Easily Spooked? Accountant horror stories (Part 1)

As an accountant, your nightmares might sometimes involve witches and zombies, but in reality, they can usually be a little more grounded.

Is the dreaded client who leaves everything to the last minute keeping you up at night? Or does the thought of making a mistake and failing to comply with regulations make you break out in a cold sweat? In the spirit (or spirits) of Halloween, we thought we’d share some scary accounting stories that would send a shiver down your spine.

The excel gremlin in the office

Amara started out her practice back in 2015 in a small office in Glasgow and began using spreadsheets as a tool to organise her client work. Throughout the years, Amara became a spreadsheet wizard, sprinkling magic formulas over almost every aspect of her practice. While Amara enjoyed conjuring up these complicated spells, her employees felt the opposite. They started calling spreadsheets the “gremlin in the office” as they spent every day tirelessly feeding them all of their client data. Eventually, it got to the point where manually updating client data became a living nightmare and a “spreadsheet strike” kicked off in the office.

Who did they call? Ghostbusters? Well, almost. They brought in the next best thing – AccountancyManager – a practice management software, which is like spreadsheets, but better. It has all of the same features, minus the complicated formulas in a million different worksheets. Amara and her team were scarily impressed by how they could access everything from just the one tab on their browser. Now, the team’s admin workload is only a fraction of what it used to be. Amara saves her firm hours each month that she can now put into growing her practice and acquiring new clients.

The nightmare before payday

Lucy was busy finalising the payroll for a client with 120 employees the week before payday. They’re usually paid on the 1st of every month, but forgetting that the 1st of this month fell after a bank holiday weekend, Lucy finalised the payroll as normal. On Friday evening she realised her mistake, and at that stage, it was too late. To make matters worse, two of the client’s employees were also underpaid.

As a result, Lucy had to create a new bank file, make sure the bank payment file was uploaded to the banking provider correctly, and wait for the payments to land in employees’ bank accounts (which can take three business days). This meant employees had to wait almost a week to be paid what they were owed. Between all the emails and upset phone calls from her client, Lucy realised enough was enough, something had to change.

She reached out to her friends in the industry for advice to see what other options were out there. That’s when she heard about Faster Payments. She decided to give it a whirl and integrate it with her payroll software. She’s never looked back. By using BrightPay and Modulr together, Lucy now makes payments faster than ever before, in just 90 seconds directly through her payroll software. She also pays subcontractors and HMRC this way too. No more bank file monsters, or late payment hexes.

Signatures so fast, it must’ve been witchcraft

When Joshua started out his practice 12 years ago, it took him roughly six days to get signatures from his clients each time he needed a signature. This was and still is the norm for many accountants – a recent study found that the average time it takes to acquire a signature is five days.

Joshua wanted to modernise his firm’s processes, but no matter how many phone calls he made or what courier service he used, it still took him nearly a week to get signatures from clients. He then discovered (what some may say) ‘magic’ technology that reduced the average time he spent acquiring signatures to just 37 minutes. No witchcraft experience needed, muggle approved.

How? The answer is e-signatures. They’re an efficient, secure and legally binding way to get electronic documents signed quickly (even from your slowest clients). The best part? No more time and money spent on printing, courier services, or even your own travel and fuel costs.

By using the e-signature feature in Surf Accounts Production, Joshua now has a much more efficient workflow in his practice and has used the time he’s saved with his new e-signing feature to work on higher valued services.

The haunting of MTD for ITSA

William from Bristol was about to begin the most stressful time of year, the three month rat race before January 31st, or as his staff liked to call it, ‘silly season’. Those last few weeks can often feel like a drag, with the gloom and doom of chasing clients more prevalent than ever.

One Friday night, William was stuck in the office, lost in a sea of paper receipts. Questions like “Will I still be chasing up clients over the Christmas break?” and “Should I cut back on clients next year?” were popping into his head. The hard truth was that he was running himself into a wall. His workload was unsustainable, and something had to change fast.

With the looming spectre of MTD for ITSA, William felt under even more pressure than usual. His clients were unaware of the trials ahead – how would he be able to do this every quarter, when he’s already struggling to do it just once a year?

It was a terrifying thought, and William spent the rest of that night looking for guidance online. He came across a free guide on Making Tax Digital. Rather than echoing his fears, it outlined solutions, such as BTCSoftware, that enable him to manage time and clients more efficiently, as well as focusing on possible opportunities.

William now feels that his days of being haunted by MTD for ITSA are behind him. He feels much more confident on the topic and has the tools he needs to start preparing his firm now.

Want to avoid excel gremlins and payroll nightmares this Halloween? Click here to find out more about Bright’s accounting solutions, including payroll, bookkeeping, accounts production, practice management and tax compliance software.

Interested in hearing more horror stories from accountants? Read part two here, featuring even more scary stories including the accountant that was haunted by taxes and the mystery of the missing payroll data.

This content may have been developed with the assistance of AI tools. Content is reviewed by a member of the Bright team before publication. Guidance on legislation can be obtained from your industry body.