Local guides · Post 20
The January chase a Lampeter accountant runs by hand
For small accountancy practices in Ceredigion: the January records chase is rebuilt by hand every year, and it costs days that the tax work needs.
January in Lampeter begins with the same list. Clients in Aberystwyth, Cardigan and Newcastle Emlyn owe the same records they owed last year: bank statements and a mileage figure, plus a note about dividend income. The request goes out. A few reply the same day. Most wait, and the ones who wait longest are the ones who waited longest last January.
By the second week the chase has been built again from nothing. Last year's emails sit somewhere in the sent folder. The list of who has replied is in someone's head. A reminder goes to a client who sent half the records a fortnight ago, because nothing records what has already arrived.
That is the loop: the self-assessment paperwork chase. The filing work is not the hard part. The asking and the follow-up either side of it are, and they are identical every year.
The maths (a sketch, not a client figure)
Assume a book of 40 self-assessment clients and an assumed 20 minutes each across the season for the request and the follow-up. Both numbers are assumptions, not measured figures. At an assumed £30 an hour, the arithmetic runs like this.
- 40 clients × 20 minutes = about 13 hours
- 13 hours × £30 an hour = about £400
- spread across January and the run to the filing date
That is time taken from the tax work. A standing request and a dated rhythm do not remove every reply, but they remove the rebuilding.
Score it: the three checks
- Hours. About 13 hours across one season on those assumptions, and more when the late filers are slow. Most small practices clear that without checking twice.
- Repeat. The request is the same each year: the same records and the same wording. One written page can carry it, and a new starter can run the chase from that page alone.
- Risk-if-wrong. A nudge to the wrong client is untidy. A nudge that states a wrong figure, or drifts into advice about a filing position, is not. That decides who checks it: a named person reads every message before it is sent.
Try one thing this week (free)
Open last January's sent folder and write the record request on one page. Put down the date you ask and the date you chase. Then take last year's late clients and check the page against them. If those dates would have caught every one of them, the page is ready to become the standing request. You can judge that by Friday, and it costs an hour, not money.
Where a person stays
Software can hold the list and draft the nudge when a date passes. A named person still decides every send. The tone of a difficult reply and any judgement about a filing position stay with a human, and so does the choice to ring instead of write. If a client's answer looks like advice, it leaves the queue and reaches a person. Financial and compliance work stays approval-only, always. Nothing goes out unchecked.
FAQ
The chase is the job. Rebuilding the list and the wording each January is not. Preparing it once means the season starts from a standing request.
The standing list records what has arrived and what has not, so the next nudge asks only for the gaps. A person reads the list before anything is sent.
The message goes out in the practice's own words, under a named person's name. Software prepares it and a person approves it, and how you explain that to a client is your call.
Those are the ones the rhythm is for. They get the same dated nudges as everyone else, and last year's pattern tells you who is worth a phone call instead.
The £499 diagnostic. One fixed fee: a one-hour call, a written report, and a follow-up call ranking what to hand over first. 5 hours a week found or a full refund, and the whole fee credits against any build.