How to stop clients sending records late: a records policy for a small practice

"How to chase clients for records" is one of the most searched phrases in practice management, and the search itself is the problem: chasing is what happens when there is no policy. With four MTD deadlines a year, a practice that chases will spend its year chasing. This is a policy instead.

1. Put the dates in the engagement letter

The engagement letter already says what the practice does. Add when the client does their part: records for each period are due 18 days after the period ends. For standard MTD quarters that is 23 July, 23 October, 23 January and 23 April, which leaves the practice 15 days to the 7th. For year-end accounts, give a date three months after the year end. Dates in the letter turn "could you send" into "as agreed".

2. Make capture the default, not the request

Most late records are not withheld; they are in a drawer. A bank feed into Xero, QuickBooks or FreeAgent and a receipt-capture app on the client's phone mean the records arrive as the client spends, not when the practice asks. Set both up at onboarding, for every client, and the quarterly request shrinks to "anything not on the feed". Clients who refuse the feed are the ones to charge for lateness; they have chosen the work.

3. Chase in three letters, on fixed days

A first request the day the period ends; a reminder at 14 days before the filing deadline; a final letter at 7 days that says the practice cannot file without the records and that the penalty or penalty point is the client's. Same three letters, same days, every quarter. The records request letter maker writes them with the client's missing items filled in. The sequence works because it is predictable; the client learns that the final letter always comes, and that the practice means it.

4. Charge for late records

A records charge, stated in the engagement letter, for any period where the records arrive after the practice's date. It does not need to be large. Its job is to make the client feel the cost of lateness before the practice does. The alternative, absorbing the cost of chasing 120 clients four times a year, is the staffing problem every practice is describing this year.

Tell the client what "records" means

Half of late records are a definition problem. A sole trader hears "your records" and pictures a shoebox; the practice means a bank feed that is already connected plus the receipts that are not on it. Write the list once per client type, in plain words, and send the same list every quarter: for a landlord, the agent's statements and any invoice over £100; for a trades sole trader, the bank feed, sales invoices and materials receipts. A client who knows exactly what is being asked for sends it. One who has to work it out puts it off.

What to do about the hopeless ones

Every practice has clients who will never send records on time. For them, the choice is a higher fee that pays for the chasing, a bookkeeping service where the practice holds the records itself, or disengagement. What does not work is treating them like the others and hoping.

The penalties, for the letters

The final letter is stronger with numbers in it. The Self Assessment penalty calculator gives the cost of a late return and late tax; the Companies House penalty calculator gives the scale for late accounts; and for MTD clients, four late updates mean a £200 penalty. Put the figure in the letter and the records arrive.

This is general information, not professional advice.