When a team member leaves, their VAT clients’ quarters go quiet

The situation

Rowan Street Accountants has eight staff. Sam, a senior bookkeeper, looked after around 40 VAT-registered clients, mostly on quarterly returns. Each client’s records and deadlines lived in Sam’s own spreadsheet and inbox reminders.

Sam left in early summer for a new role. The handover was a long email and a shared folder. Most clients were picked up by colleagues – but not all of them.

What went wrong

One of Sam’s clients, Greenway Florists Ltd, files VAT quarters ending 31 May, 31 August, 30 November and 28 February. Its May quarter return was due on 7 July.

Nobody had been formally given Greenway. Its return was filed three weeks late. The August quarter, due 7 October, was also late. Greenway already had two penalty points from a difficult year before it joined the practice.

What it cost

• Under the points-based system, a quarterly filer reaches the threshold at 4 points. Greenway’s two late returns took it to the threshold, triggering a £200 penalty, with another £200 for every further late return until its record is cleared.
• Late payment penalties and interest on the VAT paid late.
• To clear the points, Greenway now needs a full period of on-time returns – and a practice that will not let it slip again.

How Deadlio would have caught it

1. Every client has an owner. In Deadlio, each client is assigned to a team member. When Sam left, the Overview’s Workload by team member table would have shown her clients, and the Unassigned row would have made any gap obvious.
2. Reassign in bulk. Tick the clients, choose the new owner, and click Assign. It takes seconds.
3. Each person’s Monday email. Every staff member gets a weekly list of their own clients’ deadlines. A client nobody owns would still appear in the practice-wide summary sent to the partners.
4. VAT quarters roll forward. After each return, Mark done moves the client to the next quarter, so the next due date is never a manual entry.

Lessons for any practice

• Deadlines should belong to the practice’s system, not to one person’s spreadsheet.
• Make reassignment part of every leaver checklist, and check for unassigned clients afterwards.
• Watch clients that already carry penalty points – they have the least room for error.

Related guides

• VAT return deadlines
• Self Assessment deadlines
• AML client review cycle
• All deadline guides