For many businesses, the year-end process and the technology used, heralds a difficult period, filled with long days and a significant amount of stress. Those organisations that have stretched their existing, often spreadsheet-based processes to a point where they are no longer efficient or effective have to carry out significant amounts of manual input or intervention - increasing the risk of error and the time required to sign off on your tax disclosures during the reporting process.

Time for a better way?

It is estimated that over 81% of the ‘self-developed’ provision spreadsheets contain formulae errors, broken links, or regularly crash. Excel is no longer fit for purpose in this area and auditors are starting to ask the difficult questions in relation to the origin of the data and the calculations used.

There is a better way: we are seeing a trend away from internally developed spreadsheets into something more robust, incorporating specialist software which includes greater levels of automation and data integration. This is not cost-free but recent entrants to the software market and more cost-effective pricing by existing vendors migrating to cloud solutions, are removing the price barriers.

Managing process evolution

Just buying software isn’t the whole answer - implementing a new technology solution on top of an existing bad process is doomed to failure. It is therefore important that any work in this area isn’t just an ‘IT Switch Over’, but a more considered transformation. That doesn’t have to come with a big price tag but it should reduce the work your team does.

BDO will help you succeed

We are one of the only independent tax and technology advisors, who isn’t tied to a particular software solution, or believes that their own home-grown solutions are the only approach. As a team of tax process and automation experts, we know which solutions are available in the market and how those solutions could work for you – that’s our specialism.

As a full service firm, we help you understand opportunities to improve your process, identify and select appropriate solutions, build the business case, design and implement the right solution whilst considering process improvements, and supporting you through go live including post go live support.

We established this team to help you find a better way.