a client’s paperwork on a continuous basis rather than all at once is necessary for this. With Dext Prepare, your clients can submit the documents to you immediately. You can use the platform to then gain a clear view of your client’s income and outgoings, allowing you to spot opportunities and risks.

If you find clients are struggling to submit their receipts or invoices regularly, you can send them push notifications through the Dext Prepare mobile app. This acts as an easy way to communicate with clients and help to keep your clients’ financial records up to date. To cover your basis even further, a practice management software could be used to send reminder emails to your clients. For example, by using Bright’s practice management software you can schedule reminder emails, choose from ready-made templates, and send automated client emails.

With your clients keeping up-to-date records throughout the year, it can make meeting critical deadlines a much more manageable task. This helps to eliminate the last-minute scramble sorting through receipts and makes tax season a calmer and more organised period.

3. How Surf and Dext save time

By using Dext Prepare alongside Bright’s bookkeeping software, Surf Accounts, you can create an end-to-end accounting solution, from receiving paperwork all the way to producing your client’s financial statements. Surf Accounts is a cloud accounting software which has many unique features including VAT tailor-made for the Irish market. The end-to-end solution works in three phases:

Phase one, using Dext Prepare for the pre-accounting stage,
Phase two, leveraging Surf Accounts for bookkeeping tasks such as VAT and bank reconciliation
Phase three, using Bright’s accounts production software to produce your clients’ financial statements.

The end-to-end solution is made possible thanks to API integration, which allows you to send all your clients’ information from Dext to Surf Accounts, in just a few clicks. With the unique integration between Surf Accounts and Surf Accounts Production, the accounts production software will automatically update, meaning that you have all the data you need to produce your clients' accounts.

By using the end-to-end solution, you can complete your bookkeeping and year-end tasks for your clients on a gradual basis, throughout the year. By doing this, you remove the stress of completing all this work in one go as tax deadlines approach, making it a more manageable and controlled way of working. For a detailed demonstration of how the end-to-end solution works, you can watch back our recent webinar.

Learn more about Dext Prepare

If you would like to find out more about Dext Prepare, Surf Accounts or Surf Accounts Production, you can book a free one to one demo with our product experts.