Making Tax Digital changes where client records live and what form they have to be in. From a practice point of view, that has more to do with how you service clients than with any single submission.
Digital records are the substance of it
The requirement is that records are kept digitally and submitted digitally. The practical consequence is that a client turning up with a carrier bag of paper is no longer a workable arrangement — somebody has to be keeping digital records through the year.
That splits your client base in two
Some clients will keep their own digital records. Some will not, and will need your practice to do it for them.
Those are two different service lines and they need two different tools:
- Clients doing their own work need software of their own, with you having access over the top
- Clients who will not need your team doing the bookkeeping on their behalf
Trying to run both arrangements through one tool is where practices tie themselves up.
What to prepare
- Work out which clients fall on which side of that split
- Get the self-servers onto software that is MTD enabled
- Make sure you hold accountant access to those files, so year-end starts from records you already have
- Put the rest into a bookkeeping process your team controls
How Practice Hub UK handles the split
VAT (MTD) is the client-facing side — the records are kept digitally in the form Making Tax Digital requires, and your practice keeps full access for the annual accounts. AI Bookkeeping is the other side, where your team does the bookkeeping for clients who will not do it themselves.