I’ve been in practice for over 20 years and have seen the accounting landscape change significantly in that time. I’ve spent my whole career advising SME clients and large corporate groups who want to maximise their opportunities and minimise their obligations. More recently I been able to merge my personal love of technology with my job as the accounting sector shifts more towards the next industrial revolution (along with most other sectors).There has been an explosion in recent years in the number of apps and cloud technology which have been created to streamline the accounts functions in business. The days of having to manually enter bank transactions, invoices or expenses into an old desktop accounting software package (or worse writing them up in a manual ledger) have long gone. Businesses are now able to link the latest cloud systems with their bank account to pull in their statement data. Invoices and expenses can be scanned or photographed on a smart phone with the data then being automatically copied into the new cloud accounting systems.In part, some of these changes will be driven by HMRC’s plans for Making Tax Digital (MTD) which will require all VAT registered businesses who turnover more than the VAT threshold (currently £85,000) to make their VAT submissions digitally from 1 April 2019. This means that all businesses using manual ledgers, spreadsheets or accounting systems which are not compatible need to think about moving to compatible MTD software urgently.Mitchell Charlesworth is at the forefront of these changes and I’ve recently spoken at a number of seminars and on our recent webinar to promote these issues.If you would like any advice on the changes or on how to use software to automate parts of your accounts function, or if you just want a friendly accountant to give you some advice then please contact me.A link to our latest webinar on Making Tax Digital and Cloud Accounting can be found using the media link below.