It is quite common to invoice a customer with terms of “30 days or net monthly account”. Small customers will be expected to pay within 30 days, while large customers will be expected to pay at the end of the month following the month of the invoice, so an invoice sent in July 2018 would be settled by 31 August 2018.
Large companies do it this way because they may receive several invoices from a supplier, and will want to settle all of them with a single payment when they do their computerised cheque run. It would therefore be a good idea for the supplier to have sent a statement at the start of June listing all outstanding invoices. Typically the cheque run would be about the 25th of the month, which is near the date of this posting. If you give credit and have debts to collect, then you might like to have a discussion with us. Most accountants are also general business advisers as well.
The “net” in “net monthly account” has “nett” as an alternative spelling.
Archives for August 2018
Is Artificial Intelligence a Threat to Jobs?
The short answer is yes it is. If we have an OCR system for scanning bank statements which allows an accounts clerk to be four times as productive say, then apparently three out of four accounts clerks will no longer be needed. We can make a number of observations on this :
Should we carry on working in pounds, shillings and pence? Should we come to work on horseback? Should we use candles or gas lighting? This author still owns an abacus, a slide rule and a set of log tables, but no longer uses them.
Politicians use printers to produce their manifestos. Just think about all the monks they have put out of work.
Everybody wants a continually-improving standard of living, and raising the productivity of labour is an essential part of this. In the short term this means shakeout in some industries, but in the long term everybody benefits.
If everybody is getting auto-enrolled pensions, then they need to be more productive to compensate their employer for the extra cost and bother. There’s no free lunch here. OCR can help.
It is human nature to resist change, even in accountancy where things tend to keep changing all the time. OCR is just another change.
This author would have recommended gradual change, which was always possible, but other people stuck their heads in the sand and resisted all change. Revolution it’s going to be.
Value Added Tax deadline on 7 September 2018
Value Added Tax returns for the quarter ended 31 July 2018 should be submitted by 7 September 2018, and any payment which is due should be made electronically by the same date.
Companies with a 30 November 2017 year end
More Colour Coding
We use standard colours of blue for companies, red for unincorporated businesses, green for VAT and yellow for payroll. We can add some new colours to reflect the technologies we use.
Optical Character Recognition is our blue sky technology and will be represented by cyan as a computer colour. Narrative Prediction is our golden technology. Reprogramming the function keys to generate custom narrative is our silver technology. Anything new to do with dates is represented by magenta.
The default typeface is Times New Roman. With gold and silver, we will use the typeface Imprint MT Shadow whenever it is possible, because it has a metallic look and resembles TNR.
For every client we will have an aide-memoire to remind us how to process the client from year to year. Usually we will use OCR for bank statements (cyan reminder in TNR), but where we need to drop to typing in by the column, our aide-memoire will remind us how to begin doing this by switching on datepointing, and will plug the usefulness of NP. The aide-memoire is a colourful document which is achieved in Excel by picking the option from a list and using conditional formatting.
For cash records, we can type in by the column (gold reminder in orange + Imprint plugging NP) or by the row (silver reminder in grey + Imprint plugging function keys). We get an additional reminder (magenta + TNR) about what to do with dates. We can add handwritten notes and have the coloured ballpoint pens to do it, with silver being represented by pencil.
The object of this is to encourage the clerk to use our full repertoire of technologies. It is quite possible to enter some cash records and overlook the usefulness of Narrative Prediction. We will just accept that we are “all fingers and thumbs” in the first year and cannot be superhuman, but we will make a note for next year not to overlook it again. As far as we know, some other people are using blue sky technology, but nobody is using the gold, silver or magenta technology, and so we want to press our competitive advantage. The colours we use, blue sky, gold and silver, do represent our estimation of the usefulness of these technologies and the difficulty which our competitors will have in duplicating them.
Life is easy once we have the client data captured on a spreadsheet, which is why we put so much effort into doing it. Subsequent processing is all-electronic and fast all the way through to the final accounts. We normally expect to use OCR for printed matter and typing for handwriting, so we need a range of technologies to cover various possibilities.
Employer Payment Summary by 19 August 2018
It can happen sometimes that when you are an employer, you have not actually made any wage or salary payments for a PAYE month such as the month from 6 July to 5 August 2018. In that case you must submit electronically an Employer Payment Summary as a NIL return by 19 August. This is too easy to overlook.
If you engage a local accountant and business advisor or a payroll bureau to do your wages, then this will be taken care of. In our case we keep a diary and do a batch of payrolls at about the same time each month. Our payroll files are bright yellow like the old P30BC booklet so we do not overlook them. We colour-code all the taxes so green is VAT, red is income tax, blue is corporation tax and yellow is PAYE.
CIS Returns to 5 August 2018
Construction Industry Scheme returns for the month from 6 July to 5 August 2018 should be submitted online by 19 August. This includes NIL returns.
It is only too easy to get caught out by the need to submit a NIL return when no payments to subcontractors have been made. If you engage a local accountant to do your CIS returns, then this will be taken care of. In our case we keep a diary and do a batch of work at about the same time each month. We aim to be the Carlisle accountants that businesses will turn to for a range of advice and services. Our payroll files are bright yellow so they are hard to overlook, and CIS files also have a green line around them so they are easy to pick out.
A Company which has missed the 31 July 2018 Deadline
If your company had a deadline of 31 July 2018 for the submission of its accounts to Companies House, and this deadline has been missed, then you still have something to play for, and you should contact Carlisle accountants such as David Porthouse and Co at once. You will incur a penalty of £150, but this penalty rises to £375 after 31 August 2018 if you still haven’t submitted your accounts. These penalties are £300 and £750 if you miss the deadline two years’ running. We can readily prepare and submit your accounts within the month if you contact us straight away.