AccountsPortal Reviewed and Accredited

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on September 24, 2011 by Gidon@AccountsPortal

We recently asked The Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (ICB) to review our online accounting application. Our aim was to get independent confirmation that our accounting software is both robust and reliable. We are happy to announce that AccountsPortal is now officially accredited by the ICB. A few selected excerpts from the review can be found below. 

quote AccountsPortal is very easy to set-up and intuitive to use. The information on the website is clear and easy to find. quote

quote The interface is straight-forward, professional and inspires confidence. The features include everything a typical business should require. quote

quote The service is relatively new, easy and uncomplicated to use and very competitively priced. quote

quote As there is a no-obligation free trial there is no reason not to include it in any evaluation when considering your options for a bookkeeping/accounting package. quote

For more information on the review, please go to Accredited Software.

Finding the right accountant

2 Comments Published in 
on August 01, 2011 by Jon@AccountsPortal

Over the next few weeks we will be inviting our partners and users to share their insights on the AccountsPortal Blog. If you would like to take part, please get in contact with us.

Today's post comes courtesy of Nicola Jones from My Accountant Online.

 

 

Do you realise in the UK anyone can call themselves an accountant?

An accountant doesn’t need to have passed any professional exams, undertaken any training, hold insurance, maintain and update their skills and knowledge, or actually have any knowledge or experience whatsoever.

As a qualified accountant I find that frightening!

Some individuals who don’t hold professional qualifications are competent at what they do, for example some tax advisors will be ex tax inspectors without formal qualifications, and some accountants who have attained professional accountancy qualifications choose not to maintain their memberships of their professional bodies. But unless they choose to take out insurance, and join a regulatory body, you have no safeguards or assurances if things go wrong.

If you are looking for an accountant here’s my suggestions on a few things to look for –

1. Check what qualifications they hold – there are many professional bodies for accountants in the UK but some of the most common for qualified accountants in practice will be the Chartered bodies with accountants having FCCA, FCA, ACCA or FCA, after their name and the AAT and ATT whose members will be MAAT or ATT.

2. Make sure they are experienced in looking after the accounts and tax affairs of people like you.

3. Get recommendations and ask for testimonials.

4. Make sure they have a proper complaints procedure and professional indemnity insurance – this should be set out in writing when you sign up with a qualified accountant.

5. Make sure how and what they charge is clear at the onset – some accountants do still charge based on the time spent on your affairs which can mean unexpected bills. Fixed fees mean you know what you are paying and when.

You may decide an unqualified accountant is right for you but make sure it’s a decision you make knowing that if things do go wrong you may have no come-back if they aren’t insured or have a professional body who will deal with complaints. The choice is yours, but you need to make an informed choice.

Nicola Jones
FCCA, MAAT, ATT
Director My Accountant Online Limited
Chartered Certified Accountants

Our favourite small business websites

Add New Comment Published in 
on July 09, 2011 by Gidon@AccountsPortal

Operating a small business can be very demanding. At one end of the spectrum, you have your accounting, regulatory and insurance requirements. Then, of course, there's the small matter of actually growing your business. Seeking advice from professionals is always the best way to go but sometimes it's just too expensive or time-consuming. The good news is that there is a wealth of reliable, expert information only a few clicks away. Here are a few of our favourite sites....if you have any of your own, then please share them with our other users as 'comments'.

 

  • Business Link - site created in partnership with HM Government which includes excellent information on the legal requirements of small businesses.
  • HMRC - you all know what this one's about!
  • Guardian Small Business - excellent source of news relevant to small businesses.
  • UK Business Forums - forum site for everything small business related.
  • Small Business - small business resource and information site.

Introducing flexible Chart of Accounts numbering

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on June 27, 2011 by Gidon@AccountsPortal

You can now specify your own numbering convention for the Account Codes in your Chart of Accounts. The code can consist of any alphanumeric up to a maximum of 10 characters. The customisable code will give you more flexibility in reporting and allow you to align your Chart of Accounts with the requirements of your accountant.

Account Code

To complement the new feature, we have also enhanced the Account drop down list in the transactions to allow searching by the Account Code.

Please read the help documentation for more information on Chart of Accounts usage and settings.

Specify Categories when Importing Invoices

Add New Comment on June 05, 2011 by Jon@AccountsPortal

You can now specify the Category Code when importing invoices and credit notes, which will simplify and speed things up for those Organisations that make use of Categories.

More information is available in our help docs.

Record a Dividend Payment

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on June 01, 2011 by Gidon@AccountsPortal

Broadly speaking, you can take dividends whenever you like and for as much as you like, but you must ensure that the total of all dividends in a year do not exceed the company’s accumulated profits (after corporation tax). The treatment in AccountsPortal depends on when you make the payment

 

1. Payment Date same as Dividend Date

Use the Spend Money (type 'General Payment') transaction to reflect the dividend paid out. Assign the line item of the transaction to the 'Retained Income' account and clearly mark it as a dividend payment in one of the transaction text fields.

 

2. Payment Date later than Dividend Date

a. Enter a Journal transaction to reflect the dividend declared and payable. The first line item should be a Debit amount assigned to the 'Retained Earnings' account. The second line item should be a Credit amount assigned to the 'Dividend Payable' account.

b. Use the Spend Money (type 'General Payment') transaction to reflect the subsequent payment. Assign the line item of the transaction to the 'Dividend Payable' account.

 

If you would like to have your Dividends report separately to your 'Retained Earnings', then use the 'Dividends Paid' account instead of the 'Retained Earnings' account in the steps above.

 

EU VAT Reporting for UK Organisations

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on May 09, 2011 by Gidon@AccountsPortal

These changes affect all VAT Registered users, regardless of your country, so please take a moment to find out how they may impact you.

New functionality has been introduced allowing full reporting of EU transactions for UK organisations. All transactions in which you specify a VAT Code will now have a new field called VAT Treatment. This field allows the user to indicate whether the VAT transaction relates to dealings with UK, EU or other International Customers/Suppliers. The VAT Treatment is then used to correctly compile your VAT Report and update the reporting Boxes relevant to transactions with non-UK parties.

EU VAT

How does this affect you? Well, that depends on your situation:

1. I am not registered for VAT
Jackpot! You are not directly affected by these changes. You will, however, need to download the new Import templates if you import Customers, Suppliers or Invoices.

2. I am registered for VAT but don't transact with EU Customers or Suppliers
Don't sweat, you'll hardly even notice! As above, you will need to download the new Import templates. There is one very important change you need to be aware. The new VAT Treatment field will be available on certain transactions and in most cases you can just leave the default. The one exception is if you are processing a refund or return using the bank transactions Receive Money or Spend Money (with Type 'General'). In such cases, you will need to change the default VAT Treatment. Please read more about this at the top of VAT UK - Box by Box.

3. I am registered for VAT and transact with EU Customers or Suppliers
Double jackpot! AccountsPortal now provides for full EU VAT Reporting. You are also affected by the items mentioned in 1. & 2. above so please review these before reading about the new EU VAT features.

  • Transactions relating to an EU or International Customers/Suppliers can be identified by selecting the appropriate VAT Treatment.
  • Customer VAT Numbers are now printed on Invoices and Credit Notes.
  • EC Sales List introduced as a new report.
  • Bank Import Rules have been updated to store VAT Treatment. Please edit your existing rules where necessary.
  • Import templates have been updated. You will need to download the new templates before importing any data.
  • Recurring Invoices for EU and International Customers/Suppliers will need to be updated regarding VAT Treatment.

If you have the time, we recommend you visit the HMRC website to find out more about VAT reporting requirements for international trade. VAT Reporting requirements for International trade can be quite complex and will depend on the nature of your business as well as the nature of your Customer/Supplier (are they individuals or VAT registered entities?). Our recommended approach is that you first determine your requirements and then review them against our VAT UK - Box by Box help document to get clarity on how these transactions should be entered.

PayPal Integration

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on March 15, 2011 by Jon@AccountsPortal

AccountsPortal now has PayPal integration! This means that you will no longer need to manually import your PayPal data - once you have set up your account, we will automatically download and process all of your PayPal transactions once per day.

Did we mention that there is no extra cost associated with this? Zero, zip, nada.

For instructions on how to get this up and running, please see our help document.

VAT Reporting for International Organisations

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on March 13, 2011 by Gidon@AccountsPortal

Our customer base is spreading rapidly...AccountsPortal now has users from four different continents! The format of the existing VAT Report was initially based on UK VAT requirements. The values have always been correct but the display is not quite ideal if you are VAT Registered in a different country. With this in mind, we have introduced a more generic VAT Report for our international customers. All you need to do is ensure you have correctly set the Country field in your Organisation's settings.

VAT International

 

Note: We refer to the Value Added Tax system as VAT. In some countries, eg Australia and New Zealand, this is known as GST.

VAT Registered Users - Transactions Missing from VAT Report

3 Comments Published in 
on February 20, 2011 by Gidon@AccountsPortal

The Issue

One of our users raised a ticket via the helpdesk querying the result of their VAT Report. They provided us with a login to their organisation so we could do a bit of investigating and this is what we found:

15/09/2010
User completes and saves VAT Report for quarter 01/06/2010 - 31/08/2010. Results are submitted to the revenue service.

24/09/2010
User enters Sales Invoice INV9999 with a transaction date of 31/08/2010.

15/01/2011
User completes and saves VAT Report for quarter 01/09/2010 - 31/12/2010. User queries why INV9999 is not included in the VAT Report.

The key here is the transaction date that has been used. The invoice was only entered into AccountsPortal after the first VAT Report was created but the transaction date is not applicable to the date range of the second VAT Report. INV9999 was not included in the second VAT Report because the transaction date of 31/08/2010 is earlier than 01/09/2010.

 

The Solution

On the 15/01/2011 the VAT Report should be run for the period 01/06/2010 to 31/12/2010. This will pick up any transactions that were missed in the initial VAT Report run on 15/09/2010. There is no risk of duplication as transactions saved in a VAT Report will not appear in a second VAT Report even if the Start and End dates of the two reports overlap.

Entering transactions with earlier dates is a legitimate requirement but to help avoid this issue, we will look at adding a warning message if the transaction date falls into a period for which a VAT Report has already been saved.

 

Does this apply to VAT on the Accrual Basis and the Cash Basis?

Yes! The principle is exactly the same regardless of which VAT basis you use. If you are on the Cash Basis, be mindful if you enter advance payments and only subsequently apply them to invoices which are dated later than the advance. Make sure your VAT Report includes the transaction date of the original advance payment.

 

How do I know if I have missed any transactions in my saved VAT Reports?

It is quite likely that some of you will have backdated VAT relevant invoices or payments at some point. The easiest way to check if any of these have been missed out of saved VAT Reports is to go to the VAT Report screen, create a New VAT Report and set the range to include the start date of your first saved VAT Report and the end date of your last saved VAT Report. Click on the Refresh button. If you have any values in the result, these should be investigated and if applicable, included in your next VAT Report that you save.

If you have any questions regarding this item, please raise a ticket on the helpdesk.

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