Accountancy practices
Where practice admin time actually goes
Most of what eats a practice is not accountancy. It is the chase, the calendar and the re-keying: work that repeats on a fixed trigger, arrives in a lump, and has to happen whether or not anybody has the time.
What the repeated admin actually looks like #
Ask a partner where the week went and the answer is rarely a set of accounts. It is the third email to the same client about the same bank statements. It is checking who has signed the engagement letter and who has not.
It is the identity check, the authorisation that has not come back from HMRC, the confirmation statement that falls due on a date nobody has in their head, and the records that turn up as photographs of receipts two days before a filing deadline.
Four shapes cover most of it.
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The chase
The same request sent repeatedly to people who are busy with something else.
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The calendar
A fixed set of statutory dates repeated across every client on the list.
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Onboarding
The same sequence of checks and letters run cold every time a new name arrives.
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Re-keying
The same client detail typed into a second and third system because the first one will not hand it over.
None of that is new. What has changed is the volume. Making Tax Digital for Income Tax brings in sole traders and landlords over a qualifying income of 50,000 pounds from 6 April 2026, over 30,000 pounds from 6 April 2027 and over 20,000 pounds from 6 April 2028, according to HMRC guidance.
Separately, identity verification at Companies House became a legal requirement on 18 November 2025. Both of those add touchpoints per client rather than per practice, which is why the load grows with the client list and not with the fee.
How to tell which parts run on rules #
The useful test is not "is this boring", it is "would two competent people do it the same way". A job runs on rules when the trigger is the same every time, the steps do not branch on judgement, and the output is checkable by looking at it.
Runs on rules
- A filing date derived from an accounting reference date
- A reminder that fires because a document has not arrived
- A client record that exists in one system and should exist in two
Judgement
- Whether a client’s explanation of an unusual deposit is credible (exactly the kind of decision a regulator expects a named person to own)
- Advising a client to change their year end
- Telling somebody their business is in trouble (judgement, and a relationship)
The whole point of separating the two is to stop the first kind crowding out the second in the weeks when both are due at once.
The pages below take one job at a time: chasing clients for records, onboarding a new client, the statutory calendar, and the questions practices ask before they let any software near client data.
They say what the work costs and which parts of it are mechanical. They do not tell you what to buy, because the honest answer depends on your week, and working that out properly is what the free audit is for.
If you want the general version of the argument first, the plain answers section covers what automation can and cannot do in a business, and the free tools put a number on it.
Accountancy practices
Practice admin: onboarding, records chasing, deadlines and the January wall.
- Chasing clients for records What the chase actually costs a practice, and which parts of it run on rules
- Why January breaks a practice The Self Assessment deadline squeezes a year of chasing into a few weeks
- MTD for Income Tax: the workload Who is in scope, when, and what four quarterly updates a client does to the admin load
- Client onboarding The sequence a new client sets off, and where the elapsed time actually goes
- AML and identity checks What the Money Laundering Regulations ask for, and why the checks keep coming back
- Companies House deadlines Accounts, confirmation statements, identity verification and what late filing costs
- The practice deadline calendar Every recurring HMRC and Companies House date, multiplied by your client list
- Will AI replace accountants? What has measurably changed for UK practices by 2026, without the vendor statistics
- Client data in AI tools The three questions behind "can I paste this into ChatGPT", and who carries the risk
- Chasing your own fees Why a practice chases records all year and its own invoices never
Where these numbers come from
- GOV.UK, Self Assessment tax returns: deadlines , read 19 September 2026
- GOV.UK, Check if you are eligible for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax , read 19 September 2026
- GOV.UK, Verifying your identity for Companies House , read 19 September 2026
Last checked 19 September 2026.
Our workings are on the methodology page .
Free audit
A free audit for accountancy practices
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