Case study: How we helped a sole trader with MTD

“As a sole trader and podiatrist, I don’t have an IT department, HR department or finance team behind me. My husband is a window cleaner, and I manage all of our bookkeeping myself.

Over the years, I’ve worked hard to teach myself technology, step by step, so that I can use it to benefit my business, my patients and myself. I moved from paper spreadsheets to MTD-compatible Xero through Flexi-Books and have worked hard to keep my books in good order for our annual tax return with Simmons Gainsford.

However, last week was incredibly stressful. With the new quarterly MTD requirements, I spent night after night trying to track, configure and map everything, get the software communicating with HMRC, and resolve an issue where HMRC was recognising my National Insurance number as belonging to my husband.

I contacted Xero support, who managed to establish the HMRC connection, but the reports were still showing as 0000 and HMRC wasn’t receiving the information correctly.

Then Mehreen Maqsood from FlexiBooks/Simmons Gainsford stepped in—and what a difference she made.

Mehreen was calm, friendly, personable and incredibly knowledgeable. She worked through the problem, connected everything together and set up the links needed to enable me to submit my next quarterly report successfully.

Thanks to her support, I made the deadline with just 12 hours to spare!

I honestly cannot thank Mehreen enough. After days of stress and frustration, having someone who understood the system, knew what needed to be done and patiently guided me through it was an absolute lifesaver.

Thank you, Mehreen, for going above and beyond. Your expertise and support made such a huge difference.

I would highly recommend FlexiBooks/Simmons Gainsford to any small business owner who, like me, has to navigate technology and bookkeeping without an IT or finance team behind them.”

Karen Bedwell BSc ( Hons) PGDip FSSCH

Mayor of Uckfield