One tracker for every Companies House and HMRC deadline
Miss a filing deadline and it's a penalty, an awkward phone call and a dent in the client's trust. Yet at plenty of firms the master list of who's due what is a spreadsheet and a good memory.
Where it hurts
When you've got dozens of clients, each on their own cycle, the deadlines never stop coming. Companies House here, HMRC there, a renewal somewhere else. Keeping it all straight in your head or a colour-coded sheet works right up until it doesn't.
The danger isn't the deadline you know about, it's the one that quietly rolls around while you're heads-down on something else. No reminder, no flag, just a penalty notice a few weeks later.
And chasing clients for the documents you need to hit those deadlines is its own separate headache.
What I'd build
I'd set up one tracked list of every client deadline: accounts, VAT, confirmation statements, payroll, self assessment, whatever you handle, each with an owner, a status and reminders that fire early enough to act on. Companies House publishes filing dates, so those load themselves rather than being typed in and going stale. The chasing is where an AI step earns its keep: when a client replies with documents, it reads what's actually arrived, ticks those off, and drafts the next chase naming exactly what's still missing, ready for you to approve and send. The whole thing lives somewhere the team can see it, colour-coded by how close and how at-risk each deadline is. A deadline shouldn't be able to sneak up on you.
What changes
- Every client deadline in one shared, always-current list
- Companies House dates pulled in automatically, not typed and forgotten
- Client replies read and ticked off, chases drafted for your approval
- See at a glance which clients are on track and which are at risk
Related fixes
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