If not, then Why not?
The answer is probably along the lines of “He’s not qualified to do accountancy, or she has no previous experience of doing VAT returns”.
And all of those would probably be true.
So why do people let their Accountant give them advice on Operator Licence Compliance?
Have you ever asked your Accountant to see their Transport Management CPC qualifications or their last Transport Management refresher training certificate?
We appreciate that some accountants, due to their background or client base may be more familiar than others with the world of Transport, but that does not make them an expert or a trusted source.
In 2019 so far, and we are only just into June, we have attended 9 businesses of various sizes and all are in trouble with their O Licences, and we are talking Public Inquiry sort of trouble, where they have taken advice from their accountant on how to:
- apply for an Operator Licence
- Reply to a DVSA Inspection with regard to corrective actions
- Whether they require a Standard Nation or a Restricted Licence
- Whether drivers require Driver CPC training
- How to ‘get around unhelpful rules’
- How the WTD works and how to get around the night working ‘thingy’ rule
- Completely opting out of the whole of the WTD. (That made interesting reading)
- Setting all drivers on as Self Employed on CICS cards
- And the best was ‘As long as you download the Tacho data you don’t need to analyse it, the DVSA do it for you for free’.
The list goes on, but on all of the above it became very obvious, very quickly that the Accountant had given bad advice, usually because they had no experience in Transport or Regulatory Compliance at all.
With all of these clients we have then had to spend many hours puting right other’s mistakes. If they had simply got the right advice from the start some of this would never have been an issue because it would have been done right from the start.
So, for a pain free, simple and untaxing approach to Transport Compliance contact AS Miles Consulting on either helpme@asmilesconsulting.com or call 01455 389053