Manage your practice’s default tax submission and access settings
This article explains how to set up default settings for your practice that control how your clients can submit, approve and see tax information.
You can set up default settings for your practice so that you can approve, restrict or hide Income Tax submissions, and manage Tax Timeline visibility - all from your Practice Dashboard.
Please note:
- Only senior account managers can manage the practice’s default tax submission and access settings.
- Tax submission and access settings will be applied to all clients, including those that are linked to the dashboard. However, you can override these default settings for individual clients.
- Setting submission and access settings for end-of-year statutory accounts and Corporation Tax filings, Income Tax and Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is only the first phase of this in FreeAgent. We’ll be adding settings for other taxes and reports in due course.
Managing tax submission and access for clients
Select 'Settings' from the drop-down menu below your practice name.
Next, select ‘Tax submission and access control’ from the ‘My practice’ area.
You can manage clients’ tax submission and access to the End of Year, Income Tax and Tax Timeline areas of FreeAgent.
End of Year
In the ‘End of Year’ tab, you can update clients' display settings, report content settings and email settings.
Display settings
Choose whether each client’s Companies House Report and CT600 tabs should be visible in the client’s End of Year area.
Report content settings
Choose whether the accountant’s report, which is not included by default, should be included in the client’s full accounts, and add text for it if you want to include it.
Email settings
If your client has the user role of ‘Director’ in FreeAgent and has either full (level 8) or level 7 access to their account, you can send an email directly from FreeAgent to notify them that their End of Year report is ready for approval.
A default message will appear in the ‘Default email contents’ area but you can edit this text if you wish.
Once you’re happy with the default End of Year settings, select ‘Save changes’ to complete the process.
Income Tax
In the ‘Income Tax’ tab, you can choose who can access the Income Tax area in FreeAgent and update clients’ Self Assessment and Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Income Tax submission settings.
Income Tax access
You can choose whether the Income Tax area in FreeAgent can be accessed by account managers only, account managers and clients with full (level) 8 access, or account managers and clients with level 7 and 8 access.
Self Assessment settings
If you allow clients to access Income Tax, you can choose whether clients with full (level) 8 access who need to complete old Self Assessment forms can make Self Assessment submissions themselves.
Please note that you won’t see this option if you set Income Tax access to account managers only.
MTD for Income Tax settings
For clients who need to complete MTD for Income Tax submissions, you can choose whether clients with full (level) 8 access can make submissions for quarterly updates, end of year updates, and final declarations.
You can also choose which MTD for Income Tax submissions will require approvals. Read how to send MTD for Income Tax submissions to a client for approval.
Finally, you can choose whether or not to show the annual tax estimate in clients' accounts, which is provided by HMRC after each submission.
Once you’re happy with the default Income Tax settings, select ‘Save changes’ to complete the process.
Tax Timeline settings
In the ‘Tax Timeline’ tab, you can choose which tax and accounts reports to display and whether to show or hide the tax amounts due, on the Tax Timeline in client accounts.
If you want to show the filing deadline but hide the tax amount due, select ‘Show without tax amounts’ from the drop-down menu next to the relevant report(s).
To hide any of the reports completely, select ‘Hide’ from the drop-down menu next to the relevant report(s).
Please note:
- If you hide the tax liability from your clients’ Tax Timeline in FreeAgent, and they use one of our supported banking apps such as Mettle or NatWest, they won’t see the tax calculation in their banking app.
- If you hide the CIS option, this will hide the CIS return submission deadlines from the Tax Timeline only. Clients will still see the CIS payment liabilities included in their PAYE/NI payment entries on the Tax Timeline unless you also opt to hide the PAYE/NI reports.
Once you’re happy with the default Tax Timeline settings, select ‘Save changes’ to complete the process.