We’re running a three-part MTD workshop series with Xero at the moment, and after the first session I found myself thinking about it long after we’d finished.
This article contains paid promotion for our partner Xero.
I’m going to start by saying no, new dramatic things were revealed, and I don’t think anyone came away feeling that MTD has suddenly become simple, but the conversation covered what I really believe is necessary at this point. It felt practical, and honest, and very close to the reality of what bookkeepers are actually dealing with right now. Session one was designed to cover the foundations, the shape of the year ahead, and what this is going to mean in day-to-day practice, and I think that was exactly the right place to start.
There were more than 600 registrations for the series, which tells its own story. People are paying attention, and they need this kind of support. They’ve been to all the training but they needed to see end-to-end what to do next. Because this is something we need to be rolling out, now.
I think one of the reasons this topic has felt like such a big deal for so many bookkeepers is that MTD has been spoken about as if it is one thing, when actually it touches lots of different parts of practice life all at once. It is about software, yes, and submissions, and process, and deadlines, but it is also about clients, expectations, capacity, onboarding, communication, and how much of the work sits with you and how much sits with them. When you look at it like that, it makes complete sense that people have felt unsure where to start. That came through in the session as well, with the readiness figures Jess from Xero shared. Some firms feel fully prepared, some feel partly there, and some feel nowhere near. I actually thought it was helpful to hear that said, because it reflects the reality of how the profession feels right now.
What I liked about session one was that it didn’t pretend the answer is to race straight to the filing part. Quite the opposite really. The strongest message for me to share was that MTD becomes much more manageable when the setup is done properly at the beginning. I framed that around three areas: segmentation and communication, registration and authorisations, and digital bookkeeping. That feels right to me, because it shifts the focus away from panic about the submission itself and back onto the conditions that make the submission possible in the first place.
And if I had to pull out one thing that matters most from that first session, it would probably be client segmentation.
That may not sound especially exciting, but I think it is one of the reasons some practices are feeling more confident about this than others. Once you know which clients are impacted, when they are likely to be mandated, what their current bookkeeping habits look like, how open they are to technology, and how much support they will need, the work becomes a plan rather than this huge thing you have to do that is hanging over your practice. Jess talked through that really well, and the client examples helped too, because they reflected how clients are not all the same, and there is no single way this will work for all of them. Some are already on software and will happily stay hands-on. Some are using software but will still want the adviser to manage filings. Some will need a much slower transition. Some will resist the whole thing until they absolutely cannot. That is not a problem to be fixed with one email.
I thought that was one of the most useful parts of the session, actually. It moved the conversation away from “What is MTD?” and into “What does this look like across a real client base?” Those are two very different conversations, and the second one is the one that helps bookkeepers do something with the information. The first gets attention. The second changes behaviour.
The other thing that really stood out to me was the role of communication.
Jess made the point that it is worth communicating not only with clients who are directly impacted, but with all clients, simply so people understand where they stand. I think that is such an important point, because in periods of change, uncertainty tends to spread much faster than facts do. If people hear the phrase Making Tax Digital and do not know what it means for them, they fill in the blanks themselves, and not usually in an accurate way. We heard that in the workshop too, with the references to clients and even family members asking whether they need to do something because they have heard snippets and assumed the worst. A lot of unnecessary worry can be reduced by a practice being the first to explain it properly.
That matters for another reason as well, which is that MTD is going to expose how clear or unclear the working relationship already is between a bookkeeper and a client.
Who keeps the records up to date. Who chases missing paperwork. Who is responsible for digital records. Who submits. Who reviews. Who signs off. Who is expected to do what, and by when. All of that becomes much more visible in an MTD environment, and while that may sound slightly uncomfortable, I actually think there is something positive in it. Bookkeepers are so often carrying an invisible amount of operational responsibility for clients, and legislation like this has a way of bringing those unspoken arrangements to the surface. That can be frustrating, but it can also be the moment a practice becomes much clearer about how it works. The client examples in the training reflected that nicely, because the answer was not that every client should behave the same way. The answer was that there needs to be a conscious decision about how the work will be handled for each type of client.
There was also a really useful reassurance in seeing the filing side demonstrated in Xero. I don’t think I’ve seen the end-to-end submission process before, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. There is something very comforting about seeing what it is actually going to look like. So much of the anxiety around legislation sits in the unknown. Once people can picture the process, and understand where the data sits, how the categories are mapped, where the updates are managed and what a filed update looks like, it becomes easier to imagine how this fits into the workflows for you and your clients.
But even there, what came through very strongly was that software does not rescue poor bookkeeping habits. The quarterly updates are straightforward when the data is right and the bookkeeping is in good order, but as we all know, that isn’t always the case. The pressure here isn’t going to come from the existence of a quarterly update. It’s going to come from the state of the records behind it. If the invoices are in, the receipts are captured, the bank is reconciled and the data is reconciled, the job looks very different from the one where you are still piecing everything together late in the day. That is one of the reasons this workshop was about foundations rather than filing. The work starts way before the button is pressed.
I also thought it was helpful that the session made a distinction between reporting and payment. This is one of those areas where clients can become anxious very quickly, especially if they hear the word quarterly and assume that means quarterly tax payments. I took time to explain that the quarterly submissions keep HMRC updated through the year, while the usual self assessment payment points still sit where people would expect them. That is such an important practical message for client conversations, because that sort of misunderstanding will create stress.
Something else I kept thinking about afterwards was confidence. I often say that bookkeepers do not need more qualifications; they need more confidence. I think that sits underneath this whole MTD conversation. There is a technical side to this, of course, and there are deadlines and rules and software decisions, but a lot of what people need right now is confidence in where to begin, confidence in what good preparation looks like, confidence in how to talk to clients, confidence in how to make decisions about service boundaries and pricing and workflow.
That is probably my main reflection after session one.
Not that MTD is suddenly easy, although if the bookkeeping is good and you have chosen a system and communicated with clients, it will be… I know that not every question has been answered yet – and that’s why we’re running a three part series. But my main reflection is that as we all know deep down the conversation gets much better when you are prepared to have the conversation. And if you’ve now seen that work flow, the submission, the dates, that conversation is much easeir to hold.
I’m making sure that replays of these sessions are available to watch because I know that there will be plenty of registrants that couldn’t attend, or will want to watch the replay back as they deal with questions from clients and work through that first submission (and maybe the second and third). In fact, I suspect a lot of people will get even more from the session on the second watch than they did on the first simply because that familiarity is building. The recording is available, and I would genuinely recommend taking the time to revisit it if MTD is something you are still trying to get your head around.
We have still got two more sessions to come, and that feels right, because there is a lot still to unpack, from setup and onboarding through to pricing and submission. But as a first workshop, this one did what it needed to do. It made the topic feel more tangible, it acknowledged that people are at very different stages, and it brought the conversation back to the part bookkeepers can actually influence now, which is how prepared their practice is going to be.
If you missed session one, or joined live and want to watch it back properly, the replay is available.
And if you are already thinking ahead to what you need to do next, I would start where the workshop started: with your clients, with your current processes, and with the parts of the work that are still too dependent on last-minute fixes. That feels like the right place to begin.
