Before we build any more of it
Twenty six questions we cannot answer ourselves.
We can read Revenue's manuals. What we cannot read is what actually happens in a practice: what arrives in January, what you do when the rule and the reality disagree, and what you would never put in front of a client. That is the part that decides what Vouch becomes.
The first five are the ones that change the build. If you have five minutes, answer those and ignore the rest. If we get a call, the other twenty one are the agenda. Answer in any form you like, a reply with numbers is perfect.
Start here
The five that change what we build.
- Do the mileage bands reset on 1 January, or on the client's own financial year end?Vouch currently counts from the business year. Revenue's own worked example on the civil service rates page runs from 1 January and calls it total kilometres for the year. Every band calculation for a client with a non-calendar year end turns on this, so we would rather be told than guess.
- For a tradesman who leaves home for a different site every day, what is his normal place of work?Where a journey starts at home, the claimable distance is the lesser of home to site or normal place of work to site. That comparison needs a fixed point. If a plumber has no yard and no office, what do you put down, and does Revenue accept it?
- In a single director company, who approves the director's own mileage?Revenue permits the flat rates tax free where a recording and internal control system is in operation. One person approving their own claim is not much of a control. What do you actually do, and has it ever been questioned?
- When mileage records reach you today, what form do they arrive in, and what share are usable without going back to the client?This tells us what Vouch is really replacing and what good looks like. A number is fine: two in ten, eight in ten.
- What would stop you recommending this to a client?The most useful answer in the document. Feature, price, risk, or the plain fact that you would not want to be the one they ring when it goes wrong.
Section 02
How the work happens now.
We have built for the practice we imagine. We would like to check it against the one you run.
- Do you send clients a mileage template, or leave them to their own devices?If you send one, we would love to see it. It is the closest thing to a specification we could get.
- Who assembles the mileage in a client's business, the owner, a bookkeeper, or each person for themselves?Vouch assumes each person logs their own and the owner approves. If that is not how it works, the app is aimed at the wrong hands.
- Roughly what share of your clients with vehicles keep a record as they go, rather than reconstructing it in January?Reconstruction is the thing Vouch exists to stop. We would like to know how big that is in a real client book.
- How many hours a year does travel and subsistence cost you across the practice, and do you charge for those hours or absorb them?If it is absorbed, Vouch is saving your money. If it is billed, it is reducing a fee. Those are two different sales.
- How often does subsistence actually arise, against mileage?Overnight and day allowances take up a third of the app. If they come up twice a year we have given them too much room.
Section 03
Rates and rules we may have wrong.
Each of these is something Vouch either does not handle or handles on an assumption.
- Do the reduced motor travel rates ever come up, for courses, conferences and journeys not solely in the performance of duties?Vouch does not have them at all. If practices use them we need a second table and a reason to pick it.
- Someone changes car mid year. Does the cumulative band count follow the person or the vehicle?Vouch follows the person and reprices later trips at the new engine size. We are not certain that is right.
- The 8 km rule for day rates and the 100 km rule for overnights. Do you see them enforced, or taken on trust?Vouch states them but does not block a claim that breaches them. Should it?
- A person works for two businesses you act for. Do the bands count separately for each employer?Vouch counts per business, so someone with two employments gets two Band 1 allowances. That may be wrong.
- Do you ever see the reduced or detention overnight rates used after fourteen and twenty eight nights, or is it always the normal rate?Vouch steps them down automatically. If nobody uses them in practice we have added a complication for nothing.
- For a sole trader or a partner, do you get a business kilometre log for the apportionment, or is the business use percentage estimated?Vouch collects the receipts and the kilometres and leaves the percentage to you. We would like to know whether the log is genuinely useful to you or just tidy.
Section 04
Sign off, records and audit.
- Have you had a Revenue query on travel and subsistence? What did they ask to see?One real example is worth more to us than the whole manual.
- Would a manager approving and the owner countersigning be useful, or is a single approval enough?Vouch has one approval today. Two levels is straightforward to add and easy to over-engineer.
- Should an approved claim ever be reopened, and by whom?Today it locks permanently. That is clean, but it may not survive contact with a genuine mistake found in November.
- Six year retention. Do you want Vouch holding those records, or do you take a copy and archive it yourself?It changes what we promise and what happens if a client stops paying.
Section 05
Getting it into the books.
- Which account codes do you use for mileage, subsistence and expenses in Xero and in Sage?Our export ships with placeholders. Real codes from a real practice would replace them today.
- Would you rather the entries arrive as a journal, or as a payable invoice to the employee?We built the journal. The invoice route may suit a client who pays expenses through the bank rather than payroll.
- Should the export go to you, to the client's bookkeeper, or to both?Vouch assumes you pull it. If a bookkeeper sits between you and the client, that assumption is wrong.
- Do you file enhanced reporting on or before each payment date, or batch it up?The rule says on or before. Vouch produces the summary at year end, which would be the wrong moment if you file as you go.
Section 06
The commercial end.
- Twenty euro plus VAT a month per business, up to ten people, paid by the client, never billed to your practice. Right, high or low?Say low if it is low. We would rather hear it now than price it wrong for a year.
- Would you rather recommend it and stay out of the billing, or buy it and bill the client yourself with a margin on it?Both are on the table. Practices have told us opposite things and we would like a third opinion.
When you are ready
Send it back.
Answer as many or as few as you like. Nothing is compulsory, including your name.
Where your answers go. They are saved to a Google Sheet that Stephen at Splash reads, and nowhere else. Nothing is published, nothing is shared with another practice, and we will not quote you by name without asking you first. If you would rather not use the form, press Copy and send the lot by email instead.
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And thank you
Be as blunt as you like.
The last practice we asked told us the export was not good enough to rely on, and they were right. That one sentence changed the product more than anything we thought of ourselves. Do the same.