Advanced Business Solutions » darling

We don’t love you, Darling

Richard Anning — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:03:16 +0000

Following the announcement of the change to VAT on Monday 24th November, giving a grand total of 4 working days notice until the new rate becomes operational, we have had a busy couple of days helping our customers make sense of the changes and making sure they are in the best position to cope.

The changes to our systems are relatively minor compared to some of the changes required to operational and front office systems. Our many retail clients, for example, have to consider how and when to actually introduce the (effective) price change to their products, bearing in mind standard price points as well as the time of year. There are also issues to consider with documents that go across the rate change date as well as interfaces with third party systems. Our trade association BASDA has published a useful list of issues to be considered – http://www.basda.org/HMRC-exclusive-briefing-for-BASDA-members-re-VAT-changes-247.htm.

We set up a page of information this week containing advice and guidance for each of our systems, as well as guidance papers released by HMRC. Of note, our website had its greatest number of visitors ever on Thursday (over 1,000 visitors), with over 800 downloads of the documents that we put there over the last two days.

A lot of work for us, but a mass of work for our clients. So no, we don’t love you, Mr Darling.

We don’t love you, Darling is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

All change with Mr Darling

Richard Anning — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 17:19:43 +0000

So the Chancellor has made his pronouncements in what must be some of the worst kept secrets of the pre-budget report ever! The headline-grabbing changes in VAT and income tax were there, as predicted, along with a number of other measures targeted at increasing spending and getting the economy going again.

Of interest to COA Solutions is the pronouncement that VAT will decrease to 15% as of “next Monday, December 1^st”. This requires a number of very quick changes to be made to financial systems, putting rates down from 17.5% to 15% and considering the implications for partially-rated VAT. We will be putting a briefing paper on our customer portal shortly, advising all our users how this pre-budget report will affect them and what changes they should be considering.

Amidst all this pre-Christmas cheer (extra money for all!), we continue to provide solutions for our clients aimed at reducing costs and improving processes and competitiveness. As organisations continue to look at the real cost of employment and consider the possibilities of restructuring, we provide a graphical overview of how pre-defined KPIs can help your organisation move forward. Click here to view this new, fully interactive overview of Corporate Analytics.

If you are having trouble borrowing money at the current time, at least you can find out where you can save money internally!

All change with Mr Darling is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment