If you have kept your accounts in a spreadsheet for years, the move to Making Tax Digital raises an obvious question: can you carry on exactly as you are? It is one of the things we get asked most, usually with a note of reluctance, because a spreadsheet that works is hard to give up.

The honest answer is yes and no. You can keep your spreadsheet. You cannot keep only your spreadsheet.

What Making Tax Digital actually requires

Once Making Tax Digital applies to you, three things change. You have to keep your income and expense records digitally. You have to send HMRC a summary of them every quarter. And at the end of the year you submit a final declaration in place of the old Self Assessment return.

The part that catches people out is that all of this has to happen through software that connects to HMRC. You can no longer log in to the GOV.UK website and type the figures in by hand. The quarterly updates and the final declaration both have to be filed by software that talks to HMRC directly.

Why a spreadsheet on its own is not enough

A spreadsheet is a perfectly good place to record numbers. What it cannot do is send those numbers to HMRC. There is no button in Excel or Google Sheets that files a quarterly update.

Making Tax Digital also expects what HMRC calls a digital link between your records and your submission. In plain terms, the figures have to travel from your spreadsheet to HMRC digitally - you cannot read a total off the screen and retype it somewhere else. That manual step is exactly what the rules are designed to remove.

So a spreadsheet by itself leaves you with no compliant way to actually file. That is the gap that needs closing.

Where bridging software comes in

There are two kinds of software that are compatible with Making Tax Digital. The first creates the digital records for you - bookkeeping or accounting software you enter everything into. The second connects to records you already keep, and this is what bridging software does.

Bridging software sits between your spreadsheet and HMRC. You carry on recording everything in the spreadsheet exactly as before, and the bridging tool reads your figures and submits them, keeping the digital link intact. It is a legitimate route that HMRC allows, and for someone who genuinely does not want to change how they work, it keeps the familiar spreadsheet alive.

The trade-off is that you are now running two things instead of one. You maintain the spreadsheet by hand, you keep the bridge connected, and you have to make sure the link between them stays digital - no copying and pasting the numbers that matter. For a lot of people that is more moving parts, not fewer.

The simpler option

The alternative is software that does both jobs at once: it creates the digital records and files them for you. There is no spreadsheet to keep up to date and no bridge to maintain, because the record and the submission live in the same place.

This is the approach DoneTax and DoneSE take. You connect your bank, the transactions come in, you categorise them, and the quarterly updates and final declaration are filed straight to HMRC. DoneTax handles property income, DoneSE handles self-employment, and VAT-registered businesses can do the same through DoneVAT. No spreadsheet, no bridging software, nothing to reconcile between two systems.

So which is right for you

If you love your spreadsheet, your finances are straightforward, and you would rather not learn a new tool, bridging software lets you keep the workflow you know. If the spreadsheet was always a chore and you would happily be rid of it, software that records and files in one place is less to manage.

What is no longer an option is a spreadsheet on its own, quietly filed once a year. Whichever route you choose, the figures now have to reach HMRC through software - the only real question is how much of that you want to do by hand.

DoneLabs builds MTD compliance software for UK taxpayers and the accountants who work with them. DoneTax, DoneSE, DoneTax+ and DoneVAT cover every current Making Tax Digital mandate.