It’s getting towards that time of year again.

There will, of course, be the odd person out there who has already submitted their 2016-17 income tax return but, if my client base is typical of other accountants, you WILL be very much in the minority.

3% give or take in my case.

I’ve probably said this before (indeed I KNOW I’ve said this before but whether I have in the blog is another matter) but I am convinced that most of my clients think “I’ll just get Christmas and New Year out of the way THEN I’ll give Colin the information he’s been asking for for the last six months. That way I can have a NICE break and get back to it when I’m all relaxed and refreshed”.

Trouble is Mr/Ms client – YOU may be chilled out over Christmas but I’m suffering dark thoughts in the dark days while anticipating my annual nervous breakdown and information overload.

There is a distinct temptation to take the whole of January as a holiday. That way they’d HAVE to get the *!*! stuff sorted but I rather suspect it would then just turn up between Xmas and New Year instead.

Sigh…

My other favourite question regarding income tax returns goes pretty much like this – we’ve had the January 31st filing deadline for at least fifteen years now and it still comes as a bl00dy surprise to some people.

Yeah, yeah, Colin’s going off on one I hear them thinking.

Double sigh…

That said I’ve had a few good experiences in the last week.

The first being a day off last Friday.

One teeny weensy “issue” (well none of us have problems any more, do we? Soooo last century) – the man flu I’ve been bravely (snort) living through (cringe) this last week or two decides to get its second wind and come back with a vengeance! Cough, splutter, cough, splutter, ache, ache, ache.

I even managed to accuse Lorraine of attacking me with a cricket bat when I woke up yesterday, I hurt so much!

She (bless her) denies even OWNING a cricket bat but I’m still pretty certain she’s just hidden it well…

It’s surprising how much more relaxed you can feel after a long weekend vegetating. Trouble is Saturdays can be booked up with shopping/visiting/hobbies (delete as appropriate) so you don’t slow down there and that leaves just Sunday. The third day just gives time (precious time) for pootling (oddly enough not in the spellchecker) about.

Mind you the side effect is, see last week’s post regarding “issues” (that word again) at one of my pro bono clients led to a flurry of emails that took nearly an hour to settle after the weekend.

And I’ve struggled to keep the un-dealt with emails under 200 ever since.

Other highlights?

I’ve had my arm twisted by my PR person Lorna to enter the News’ Business Excellence awards this year. Would never have crossed my mind to do it otherwise. Don’t normally spend much time blowing my own trumpet – very British (or unimaginative one might say) but if she says it’s doable, why the devil not! Even introduced her to one of MY clients. It doesn’t cross his mind that expanding your monthly (not annual) turnover from zero to £40,000 in around two years is anything out of the ordinary.

Bless!

Onwards and upwards. At our most recent chat turnover of £3/4M per annum was bandied around. It’s doable. All I need to do is make sure he doesn’t expand his costs too much while doing so. It can definitely be done. I might need to nail his hands to something for a while but it CAN be done!

My software nightmares seem to be calming down at last. One out the door, one out/back in and deciding whether two figures that need revising have to go back to the support team as I’m buggered if I know why it’s picking up the wrong figure that’s already had to be adjusted for somewhere else… and a third which I altered over the phone yesterday with the assistance of one of the support team (thank you Richard) which will still need a minor tweak due to a page breaking partway through a column of figures.

Wow, don’t I lead an exciting (nearly wrote exiting and actually halted for a moment before deciding it wasn’t what I wanted to say) life.

Nights are fair drawing in…