Quick question on 12 July 2014: Please add a note below or email me as to how and why you found this post. It baffles me that this 4 year old piece is routinely one of the most popular on my blog, with hundreds of views every week. Why would that be?
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This is a follow up from one of last week’s blog posts. Here I’m looking more at the extra time and effort involved in complying with the new iXBRL efiling obligations.
Clients will only agree to paying additional fees if they perceive that additional work is being done and that this benefits them in some way.
Tagging company accounts for the taxman, using iXBRL tags, is going to be obligatory from 2011.
It seems that plenty of accountants have yet to determine exactly what they will be doing to ensure that their clients’ accounts are compliant. I’m not sure how late you can realistically leave it before you find out what is going to be involved here. You’ll want to do this both to ensure that you are able to comply with the new obligations AND to manage your clients’ expectations.
Most importantly is the need, from a commercial perspective, to ensure that you only devote extra time and effort to tagging each client company’s accounts etc if you are sure you will be paid for doing so. Asking for additional fees only after the event is unlikely to be very remunerative! Is it ever?
Hi Mark,
I’m interested in a bit of market research, how do you plan to deal with the production of iXBRL versions of accounts? What additional cost do you expect it will add to your CT filing production costs?
Will you use an accounts preparation package, use a tagging solution or outsource the work to one of the Indian shops setting up? (must declare an interest – Seahorse is a tagging solution)
rgds/alex
Thanks for your interest Alex. I’m not in practice so it doesn’t affect me at all. I don’t need a solution. ;-)
This is interesting in retrospect. For me, iXBRL meant no changes to the way I did things or my cost base whatsoever. The software I use incorporated the requirements in time, at no extra cost, and tagging a set of accounts takes seconds. If anything, it’s saved me money as I now file all my accounts with Companies House in iXBRL format. No letters, no stamps, less time…
How many people have charged extra for iXBRL and how much did they charge?