With entries to the 2024 Accounting Excellence being open, Karen Kennedy, director at Kennedy Accountancy and Andrew Griggs, senior partner at Kreston Reeves join Richard Hattersley and Matthew Ord to talk all things accounting excellence. Kennedy Accountancy won last year’s New Firm of the Year Award and Kreston Reeves picked up the award for both the Audit Team of the Year and the AccountingWEB Pride Award for ESG. They discuss the three pillars of accounting excellence: Client care Kennedy and Griggs speak about how big of a focus client care is, how important it is to their firm, how things have changed and the initiatives they have both undertaken. Processes They continue to discuss how their firms are improving efficiency, staff development and the quality of services they provide. Growth Lastly, both Kennedy and Griggs explore what growth looks like for them and how they successfully keep up and achieve balance when growing.

Richard Murphy is a professor of accounting practice at Sheffield University Management School, a chartered accountant and an economic justice campaigner. He joins AccountingWEB for a new episode of No Accounting for Taste. Discussion begins on Labour’s plans to raise an extra £5bn a year by tackling tax avoidance. Murphy offers his take on whether shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves is looking in the right places and whether she is speaking to the right people. Murphy’s taxing wealth report is shared as he discusses that with certain measures, £90bn could be raised. Talk then turns to the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales’s (ICAEW) annual accounts being recently published. The team alongside Murphy looks at the funds paid to the ICAEW as a result of fines and penalties given to chartered accountants, whether things have changed in the accounts and what’s next for the reserves.

After the Easter weekend, the AccountingWEB team joined for another episode of No Accounting for Taste. Tom zeroes in on HMRC matters, exploring their new One Login service, questioning why now and what impact this will have. He also delves into recent complaints lodged against HMRC after their letter to Devonports LAS accountants contained multiple errors. The team asks how a letter like that gets posted and how are they written. With the recent news that the Accounting Excellence Awards are now open, Richard looks back at the entries from last year and discusses the most common trends and challenges. Interested in starting your entry for Accounting Excellence? Click here. Matt closes off the podcast by recounting an interview with AJ Chambers’ James Gosling, speaking about M&A trends. They talk about issues with succession, consolidators and firms struggling to retain talent.

AccountingWEB’s technology editor Tom Herbert is joined by experts Natasha Everard from Bewitching Bookkeeping and Bhimal Hira from Prysm Financial to share their insights into what's hot and what's not on the accounting technology runway in 2024. For full shownotes visit: https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/tech/accounting-software/whats-on-accountings-spring-software-shopping-list

The team discuss what they got up to at the Festival of Accounting & Bookkeeping (FAB), coming back together for another packed episode of No Accounting for Taste. Just before we hit record, HMRC made a sudden U-turn on the decision to make permanent cuts to the helpline. Matthew, Richard, and Tom delve into the ensuing chaos and the swift turnaround in their decision. A popular topic at FAB, Richard speaks about the government consultation to regulate the tax advice market. He looks at what this means and what accountants have to say. Tom moves on to a fraud case where cybercriminals stole £53,000 from an accountant’s Revolut business account. He details Revolut’s response and explores the rules of reimbursement. Lastly, we hear from a special guest, Kate Bell, farms and estates partner at Albert Goodman on the trials and tribulations of farming, its need for stability and how they are navigating tax measures. Kate talks about the impact that basis period reform, double cab pick-ups and the furnished holiday lettings regime has had on farming.

On this week’s No Accounting for Taste, it’s all things Spring Budget. Chatting with Allica Bank’s Conrad Ford, Richard and Tom look at Jeremy Hunt’s “Budget for long-term growth”, questioning whether this was the pre-election Budget they were expecting. This session is sponsored by Allica Bank, who provides full-service banking for established businesses in the UK.

Alongside Richard and Tom we welcome our new deputy editor, Matt who will be joining the No Accounting for Taste podcast. A big story this week was the U-turn made by the government regarding double-cab pickups. Richard looks at what happened and what this says about the government. With self assessment been and gone, HMRC provided Tom with some more interesting statistics. Tom shares the percentages of how many tax returns were filed by agents, how many were filed digitally and what this all means for making tax digital. In other HMRC news, Matt speaks about the name and shame made by HMRC for employers who failed to pay minimum wage. Matt talks about the big names involved, reasons why this might have happened and whether naming and shaming was the correct approach. And finally, the sad news of the death of actor and comedian Ewen MacIntosh, who played big Keith in The Office, prompted the team to remember MacIntosh’s impact on the fictional accounting world. With only three weeks away, we also get a sneak peek of what the team are looking forward to at the Festival of Accounting and Bookkeeping (FAB).

