Chasing clients for MTD records without souring the relationship

Making Tax Digital for Income Tax changed the rhythm of the year for sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000. Instead of one push before 31 January, there is a quarterly update due on 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May, plus the tax return itself.

The submissions are rarely the hard part. The reports after the first deadline in August 2026 kept coming back to the same thing: client communication, records and getting information in on time. ICAEW’s write-up of the first submissions lists missing client information among the problems practitioners ran into, and AccountingWEB’s lessons-learned piece makes client communication and record keeping the main theme.

So the practical question for a practice is how to ask the same clients for records four times a year without it becoming a nag they ignore.

Start earlier than feels necessary

Each standard quarter ends on the 5th of the month, and the update is due a month and two days later. That sounds like plenty of time until you count back the days your team needs to review, categorise and query.

A workable pattern:

• First request a few days after the quarter ends. The period is closed, bank statements are available, and the client still remembers what they spent.
• Ask for a date, not “as soon as possible”. “By Friday 23 October” gets a different response from “when you get a chance”.
• Keep the last two weeks for your own work. If records arrive in the final week, you are chasing your own deadline, not the client’s.

The third quarter needs special care: its update is due on 7 February, a week after the 31 January Self Assessment deadline, when your team has the least spare capacity.

Write reminders the client can act on in one minute

Most clients don’t ignore reminders out of awkwardness. They put them off because the request looks like work. Make it look small:

1. Say exactly what you need. “Your bank statements for July to September” beats “your records for the quarter”.
2. Say how to send it. “Reply to this email with them attached” is the lowest-effort route for most people.
3. Tell them the minimum that unblocks you. “The bank statements on their own are enough to get us started” turns a big job into a small one.
4. Keep the tone of your firm. A reminder should sound like the person they already deal with, signed by them.

Use stages, and stop when it arrives

A single reminder relies on the client acting immediately. A short sequence works better, as long as it is predictable and stops the moment the records arrive.

A common pattern is a first request, a second message after three working days, a third after seven, and then a person at the firm picks up the phone after ten. Each message should be shorter than the one before. The third one should give the client an easy way to say what is getting in the way, because sometimes the problem isn’t forgetfulness.

Two things make sequences feel like nagging: messages that keep going after the client has replied, and messages that ignore the reply they sent (“I’ve already sent them!”). Whoever or whatever sends your reminders needs to see replies before sending the next one.

Treat the soft landing as practice time

HMRC has said it will not give penalty points for late quarterly updates in the 2026 to 2027 tax year. Late returns and late payments are still penalised, and from 2027 to 2028 late quarterly updates count towards points.

That makes this year the cheapest time to set expectations. A client who learns now that the request arrives on a predictable date, in a predictable format, is a client who will be on time when the stakes rise.

Know who is late, every week

The most useful single habit is a weekly view of who has been asked, who has replied and who is late, with how many days. Without it, chasing happens when someone remembers, and the clients who go quiet are the ones nobody notices until the deadline.

Where Forenax fits

This is the job Records Chaser does: dated, staged reminders in your firm’s name, sent from your own mailbox after your team approves them, replies read and matched so chasing stops when records arrive, and one list of who’s late every Friday. If you’d like to talk through how your practice chases at the moment, suggest a time.