Christmas 2023 – Support Availability
Infoplex Ltd’s Christmas availability for the Festive Period of 2023 and into 2024.
Infoplex Ltd’s Christmas availability for the Festive Period of 2023 and into 2024.
Infoplex Ltd’s Christmas availability for the Festive Period of 2022 and into 2023.
Multi-Currency Purchase Orders are not on everyone’s Christmas list. But for those select few whose list it is on, Christmas has come early. MultiTAS v6.2 has been released this week after 7 months of work and the odd sweary word. This blog post has a wee rundown of features and improvements that it contains. Inevitably there is probably also a bug or 2, if you find any please report to Support.
You can now create a multi-currency purchase order (P/O) in any of the currencies that TASBooks supports (which is most of them). You can then receive the goods from this P/O and invoice the P/O – all in the currency of the Suppliers Invoice, and these amounts together with the base currency values are what are posted to the Suppliers Account.
This ‘closes’ the multi-currency (multi-currency sales orders and multi-currency purchase orders) adventure Infoplex has been on for a number of years. Initially we added these features to Sales Orders and now they have been added to Purchase Orders. As a reminder, we added support for Supplier Pricelists and Multiple Stock Locations to Purchase Orders in v6 and v6.1 so those adventures have green ticks against them too.
So, there you have it. MultiTAS 6.2 is available for download now.
If updating from v5 (or – gulp – earlier) you will need to remove the existing version of MultiTAS you have before updating to v6. If you already have v6 then you can skip this step and install over the top of your version. Please remember you will need to have a valid support contract to update to this version that adds Multi-Currency Purchase Orders. If you do not currently have one please get in touch as we may have a Christmas offer available to help you out.
Like most other businesses in the country, we’ll be closed on Monday the 19th of September for the UK Bank Holiday in respect to Queen Elizabeth II.
It goes without saying that everything you’re about to read should be taken with a large pinch of salt. The situation is fluid (to say the least) and until we know exactly what will be required of businesses that import and export, we can’t say for certain that there will not be changes a little further down the road.
So. Here goes…
There will be no TAS update to support Brexit changes. Manual processes are being documented currently which can be used.
Sage
17/12/2020: Here are the details: https://my.sage.co.uk/public/help.aspx#/customer/support/brexit/category/tas/uk
Yes. We’ll add in fields to allow you to store Customer and Supplier EORI numbers and make them available on Sales Order and Purchase Order documents. We’ll also add an option to select and display the Incoterms of a Sales Order (not sure these are needed for Purchase Orders, if we are wrong then please get in touch!!).
If you need changes to any of your existing MultiTAS documents (e.g. modify to meet Commercial Invoice requirements) then please do not leave it until the last minute (or even the last week). For significant changes, there will be charges involved. We are closed for the Christmas break from 5pm on 22nd December – more information available here.
No. We are not Brexit/Customs/Accounting experts.
If you are unsure what you need to do to get ready then your first call should be to your Accountant.
You should also look over the UK Governments Transition page to see what they advise, what will change (lots) and what will get better (nothing) – Brexit transition – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
There is a lot of reading available on the Xero website – Brexit: Impact on small business and what you need to know | Xero UK
Photo by Call Me Fred on Unsplash
We’re going to keep this as straightforward as possible…
In case you missed it, the United Kingdom (UK) left the European Union (EU) on 31st January. The UK is now in a transition period. Nothing has changed. When the transition period ends, nothing will change.
Clear? Good. Now we’ll go into a bit more detail…
The TASBooks market is based in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. As such, our market is based in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. If you trade with a country that is a member of the EU, you must conform to EU rules and regulations (such as ePrivacy and GDPR). The Republic of Ireland is a member of the EU. That means that we will conform to EU rules and regulations for our customers in the Republic of Ireland.
But what about customers in the UK? When we left the EU, all existing rules and regulations were rolled into one and transferred to the UK. As such, the rules and regulations that existed in the EU on 31st January continue to exist in the UK on 1st February. It means that in the UK our customers are protected by the EU’s rules and regulations and we must continue to abide by them.
Nothing has changed. To be honest, it’s made life easy. Instead of having two sets of rules and regulations to which to conform, we have only one. It would cost money and time to implement new rules and put into place new procedures.
