The compliance landscape is constantly changing. Reviewing those changes and understanding how they affect your engagement letters is a significant task that takes time. As an OverSuite member, we do it for you formally on a quarterly basis, and ad-hoc as changes arise.
What did we review?
This quarter we have reviewed…
- Changes to the professional body regulations to understand their impact on terms and conditions
- The scopes and service schedules to ensure there are no changes to legislations
What has changed?
There have been no changes to the professional body regulations that impact your engagement letters.
However, there have been small changes to general legislation which impacts those who have clients on CIS and this has been reflected in your service schedule.
No updates require an immediate re-issue of an engagement letter and can be dealt with at your next client renewal.
In addition, we’ve made wider updates such as new service schedules, scopes and minor amendments as a result of your requests, feedback and queries.
Here’s a full breakdown…
Legislative Updates
As a result of legislative changes, the Payroll: CIS service schedule has been updated to reflect when your client should register as a contractor.
The following paragraph been updated:
Payroll: CIS Service Schedule [changes]
“You are legally responsible for:
- ensuring that you are registered as a contractor where:
- you pay subcontractors for construction work; or
- your business doesn’t do construction work but you spend an average of more than £3 million a year on construction in any 3-year period”
New Service Schedules
In response to popular demand, OverSuite users will find new Service Schedules for:
- Corporation Tax Reviews
- Registering as a trust with HMRC
New Scope: Consultancy Work
In OverSuite, a new engagement letter template is available for consultancy work. By reviewing and selecting the available scopes, you can add the template ‘Any Entity (Non-Audit): Consultancy’ to your system, and use it to produce an engagement letter where you are providing consultancy services to any client type.
Step by step guides to finding and adding new scopes to your library can be found for both OverSuite versions:
General Updates
Based on your feedback and queries, the following general updates have been made to clarify and strengthen communication:
1.The Period Of Engagement section within the Introduction of your Engagement Letter has been amended to provide additional clarification as to the period of work for which you are responsible for.
“The period for which [I/we] have agreed to start providing the individual agreed services is set out in the key dates schedule below or if not provided here, the first period after the start date of this proposal. [I/We] will continue to provide these services until there is an agreed change or the engagement is terminated.”
2.The Privacy Notice has been amended to clarify rules around data portability.
“There is no automated decision-making involved in the use of your information and therefore no automatic data portability”
3.The Privacy Notice has been amended to clarify that in the case of incapacity or death, you can provide details of the alternate person on request.
“an alternate appointed by [me/us] in the event of incapacity or death. Details of the name and address of this individual will be provided on request.“
4.The Service Schedule for a Confirmation Statement has been updated to match the most recent legislation reference.
“To enable [me/us] to carry out work you agree:
to provide full information necessary for compliance with the Register of People with Significant Control Regulations 2016.”
5.The Agreement Terms have been amended to clarify that all business sign on procedures must be satisfactorily completed for the engagement letter to remain active.
“We will terminate the engagement should our sign on procedures not be satisfactorily completed in a reasonable timescale.”
“For over 30 years Valerie Steward has worked with accountancy practices, helping them to develop their businesses and remain compliant. She has authored and co-authored a number of technical guides, work programmes on audit and anti-money laundering and practical aids such as engagement letters as well as publications on practice management and the not for profit sector.”
Valerie StewardAt The Forefront Of Compliance For Over 30 Years
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