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John Toon shares MTD success strategies for firms: balance client support, measure compliance & team health, and embrace adaptability. Year one is for learning, not perfection.
Head of Real Estate Education & Editorial at Landlord Studio
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In the final episode of our MTD Masterclass series with John Toon, Chartered Accountant and Technology Advisor at Beever and Struthers, we explored what success actually looks like once MTD is live, how to measure progress without drowning in data, and why perfection isn't the goal—adaptability is.
Listen to Episode 5 | MTD Success in 2026 available on YouTube → and Spotify →
One of the first realities firms will face is finding the right balance between supporting clients through the MTD transition and avoiding creating unhealthy dependency. It's a delicate line.
"MTD is going to mean more hand-holding for sure, more client interaction, especially in the first year," John acknowledges. But there's no way firms can pick up all the slack.
The key is early, clear communication about what your firm will and won't do.
As John emphasises: "Start early. You start with that communication that we talked about in previous episodes and get people up to speed with what the requirements are, because the clearer they are on what's going to be required, the easier MTD will be" for both you and your clients.
This isn't just about managing client expectations; it's about capacity. If you wait until April to have these conversations, you won't have the time or resources to properly educate clients when they need it most.
Strategic questions to answer now:
Related: Flexible MTD Workflows for Quarterly Submissions
John's most actionable recommendation might surprise you in its simplicity: schedule your first quarterly review meeting right now, even though the first deadline isn’t until August 2026. The aim is to make sure you are going to be able to set aside some time after that first deadline and review what went well, what went poorly, and crucially, what your firm needs to do to make the next quarterly submissions seamless.
This is about creating breathing room to learn from the experience while it's still fresh. "That's the only way, I think, to be able to get a bit of a handle on it," John notes. "And then from there, you can plan. What do we need to change? What do we need to tweak? What do we need to improve?"
The meeting agenda is straightforward but critical:
Related: MTD Quarterly Updates and Final Declarations Explained
When reviewing that first quarter, it's easy to get lost in potential metrics. John recommends focusing on fundamentals first, then layering in additional measurements as your processes mature.
"At its most fundamental, it's probably, are all the submissions done right and on time?" John states.
This first-pass assessment matters because it reveals whether your system fundamentally works before you dive into optimisation.
After confirming compliance, the next measure is less quantifiable but equally important: "Did it go well or did it make you stressed, send you completely out of your mind?"
This isn't something you'll track on a timesheet, but team burnout is a leading indicator of unsustainable processes. If quarter one leaves your staff exhausted and demoralised, something needs to change before quarter two, not after four quarters of suffering.
For more structured measurement, John identifies several key metrics worth tracking:
Workload distribution through the quarter:
"If you've got a decent timesheet or task management, your recording process, were we able to track, did we get that first quarter submission done within one week, within two weeks, within three weeks, and how did that work?"
This tells you whether your workflow is sustainable or whether you're constantly scrambling at the last minute.
Time to close: Another valuable metric: the time from notifying a client about a required submission to actually completing that submission.
"If you could measure the time from notifying a client that the submission is required to be done and then the point where it got completed, that's a good metric to understand the measure because that gives you an idea of the workflow and the time required."
This is particularly revealing for clients not using software, as they're likely the ones creating bottlenecks.
Here's where John pushes back against conventional business wisdom: don't obsess over return on investment calculations in year one.
"For me, return on investment is not a great metric generally for accountancy firms to measure. It's always quite difficult to measure, partly because typically we don't have the granular level of data required to be able to give an accurate reflection on what the impact of a change has been made."
Why ROI fails in this context:
Related: Making Tax Digital Penalties: What Landlords Need to Know
If you're looking for reassurance about when things will feel "normal," John offers a realistic timeline: at least a year to understand financial impact, and probably two to three years to truly optimise.
"I think the reality is, in year one, what you're going to be doing is formulating a view on: Where are we at with this? Are we doing the right things? Have we got the staffing resource requirement correct? Are there training issues on the software? What's going well and what's not going well?"
By the end of year one, you should have clarity on:
"It's going to take probably two or three years to get a real feel for whether we’re getting this right?"
Why? The threshold changes complicate everything. As the £50,000 threshold drops to £30,000 in year two and (expected) £20,000 in year three, you're constantly dealing with new client segments with different characteristics.
"We're going to be dealing with larger clients first, then we're going to be gradually smaller and smaller clients who will be potentially less receptive to price changes, certainly price increases, especially when they may get less benefit and less insight from utilising technology than those bigger clients."
The client attitude shifts as you move down-market, which means your year one learnings won't fully translate to years two and three.
For firms anxious about whether MTD will be profitable, John's advice is clear: resist the urge to make judgments too quickly.
"I think when you get to the end of year one, you can assess the financial impact of that because you should have a fairly clear view then of, we billed X number of clients, it took this long, cost us Y, and this is the result. Then you can ask, is that acceptable or not?"
But even that year-end assessment needs to look forward: "The review at that point will have to look forward into the reduction in the threshold as well, because we'll then have a whole tranche of additional clients coming on board" that will need to be dealt with.
The firms that thrive won't be those that achieve perfect profitability metrics in year one—they'll be the ones that build adaptable systems capable of scaling as the thresholds drop and the client mix changes.
If there's one consolation about the extended rollout timeline, it's that each year provides learning opportunities before dealing with the next wave of clients.
"Hopefully, the phased rollout will actually decrease the burden with the learning of how to roll software out, how to price for it, how to deal with communication," Logan notes during the conversation.
This means mistakes you make with larger, more sophisticated clients in year one can be corrected before you're dealing with smaller landlords in years two and three.
Related: Choosing the Right MTD Software: Avoiding Common Pitfalls
After four episodes of detailed preparation strategies, software evaluation frameworks, and workflow design, John's parting wisdom might seem almost anticlimactic in its simplicity. But it's perhaps the most important message of the entire series.
"Don't worry about getting it wrong. I think that's probably the most important thing I can say."
John sees many accountants becoming paralysed by the fear of making wrong choices: "I see a lot of accountants getting really hung up on, Have I got the right software? Have I made the right choices? Am I getting the pricing right? Am I going to screw this up?"
But here's the reality: "We're compliance-led people in the first instance. We're going to make sure, come hell or high water, that our clients are compliant with the requirements."
That's the non-negotiable baseline. Everything else—pricing, staffing, software—is adjustable.
As we conclude this MTD Masterclass series, the overarching message is clear: preparation matters, but perfectionism will paralyse you.
The firms that succeed with MTD won't be those that never make mistakes; they'll be the ones that adapt quickly when things don't go as planned.
Your action items from this series:
The April 2026 deadline is approaching quickly, but for firms that have been following this series and taking action, you're already ahead of the curve. MTD represents a significant change, but it's a manageable change when approached systematically.
Landlord Studio is specifically designed to make MTD compliance straightforward for landlord clients while reducing the support burden on accounting firms. Our platform combines intuitive property-level tracking, automated bank feeds, and MTD-compliant submissions—all built for landlords from the ground up.
With built-in client onboarding support, comprehensive training resources, and a dedicated accountants partnership program, we help you deliver exceptional MTD services without overwhelming your team.
Book a demo with Landlord Studio to see how we can support your practice through MTD and beyond.
