How to power up your clients ahead of the Self Assessment deadline

The festive season is over for another year, which means two words are likely to be sitting at the top of your to-do list: Self Assessment.

Ahead of the 31st January Self Assessment deadline, here are a few ways you can give your clients a turbo boost and help to reduce your stress in the process.

Remind your clients about the deadline

It might seem obvious but a good place to start is to remind your clients about the 31st January deadline. Encourage them to prepare their Self Assessment information and submit it to you sooner rather than later, perhaps by setting a deadline for when you need to receive it.

It might also be a good idea to contact your clients who have less urgent requirements and make them aware that they may have to wait until the Self Assessment deadline has passed before you can help them.

Warn your clients about penalties

A good way to motivate clients to get their accounts in order is to remind them about HMRC’s Self Assessment penalties. Your clients will face a penalty of £100 if their tax return is up to three months late and additional fines if it’s later than this.

Get your clients to double-check everything

Before your clients submit their information to you, encourage them to double-check that the details they’ve provided are accurate and that they’ve recorded all of their income and expenses correctly. The fewer mistakes your clients make, the less time you’ll need to spend fixing errors and chasing your clients for additional information.

Encourage your clients to use FreeAgent’s Audit Trail report

If you’re a FreeAgent Partner, you and your level 7 and 8 clients can use our Audit Trail report to track their bills, out of pocket expenses, mileage claims, invoices and bank transactions.

The Audit Trail report can be especially useful if a client discovers some discrepancies with their Self Assessment figures and needs to pinpoint an individual transaction in their FreeAgent account quickly. The report includes details of any changes made to a transaction and a record of who made the changes.

Interested in working more effectively with your clients ahead of next year’s Self Assessment deadline? FreeAgent allows you and your clients to work on their finances together in real time.