Do most accountants still use paper?

lethal0r

Im getting my new accountant to write up my accounts for the past year and i've saved most of my invoices on CD as I get sent most of my invoices and bills online.

He says he needs them on paper, either I can print them out or he can. Seems a bit of a waste of space & time & resources to me.

Are most accountants like this or should I get a guy whos a bit more modern in his methods?

Petmidget

Being an accountant it depends. Certain things you really need to see on paper, purchase invoices for eg. Though I would happily accept scans in most cases. If you get most of your bills by e-invoice then copies of those emails would be acceptable.

The main reasons a lot of us (me included to a certain extent) still use a lot of paper is we like the smell. But more seriously if you have everything about a client in 1 place ( a paper based file) then it is considerably easier to find details and to track progress of any given aspect. Rather than trying to find various words and excel docs and how they relate chronologically etc.

This is also couple with fact the agencies we primarily deal with will not communicate by email only by letter and occassionally fax, and since HMRC have gone call centre based even telephone enquiries are a pain unless it is a very basic question.

lethal0r

Thanks, keeping things together does make sense.

Something else I was going to ask as well, what happens if I dont have a receipt for something? I think because i've concentrated mainly on keeping my e-invoices in order that one or two of my paper based documents may be lost.

Is it ok for one or two receipts to be lost or is that likely to cause big problems?

Petmidget

No it is a myth about "you need all your receipts" if you can prove the expenditure by any means that will suffice from HMRC point of view.

Of course if it something small and you paid in cash that would be difficult but claim for it anyway, just make a note of things which you know you bought but cant find receipts and give it to your accountant to claim.

WHA

Your accountant is probably reluctant in the absence of you showing him your electronic files and how they are organised.

If a client sends me their papers and it is organised properly, then I am happy to accept electronic versions. BUT if there is no obvious logic to how they are organised in directories etc, or the contents is not obvious from looking at the file name, I do tend to reject them.

But this is no different from the paper version. If a client gave me a sack full of screwed up papers, unopened envelopes etc., likewise I would send them back and tell them to put them in proper order. If a client sends me a file with all bank statements in date order in one section, and invoices in order in another section, then yes, that's fine.

The point with electronic files is that if there is a separate file for each document, it will take a lot of time to open each, have a look at it, and then close it again, and onto the next. I had one particular horrible case where instead of sending me a file containing all bank statements, and a file containing all supplier invoices, I received hundreds of individual files, so trying to find an image of what I was looking for proved impossibly time consuming.

Unfortunately, most people seem to keep electronic images on a "one document per file" basis meaning huge numbers of files to look at. It would make the job far easier (therefore quicker and cheaper) for all similar documents to be merged together so for example, I could scroll through the bank statements to look for a particular amount, rather than having to separately open 12 (or more) separate monthly statement files to try to spot it.

Ask your accountant exactly how he wants to see your documents in electronic format and create your images in that way. I would suggest a full description of the content, including dates, in the file name rather than something meaningless such as document number.