What happens in the future is still a bit… vague, shall we say? If the UK agrees to stay close to the EU, then it should not prove to be a problem. If the UK diverges from the EU, we will have to abide by both EU rules and regulations (for our Irish customers) and any new UK rules and regulations.
In the meantime, we’ve already taken some actions to facilitate any future changes that may come to pass. First, we’re making sure that all of our data is held on servers within the EU. Our website is hosted on servers in Manchester but will be moved to servers in Germany in March. We use Office 365 and our data is held on servers within the EU. Our CRM of choice is HubSpot. They store data on servers in the United States and in Germany. These servers are regulated by the EU-US Privacy Shield. Our accounting and financial data is held on servers in the US. These too are protected by the EU-US Privacy Shield.
Secondly, we’re making some changes to the way in which we use HubSpot. We’ve used a variety of tools to get in touch with our customers over the years and data has been stored everywhere. We’ve decided to consolidate our customer data and our marketing data into HubSpot. In the future, all of our mail shots will come from HubSpot and will include the ability to amend or delete your communication and marketing preferences. We’re building new mailing lists and subscriptions to achieve this. We’re going to make it easier for you to opt-in to software updates but opt-out of marketing emails.
This work is ongoing. We’re trying do things with minimal interruption and without sending you mail shots by mistake. If we do – we’re sorry. We didn’t mean to do it. Please be kind.
We’ll let you know when everything is finished.
It’s been twelve months since we launched our Making Tax Digital software for TASBooks and we thought it was time to step back, take stock, and let you know what we have planned for Tax Manager in the twelve months ahead…
Tax Manager has been a phenomenal success. Working alongside HMRC, we’ve been able to develop software that takes the hassle out of submitting a VAT return. The feedback from you – our customers – has been so a real boost; you’ve shared your experiences with us and provided us with some ideas for a little further down the road.
What’s most rewarding, however, is the money that’s been saved by all of you by using our software. We know that out software can save businesses over £200 on licensing and support every year. That’s why Tax Manager continues to attract new users every month.
But what’s ahead? Firstly, most (if not all) of our customers asked for submission receipts and we’ve already delivered on this. We introduced submission receipts to both Tax Manager and Tax Manager for MultiTAS. If you haven’t updated yet, you should visit our support section to download the latest version of our software. We have a few more ideas in the pipeline for how we can use these receipts, but we’re not going to reveal too much about them at the moment.
Second, we’re looking into ways in which we can streamline the entire process for those customers that have more ‘complex arrangements’ – such as exemptions or VAT groups – and make it easier to submit returns. We are looking to allow direct submission without the need to export returns. We want to make our software are easy to use as possible.
Third, there’s a new version of Tax Manager and Tax Manager for MultiTAS due to be released in the coming weeks. It includes new tools to combat fraud and augments the existing security checks between accounting software and HMRC.
Finally, one of the biggest issues has been downtime. We’ll be honest with you – HMRC haven’t exactly been forthcoming on this front but they are getting better. We’ve already added a Service Status page to the website and we’re adding some additional features. The home page on our website will include a ticker that features service updates and product releases. We’re also working on a notification system that will push an alert or message to users as soon as possible about potential issues from HMRC.
That’s it. We’re sure that over the next twelve months somebody out there will suggest a feature. If we can do it and if it would benefit everybody, then we’ll add it to the list.
You make think that March is a little late to set out a roadmap for the year and tell out about our plans, but… we’ve been quite busy.
Making Tax Digital was a big endeavour. There wasn’t much information to work from and accountants and software developers were all in the dark. To be fair, so was HMRC. Still, it’s done now and our VAT submission software has been a huge success. It’s advertised us to new markets and new opportunities. The feedback from our customers has been invaluable and we’ve already delivered on some of it. You can read more about our plans for Making Tax Digital here.
MultiTAS is, and always will be, the heart of our business. We’ve built a genuinely intuitive set of features and tools that help you, our customers, use TASBooks effectively. Your comments help us to understand how our customers use our software and are frequently the source of inspiration. That’s why Purchase Order processing will be added to MultiTAS in the next release. You asked. We’ve delivering.
The world is changing and so too are we. When you talk to us, we really do listen to what you have to say. Certain things come up time and again. That’s why we’re expanding the range of services we offer our customers this year. These include:
And that’s it. The list isn’t exhaustive – there are some surprises that we’re keeping under our hats for now, but… That’s what we have planned for this year.
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