What's new - October 2024

Top-level summary

New reports, new ways of recording time, and interface upgrades that make your favourite practice software even easier to use.

Tax Return Production

Enhanced partnership profit allocation

Allocating profits and losses to partners in a partnership just got better with our new pre-profit/loss allocation adjustments capability. It’s now possible to enter any adjustments, such as partner salaries, prior to the profit or loss allocation being calculated on the partners’ percentage share.

Any adjustments will also be reflected on the Partnership Business Summary report for complete clarity.

New finance costs summary report

If you or your clients are struggling to understand how finance costs have been restricted on residential property income – and the utilisation of any unused finance costs brought forward and carried forward – we have just the solution for you. Our new relief for finance costs summary details everything you need to know, either for your internal use or to add to your client tax reporting pack.

Greater visibility of the partnership statements

We’ve always provided the ability to generate a report, containing a statement for each partner in a partnership, that includes all the information needed to complete the partnership pages of their individual tax returns. We’ve now improved visibility of this report by including it within the main summaries screen, and not just within the reporting pack printing preferences.

We’ve also added the ability to filter this report by a specific partner, rather than always displaying the information for every partner.

New transition profit tax calculation report

Basis period reform is the gift that keeps on giving in terms of complexity. You may have noticed that tax due on transition profits now appears as a single line item on HMRC’s SA302 tax calculation, with no reference to the rate of tax applicable to those profits. In response, we’ve created a new report showing how this figure has been calculated – particularly useful for when the transition profit spans multiple rates of tax.

Improved visibility and performance for larger partnerships

We’ve taken a fresh approach to the user interface design of our partnership screens so as to not overwhelm you with superfluous information, particularly where large numbers of partners are involved. Information now only shows dynamically – thus removing lots of empty boxes –and we’ve added search fields, column sorting, multi-select, scrolling and contextual shortcuts to improve navigation.

We’ve also made significant performance improvements to page load times where very large numbers of partners are involved.

Accounts Production

Practice level defaults enabled for new Group Accounts module

Following the exciting release of our Group Accounts consolidation module earlier this year, we’ve now enabled practice level defaults relevant to groups to be set within Admin centre. This allows you to customise the default wording for the group-specific notes and disclosures, just as you are able for other entity types.

Window size retention for posting and edit notes screens

As customers now use an ever-increasing range of screen sizes and display resolutions, we’ve observed a greater inclination amongst users to resize the posting screens and the edit notes screens. Any re-sizing of these screens will now be retained locally to avoid having to repeat that process for each subsequent opening. 

Additional disclosure notes for all company formats

In anticipation of our Charity Accounts format becoming available in 2025, we’ve added a Contingent Assets note and made that available to all formats. We’ve also added a Qualifying Third Party and Pension Scheme Indemnity Provision note to the Directors’ Report for small and micro entities, where applicable.

Practice Manager

Ability to re-assign Hub Admin role to another user

Upon first installing TaxCalc, a default user ‘admin’ with role 'Hub Admin' is created and able to do the following within the software (over and above normal Administrator role privileges):

The Hub Admin role can now be assigned to another user in the system to negate the need for a separate admin user to be maintained.

Time

Multiple employee charge out rates

In addition to the standard charge out rate for each employee, which can be varied over time, it’s now possible to add activity type charge out rates on a user-by-user basis. This allows you to have multiple concurrent charge out rates for each member of your team that vary depending on the activity they’re working on.

For example, you may wish to charge a premium for employees working on consultancy type activities or discount where they are working on more administrative activities.

Practice level activity type charge out rates

As well as being able to add multiple charge out rates for each individual employee, we’ve added the ability to set activity-based charge out rates at a practice level so that they apply to all employees across the board. Any activity type charge out rates set at individual level will apply in preference to the practice level setting.

AML Centre

Option to record proliferation financing risk

In accordance with updates made to the 5th Anti Money Laundering directive in relation to proliferation financing, we’ve added a new option to specifically set the proliferation financing risk and related comments, so that this can be identified and printed on the firm-wide risk assessment separately. 

Companies House Forms

EM01 - Change of registered email address 

Following on from our previous release, and the mandatory requirement for companies and LLPs to provide a registered email address to Companies House, we’ve included a new option to allow users to submit a change to that email address, where they’ve already notified Companies House of a registered email address.

HMRC forms

New Version of '64-8 Authorising your agent' form

In a departure from convention, customers should note that HMRC has stopped accepting the previous version of the 64-8 form when submitted on paper. We recommend that you use the new form for any paper submissions that are currently in-flight, or use electronic submission instead.