How Modern is Your Business?

The March 2020 budget signalled HMRC’s intention to create ‘a tax system fit for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century’. 

In short this reads as ‘digitalisation of the tax administration system over the next 10 years’, which got me thinking, how modern and digital is your business?

Paperless Offices

Typically quite a looming decision for a business to make, but a decision which can lead to the digitalisation of large parts of your business. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) Software now exists which enables a business to process their purchase ledger faster, stores a digital version of the invoice and can be exported to your accounting system with a click of a button.

You’ll save time on the purchase ledger processing time, reduction in time spent filing and save time on digging them back out.

Remote Working

The impact of COVID 19 has shown how important it is to be able to operate your company outside of the typical office environment. The use of software within your business allows you to communicate easily, share work easily and ultimately ensure productivity remains at the same level irrespective of location of your workforce.

Real Time Information

The use of software and digital tools enables the delivery of information to be in real time. As the information of the business becomes available faster, then, strategic decisions become more agile and more importantly become well informed decisions.

The use of RTI also helps highlight areas of the business which are not working as well as expected, enabling changes and fixes to be made much sooner, again saving time and money.

Control

Challenger banks and online purchase card companies now enable businesses to control their spending in real time and across their workforce. The ability to assign a receipt or invoice from a picture on your phone through to your accounting system increases process speeds and highlights where, and by whom, expenses are being spent.

Compliance

HMRC already has ‘Making Tax Digital’ in place with regards to digitalisation of the tax system, more and more of these compliance pieces will become digitalised and as such business should be ready well in advance of these coming into force.

Scalability

The use of software and digital products also enables a business to scale more easily. Software and efficient processes can help keep staff costs low, keep reporting times consistent and make the integration and consolidation of data easier.

Creating a blueprint of how the business operates will allow you to replicate these operations and processes at any level of scale and across multiple business units.

Summary

Integrating software and digital tools into your business helps increase efficiency, reduces time and costs, enables fast growth at scale, improves the speed of decisions and gives clear insight into the good and bad elements of your business.

Your business should be benefitting from these tools now, not just to comply with HMRC’s compliance requirements. Don’t be dragged through digitalisation, be at the forefront.