FBTC Accountancy Services: Preparing 2,000 clients for MTD through early adoption

Before MTD, FBTC worked on a familiar cycle of one self-assessment return per client per year. With MTD, almost the entire client base would need four quarterly submissions a year, which meant four times the volume.

The firm faced several questions. Could current staff handle the workload, or would they need to hire? How long would each submission take, and how could they keep the process consistent and error-free across the team? And could they get submissions right with HMRC the first time?

Alan Gott, Manager at FBTC, has spent decades in accounting and been through several tax technology shifts. Joining the Digita MTD pilot gave the firm early answers and time to build its practice around them.

Getting started was simple. “It was a very quick conversation with our product manager, with the MTD team at Thomson Reuters, and we were set up really within minutes to get access to the software,” Alan says.

FBTC didn’t need any new tools. The team exports client data from its existing bookkeeping software into Excel and uploads it directly to Digita Personal Tax. “It works really, really well. The process is very straight line.”

The firm also has full confidence in its HMRC submissions. “We have full confidence that whatever we think has gone to HMRC has gone to HMRC. There’s no reason at all for us to doubt it.”

The first submission took 90 minutes as the team learned the software and documented its procedures. Because the software developed during the pilot, FBTC could adjust its procedures along the way. “We weren’t somebody at the end going, how are we going to make this work? We had time to figure out how we made this work.”

Today, each submission takes 2–3 minutes, using a standard process that any trained team member can follow. All 12+ staff members are fully trained on MTD, giving the firm full coverage for peak periods. Ahead of go-live, Alan rated the firm’s readiness at 8.5–9 out of 10.