Growing and operating a small business is rewarding, but it also brings a wealth of pressure and responsibility. With the self-assessment tax return deadline often a sticking point, many small business owners may have felt a significant increase in the level of stress that they were experiencing.

Running a business and meeting all personal and business tax compliance obligations requires efficiency and the right tools to optimise resources effectively. Added stress from tax deadlines simply creates an unnecessary strain on this, taking valuable energy from your tank that could be used on other tasks.

So, what can small businesses learn from the past year? Here are some tips to help you ensure this new tax year is a smooth process.

Give yourself time

Self-assessment tax returns have become a looming presence, with the latest data from HMRC reporting that 3,275 of them were filed on Christmas Day. A total of 22,060 customers went online to submit them on the 24th and 26th December. Likewise, more than 42,500 customers chose to see in the New Year by submitting their return on 31 December and 1 January. And, believe it or not, on the 1st January between 00:00 and 00:59 alone, 129 filed their returns.

It seems some treated the New Year celebrations as the opportune moment to get those returns in. But leaving it to the last minute not only increases the chances of stress and burnout, with a last minute scramble to get organised, but it also puts you at risk of missing deadlines and incurring HMRC penalties. A HMRC fine arriving at your door is the last thing you need and may increase until the return has been submitted. Technology that helps you capture your financial data (expenses, sales, etc) in real time, will ensure you don’t have that last minute scramble for receipts, invoices or expenses.

Automate your financial records

What are the best ways to avoid such a scramble? Automation technology is your saving grace to meeting deadlines and managing numbers year-round. Its main attribute? It’s a time saver. The manual sorting, documenting and reporting of VAT receipts, for example, can eat into hours of work and personal life. Automation can take on the burden for you.

Adopting accounting tools can collect data from across your financial records throughout the year, not only saving time on admin but ensuring data accuracy. Such software can collate all business and personal bank accounts and transactions into a central database. This allows expenses to be recorded and processed in real-time without hassle and the need for manual data accuracy checks, helping to avoid burnout in tackling the mound of receipts before the deadline hits.

Knowledge is key

It’s always more of an uphill battle to begin projects without any previous insight, training or knowledge, so make sure you know the process before you get started. This starts with purchasing the software. When investing in accounting technology, you need to make sure the platform aligns with your business goals. Evaluate your business needs and then explore different software options and what services they can provide you. If they match up, then it’s a good fit.

Once the software is implemented, again, avoid stepping into the unknown with a lack of understanding. Instead, take some time to read through the relevant documents and plan your next steps. Not only do you need to be on top of processes yourself, but depending on the size of your business and goals, you need to be able to onboard staff and clients alike. Being in the know will only serve to make this a much smoother and more beneficial transition.

If you don’t have time to dedicate to this, don’t be afraid to find a partner that can take the stress away from you instead. It’s an expense, but it also allows you to focus on more revenue-generating activities.

Avoiding a tax-ing new tax year

For many business owners starting out, a self-assessment tax return may present a new set of challenges to hurdle over. And every year is always a learning curve. Yet the January deadline doesn’t need to be that notoriously dreaded time of the year.

What you need are the tools that can help ease the load year-round, turning the scramble to complete a return into a simple process of submitting it. First things first, to repeat the adage, don’t leave it until the last minute. Through leveraging accounting software, you can accurately automate data collection, VAT receipts and expenses throughout the year and equip yourself with the knowledge needed to manage this process to its optimum.

Taking on some of these lessons can make this new tax year far less taxing, enabling you to focus on what you’re passionate about - your business. And that’s a small business owner’s dream.