So what now for the ICAEW membership?  Perhaps a reduction in subscription cost?

Today that question was answered with an email from Michael Izza, chief executive of the ICAEW, stating that there will be a new journal for ICAEW members, which presumably will not mean a reduction.

But what of Accountancy magazine, this is surely going to put quite a bit of pressure on them, especially with regards to advertisers as the 130,000 members and 9,000 students won’t presumably all subscribe to Accountancy ongoing?  I suppose we’ll see the best of Accountancy Magazine in the next few months, as it tries to make itself indispensable for accountants.

But I certainly won’t be putting down £80 until I first see what the new ICAEW magazine is like.

Sage Usability Design Panel Sign-up Form

Sage have ‘invited’ our firm to participate in a Usability and Design panel. Whereby they will contact us with questionnaires, polls, forums etc. to give our opinion on Sage software:

As a member of the panel we’ll contact you from time to time and ask if you’d like to take part in an activity. This could be a focus group, a quick phone call so that we can find out how you use a certain feature, a face-to-face discussion at your office, or asking you to try out a new software feature before it’s released.

We have given much feedback to Sage over the years, including the wishlist feature in Sage Accounts Production Advanced and having spoken to support on the telephone and asked for requests to be logged (with a promise of an email that never arrives). These requests being for more fundamental accounts production features/problems than just usability and as far as I can see nothing has come of them.

So I don’t think we will be signing up for this, not because we cannot think of any way to improve the software we use, but because we have better things to do with our time when the only reward will be access to software not yet released, which will presumably be buggy and may conflict with existing installations.

Does Sage listen to user feedback? The comments on accounting web about annual editions of Sage Line 50 (Sage 50) suggest not. So there is no guarantee our ideas will be taken seriously let alone implemented.

At the bottom of the article are some suggestions for relieving stress. Not sure that they are all that helpful, such as number 4: Sleep Well. Either they sleep well enough or they cannot sleep in which case telling them to sleep well is not exactly going to help.

More practical ideas for dealing with stress?

How about getting to the cause of the stress, such as giving problem clients an ultimatum or just suggesting they move on to new pastures if it is not worth your while?

If you are overloaded by your boss then speak to them, if you are an accountant you are a professional and should be able to make the case for change.

Practising breathing (number 5) or improving your posture (number 6) are not going to have much affect if you are over working because you are under charging or are just badly organised.

Right, off to finish the 30 jobs on my list before the weekend…

Companies House have model articles on their website in Microsoft Word format that can be downloaded for use.

There are also new forms for all other filings at Companies House, although this is going to be less relevant due to most companies filing annual returns and most changes (e.g. change of directors, registered office etc.) online.

The full Companies House guidance is also available.

Reference checkers

I wonder if it actually looks up the UTR to its database of issued UTRs or whether it just performs a Checksum (what algorithm do they use?) like the Luhn Algorithm for credit card number checking?

Companies' House Downtime Message

Let’s hope things improve when the new penalty regime comes in.

Of course this won’t affect most companies, but for those filing late, the penalties will stack up fast.

How late are the accounts delivered	Penalty – Private Company	Penalty – PLC
Not more than one month	£ 150	£750
More than one month but not more than three months	£375	£1500
More than three months but not more than six months	£750	£3000
More than six months	£1500	£7500

In addition where there was a failure to comply with filing requirements in relation to the previous financial year (and that the previous financial year had begun on or after 6th April 2008), the penalty will be double that shown in the table.

When do these new penalties apply?
The new penalties will apply from 1st February 2009.

How will I know when a penalty is levied?
If accounts are delivered late, an invoice is issued automatically to your registered office address.

Do the penalties apply to flat management and dormant companies?
Yes

HMRC have removed the prepaid postage from their envelopes

HMRC made the announcement recently that from 01 October 2008 they would phase out prepaid envelopes for sending tax payments in order to encourage electronic forms of payment which are obviously cheaper to process and more secure.

Fortunately for business there was some good news in the notification:

If businesses still wish to submit returns and cheques in hard copy, the postage is tax deductible.

Great!

This is unsatisfactory from a professional and aesthetic point of view.

If you have the paid upgrade of Adobe Reader or some other PDF software then you can use the typewriter tool to type on the form. However its a lot of money for one purpose.

Fortunately I have created a PDF of the form with fields to fill in by using PDF Escape.

Here is the Typeable 64-8 for your use (at least until HMRC changes the layout again).

(Remember that it is probably still easier to use the form rather than the on-line authentication if you are being authorised for more than one category: CT, VAT, PAYE etc.)