Singing Praises

I don't do this very often - perhaps I should do more of it here in our blogs.

But today I am going to be serious (for once) and take the opportunity to sing the praises of two of our team members.

(Although I could do this for every one of our team... it's just there have been two very specific instances recently.)

Farhan joined us a few months ago and has proved to be a brilliant addition to our accounting team.  This was really brought home to me on New Year's Eve.

A customer of ours had a deadline to meet which just happened to be 31st December 2015.  It wasn't an easy set of accounts and it was a bit of a rush job.  There was some info missing from what we needed and all in all it would have been easy for Farhan to say 'you know what... I didn't get everything I needed on time, I'm going home.'

But he didn't.

He completed his background work at about 6.30pm (on New Year's Eve, remember), journalled in the accounts, checked everything and called the customer at 8.30pm asking for permission to file.

All on New Year's Eve...

And what's even more impressive is that he did it all with a smile on his face, communicated with the customers all the way through the process and got the job done.

The accounts were filed within deadline... whilst the customer was at a party!

Brilliant.

The second member of our team I want to thank formally is Arjun.

VAT returns have to be filed by 7th of the month after the end of the VAT quarter... so if your VAT quarter finishes 30th November you have all of December and 7 days of January to file (and pay your VAT bill if there is one).

We spotted we had a customer who hadn't filed their VAT return by about 6.00pm on 7th January... it was an oversight, nothing more, on their part.

Arjun contacted the customer to get their records emailed through, completed the VAT return, got the figure to our customer, filed the return and the customer paid their VAT bill... all within deadline which means for the customer there was no fine and everyone was happy.

Arjun stayed and finished the process, leaving the office at about 9.30pm.  This is what the customer wrote to him:

'Hi Arjun, you are incredibly kind doing this for me tonight.  I have just paid the outstanding via my online banking so that is great.  I owe you guys for this.  Have a good night also and thank you very much again.  Cheers.'

Arjun's reply was priceless.  I love it and will keep it forever because it's exactly how we operate, it's our ethos and what we strive to be and do for everyone.  Here it is:

'Not a problem at all, XXX.  Pleasure is all mine.  That's why we are different at TaxAssist.

Good night.'