Accounts and CT600 can be filed in any order

Often practices may wish to have two stages in the workflow where they file the Accounts at Companies House and the CT600 with HMRC, if you are certain that you will file the Accounts first and the CT600 second then you can set up 2 stages in this order.

The dilemma arises where you consider the possibility that a CT600 may be filed early, for example in a loss relief claim or R&D tax credit claim. At the same time the Accounts may be held back until the deadline (or even beyond) to delay the publication of bad news! If you have an Accounts filing stage and then a CT600 filing you suddenly can not progress through your workflow.

Suggested solutions include:

1) Record the filing of each in a separate job field (completion of these will green tick the deadlines) and have a single stage called 'File Accounts & CT600' - use a traffic light to prevent users from passing this stage until both job fields have been completed.

+ The benefit here is that you have a stage dedicated to filings which will be visible on the dashboard progress monitor widget (etc).

- The negative here is that having completed the stage prior to filings you may wish to complete other stages prior to filing the Accounts and CT600. For example you may to get on with an opening journal or completion of an audit file. If this effects you then you would be better off with suggestion 2.

Follow these tips to also allow unincorporated clients to use this workflow route.

2) As above record the filing of each in a separate job field (again completion of these will green tick the deadlines) and simply use traffic lights to ensure the deadline are complete prior to the end of the job. In this example you do not need a stage to record the filing of the Accounts nor CT600.

+ The benefit here is that you can get on with progressing a job and completing other finalisation stages without needing to confirm that you have filed the Accounts or CT600 when you may not have done so.

- The negative is that the progress monitor widget will not have a stage for filings. One way around this is to have the final stage called 'Ensure Accounts & CT600 filed' - all jobs would get to this stage and you would block progress unless the 2 job fields were completed. The Accounts and CT600 may have been filed much earlier than when the job reaches this stage (as recorded in the job fields), the purpose of this stage is simply to prompt a user to check they have been filed and act as a holding stage should they be outstanding.

3) Finally remember you have the option to have a separate sub-system for the CT600 process altogether. This would give you a widgets such as the progress monitor and jobs held dedicated to the CT600 process. Each sub-system would then only have 1 deadline (though the CT600 may also house the payment deadline) and in both cases you could follow options 1 and 2 above, you would avoid the confusion caused by not knowing the order of the filings as they are separate workflows.