Join the AccountingWEB team as they talk about the deepfake CFO scam alongside all things post-self-assessment. An excerpt from this week’s Any Answers Live, discusses the highs and lows of busy season with Rebecca Williams and Claire Bartlett. With this year’s self assessment been and gone, and 1.1m taxpayers missing the deadline, Richard Hattersley and Tom Herbert talk about deadline day statistics, the late and last minute filers, and the HMRC helplines. Now that tax returns are no longer a concern, attention shifts to the beginning of practice software shopping for practitioners. Predictions are being made regarding what practitioners might prioritise this year, with a noticeable interest in data tools emerging as a key focus. We also hear from Rebecca Williams, founder of Eccounting Made Easy and Claire Bartlett, founder of Arden Bookkeeping who are both speaking at the Festival of Accounting and Bookkeeping. In a snippet from this week's Any Answers Live, they reflect on the highs and lows of their self assessment season. Make sure to book your free ticket to the Festival of Accounting and Bookkeeping at the NEC, Birmingham on 13 and 14 March. Interested in practice software? Hear more about the vast array of different vendors and quiz them on new or current software. Enjoyed listening to Rebecca Williams and Claire Bartlett? They will be one of the many expert speakers talking about accounting and bookkeeping. Show timings 1m 09s Deepfake CFO scam 6m 18s Self assessment statistics 12m The start of practice software shopping 15m 50s Rebecca Williams and Claire Bartlett talk about busy season

Lucy Cohen joins the AccountingWEB team on the podcast this week to discuss the challenges of this year’s self assessment season, receiving a multimillion-pound investment in her firm and MTD ITSA testing. With just under a week to go before the self assessment deadline, and 3.8m taxpayers still needing to file, the AccountingWEB editorial team talk about the late filers, the missing information, the client chasers, the late nights, the long HMRC helpline wait times and much more, as we chart the highs and lows of this year’s busy season. Lucy Cohen, the co-founder of Mazuma Accountants and speaker at the Festival of Accounting & Bookkeeping, pulls back the curtains on her firm’s self assessment season. We also catch up with Lucy on the day that Mazuma announced a multimillion-pound investment from Innovation Investment Capital Limited Partnership (IIC), the Cardiff Capital Region (CCR) backed fund. Lucy gives the inside scoop on how the investment came about and their plans to scale the firm in 2024. Meanwhile while all attention is on self assessment and planning ahead, the elephant in the room is of course Making Tax Digital. And this week we learned of HMRC’s plans to revive the pilot, only we’re not calling it a pilot. AccountingWEB’s Tom Herbert summarises the latest developments of the digital project. Lucy will be one of the many expert speakers at the Festival of Accounting & Bookkeeping (FAB) on 13 and 14 March at the NEC, Birmingham. Go to Fab.uk to book your free tickets! Show timings 1m 30s Mazuma’s investment news 11m 40s Self assessment season discussion 30m 40s MTD ITSA testing 36m 55s Festival of Accounting & Bookkeeping

What does 2024 have in store for the accounting profession? Dan Heelan joins the AccountingWEB team to predict the big topics that will shape the year ahead. In this episode of No Accounting for Taste, the AccountingWEB team and Dan Heelan, a director at the accounting firm Heelan Associates, cast their eyes over the ongoing developments in the Post Office scandal. The Post Office scandal is one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history, where postmasters were wrongly accused of theft and false accounting, and was the subject of a recent ITV dramatisation of the scandal. While the postmasters have received some justice in the court of public opinion, many are still grappling with the compensation payment and the financial consequences of being pushed into a higher tax bracket. The team also looks at IRIS’s recent private equity investment and what the ongoing trend of consolidation in the accounting technology space means for accountants and their choice of tools. Finally, Heelan and the AWEB editors place their bets on the big stories they predict in the accounting profession in 2024. Who will take the title of the accounting prognosticator? Tune in to this week’s episode of No Accounting for Taste to find out. For links to the stories discussed in this episode go to: https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/content/no-accounting-for-taste-ep154-2024-predictions-post-office-scandal-and-iris

This week’s podcast rounds up the year that was 2023 in accounting tech, with guests Billie Mcloughlin and John Toon joining AccountingWEB tech editor Tom Herbert to discuss the impact of AI on accounting tech, what's going on with anti-money laundering technology for accountants, and how the gap between the tech haves and have notes is widening. For links to the items discussed on the show visit: https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/content/no-accounting-for-tech-ep20-accounting-technology-year-in-review-ai-aml-and-integrations