How Do I Help My Clients Move to MTD Accounting Software?

As an accountant, you want your clients to thrive. This might sometimes involve telling them to put down their coffee-stained notepads and make the switch to online accounting software ASAP. Which is fair.

The thing is, it’s easy for us to back you up on this because we know why you’re recommending it in the first place. Your clients, busy as they are running their own businesses, might not find it quite as interesting as we do. So, it’s probably worth trying to win them over by explaining why it’s a good idea to start using MTD accounting software.

The introduction of Making Tax Digital making it mandatory is a decent place to start. If you decide to mention saving the trees and their truly shocking handwriting making it impossible to understand their records… well that’s your business.

In the interests of being a friendly MTD-approved online accounting software provider, we’ve listed several more pointers to help you guide clients.

Assess their current system

You likely already know what your clients’ current bookkeeping systems are like. Whether they’re passionate about spreadsheets, accounting software, or start a new notebook each year, it’s useful to ask what they like about their current system, and what they don’t. It’ll give you a better idea of what their bookkeeping training needs might be.

The next step is comparing their feedback with those secret thoughts you have whenever they submit records.

For example, if your client is manually entering hundreds of ecommerce transactions into Excel and you need to spend a few hours working out which transactions they forgot to include, then you probably have some feedback of your own.

Identifying and explaining the potential problems of their current bookkeeping process can help pave the way to an improved system.

Choose the right accounting software

It’s all well and good switching to MTD accounting software, but if it’s going to cause more breakdowns than the McDonalds ice cream machine then you may as well leave your clients to their notepads. It’s worth thinking about things like:

Plan the move over

You probably wouldn’t decide to start packing on the day you’re moving house. It should be the same with moving your client over to new software.

Make sure your clients have access to any guides or other resources in advance! Most software providers will (should) have clear guidance to answer common questions on your behalf.

Set up and go through the new system with them

We’ll repeat our previous point about providing clients with any training resources well in advance, but these might evolve as clients come back with questions. Some software providers will use different terminology for the same thing, so even though you know what you’re looking at, your client might not.

Starting a new system or software will usually lead to questions around:

We won’t be really spammy and link each of the above points to our own Help Centre content, but we’re not above mentioning that it exists.

Consider a trial run

Many accounting software providers actually offer free trials (if they aren’t free already). Before you go full steam ahead, it’s usually worth doing the checks that you might do ordinarily, like double-checking automations such as bank feeds are working, comparing records to figures in the bank, and seeing if things balance where they’re supposed to.

Whilst you’re doing this, your client should still use their previous method of bookkeeping so you can cross-check everything is accurate.

Find software that provides support on your behalf

You aren’t going to be available 24/7. So you might want to push clients towards software providers that can help them in your absence, such as with Live Chat support, help centre articles, product tours, and phone or video calls.

We will now be tremendously stealthy and subtle, and mention that being a Pandle Partner is free (our favourite price) and entitles your clients to online support from our bookkeeping team. Which is loads better than you dealing with import queries while eating at a slightly dodgy looking restaurant in Ibiza.

Learn more about using Pandle to make business accounting easier for your clients. Create an account today and decide what to do with all the extra time you get back.