ACCOUNTANT Karen Lowen of Turl & Co in Malvern has developed an innovative solution to help small businesses called "dod-dle", simple to use, cloud-based accountancy software. It aims to effectively manage accounts and cope with the introduction of HMRC’s digital tax account.

Mrs Lowen explained: "After I heard the Chancellor’s plans in the Spring 2015 budget to scrap annual tax returns for small businesses and replace them with the digital tax account I wondered how millions of sole traders and small business owners across the UK would be able to fulfil this objective, without the use of simple accountancy software. Knowing that existing programmes are difficult to navigate and often require the support of a trained professional, I founded the idea of dod-dle – an easy to use and simple to understand platform that sole traders and small business owners could access anytime, anywhere.

“Having worked with small businesses and sole traders for over 15 years, I know that the implementation of the DTA and request for quarterly returns will cause quite the headache and I have felt quite concerned on behalf of my clients. In creating dod-dle I hope to have solved this problem through the development a software package that is really easy to use, written in everyday language that is accessible by smart phones and tablets and will be fully integrated with HMRC’s digital tax account platform.”

Mrs Lowen has been working on the development of dod-dle to ensure it meets to the requirements of small business owners for more than a year and during this time has recruited the expertise of local PR and Marketing agency Make More Noise to help spread the word across Worcestershire and farther afield.

Director of Make More Noise Hannah Haffield added: "dod-dle is an extremely exciting project that I and my colleague Natasha Bowen are very excited to be part of, particularly as we understand the pressures small businesses face. Though HMRC’s transformation to the digital tax account initially appears as quite daunting, I am confident that software like dod-dle will make it simple and stress-free.”

Having already received early interest from businesses across the UK, dod-dle is now in its final stages of testing and will be officially launched on September 1.