This white paper is designed to help the tax practitioner break free from cumbersome administrative tasks and streamline their business.

Taxation is an inevitable responsibility.  Accountants and Tax Practitioners face the challenge of meeting their annual tax deadlines on an ongoing basis so that they can ensure that their client’s tax returns are submitted timeously.

The responsibility that comes with performing this task, is enormous.

In order to maximize profits there is usually a trade-off between quality of work delivered and taking on more clients. Fortunately, there are ways to combat these bottlenecks.

The Problem

When it comes to doing tax calculations and filing tax returns, a recent GreatSoft survey showed that at least 90% of Accountants and Tax Practitioners rely on doing their calculations in an external Excel spreadsheet. The risk in using Excel is that the integrity of the data is often compromised, and hours in productive time is often lost by the need to check and re-check the figures across the following three different places:

Client data is often stored in multiple files and databases, making it difficult to track the status of relevant information that needs to be on-hand. The result is that hours are wasted following up and gathering the correct information. Once again the practitioner once relies on an external spreadsheet or email to track the status of every task, and all correspondence received from SARS.

The lack of a direct link between the SARS’s eFiling system and the practitioner’s tax calc results in the financial data needing to be re-captured. A manual reconciliation needs to be done for every return to make sure that the figures are accurate.

The problem with most electronic filing systems is that tax returns can only be submitted and tracked individually, not in bulk. Firms who have multiple tax practitioner profiles can also not be linked to a central system, causing the tax administration processes to be segregated.

For both large and smaller firms an integrated solution has become even more critical. Processes like time-sheets, work-in-progress and billing need to be linked, and high-level analysis and reporting need to be done on these functions across different partners and service lines.

The above illustration shows just how lengthy this process can be. The solution suggested below describes how one can completely eliminate steps 4, 5 and 7, and how to greatly improve on steps 1, 2, 6, 8 and 9.

The Solution

The Solution is to implement a fully integrated tax system that will allow you to manage all these processes in one central place. Such an implementation will pull all your tax processes together into one integrated system. The result? The elimination of unnecessary and time-consuming tasks, and refocusing your energy on more profitable activities.

The Benefits

The Benefits to the firms of implementing an all-in-one tax system include convenience that will allow you to:

• Link directly with SARS eFiling
  • submit your annual and provisional tax returns in bulk.
• Retrieve financial data straight from the trial balance and import into the tax return
  • these balances can be mapped according to the SARS source codes.
• Complete and check the tax calculation directly in the ITR form, eliminating the use of spreadsheets.
• Greatly reduce the risk of incorrect or duplication of information and preserve the integrity of your data.
• Track the status of all your returns and assessments per partner in a single dashboard-style view.
• Retrieve PDF Assessments, SARS Letters and other Correspondence.
• Upload and store client documents and information, and submit company financial statements.
• Manage and distribute client letters and notice of assessment.
• Capture and track tax entries and queries.
• Receive automated alerts for assessments or important deadlines that need to be monitored.
• Integrate with other business-essential modules like CRM, Costing and Timesheets.
• Having centralised client information at your fingertips.
• Produce executive-quality reports across multiple partners, offices and service lines.
• Online convenience give you the ability to work from anywhere on any device
• Daily automated backups which give you peace of mind that your data is safe.

The benefits of implementing an all-in-one tax solution outweighs the cost required in terms of time saved, and will pay for itself within the first year. Globally GreatSoft is one of the software vendors who is able to provide such a best practice system for handling tax administration and submissions. This system can be implemented in-house in your private cloud or via a hosted service.

This white paper has been written to ensure you never miss another tax deadline and to help you maximise the profits of your tax compliance services.

For more information complete the contact form at the right hand top of this page or contact our Customer Service Helpline on 0861 473 281