In October of 2013 Liberty will have been operating with paying customers for 10 years and we knew that it was time for us to give some serious love and care to the presentation of the product. Liberty has a feature set designed to bring significant benefits to businesses and accountants alike. It is way ahead of its online competitors as an accounting package, and it also includes features and levels of integration that more complex desktop software fails to deliver. It has been a long time coming but we are confident that the new presentation of Liberty Accounts is a major step forward for the product, making it clearer and more pleasant to work with. This update is not the end of the road, but the beginning of a journey for a whole host of enhancements aimed at making sure that we deliver a positive user experience as well as powerful features - for what use is beautiful accounting software if it can't do what you need it to do? The timing of this release was constrained by the deadlines for the implementation of the HMRC RTI payroll regime - effectively forcing us to deliver 2 major projects at once. The development and QA team have excelled in bringing together this update, along with all of the RTI work, on time and in a way that will once again prove the online model with all enhancements at users fingertips on their first login after 6th April. Now that the new look is out in the open, you can expect a steady stream of evolutionary enhancements to both presentation and functionality over the coming months. We will continue to design and develop a product aimed at the needs of British businesses. We would like to thank our loyal customers as we look forward to another record breaking year.

With hard-pressed employers coming to terms with Real Time Information (RTI) filing, the pain is not all over. There can be penalties. Penalties can be applied for inaccurate in-year 2013-14 returns so do try to be as accurate as possible with employee data. HMRC have however stated that they will use a risk-based approach for identifying employers who may be submitting inaccurate returns. For late in-year returns during 2013-14 there is a concession of no penalties, but to avoid a late filing penalty for 2013-14 final returns must be submitted before 19th May 2014. Also note that RTI does not change the obligation of Employers to pay deductions over to HMRC fully and on time.