Skip to content
allanninal.dev/build
Collaborate

Part 5 of 7 · Tax rate updater series ~5 min read

How the rate reminder works

A system that notices a rate change in March and says nothing again until it takes effect in October has done half a job. The half it did is the easy half. This post is about the other one.

Key takeaways

  • Two notices per change: one on announcement, one four weeks before effect.
  • The reminder carries a checklist with one tick per place from the register.
  • Ticking a place is the only interaction the system asks for, and it is optional.
  • An unticked place at the effective date is escalated once, then left visible.
  • The annual review covers manual rates, which are never watched but must not be forgotten.

Two notices, deliberately

How the announcement and the reminder reach the rate ownerThree boxes across the top outside the AWS account. The Owner, who gets both notices. The Register, which supplies the list of places to edit. And Whoever files, who is involved only on escalation. Inside the account, three components. The Announcer, which sends on the day a change is published. The Reminder, which sends four weeks before it takes effect. And the Checklist, which carries one tick per place. Arrows show the owner returning ticks or nothing, the register supplying the places, and an escalation reaching whoever files only if places remain unticked at the effective date. A note says the whole system asks for one interaction and it is optional.AWS ACCOUNTOwnergets both noticesRegisterthe places to editWhoever filesescalation onlyAnnounceron the day itis publishedReminderfour weeks beforeit takes effectChecklistone tick per placeticks, or nothingthe placesonly if untickedat effectThe whole system asks for one interaction, and it is optional.
Fig 1. The two notices and the checklist between them. The system is deliberately undemanding: the only thing it ever asks anybody to do is tick a box, and not ticking it is allowed.
  • App integration
  • Machine learning
  • Management
  • People

What the reminder says

The reminder, in order

  • Line one. The change and the date. “Standard rate goes from 20% to 22% on 1 October — four weeks today.”
  • Line two. When you were first told. “Announced 14 March; this is the reminder.”
  • The checklist. One line per place from the register, each with a tick box: quoting sheet tab Prices cell B4, price list PDF page 2, Xero tax rate ’Standard’, booking form config VAT_RATE.
  • The transitional text, verbatim, if there was any, under its own heading with the source link.
  • The snapshot link. The page as it read when the change was detected.

The checklist is the working part. It is not a workflow, there is no approval, and nothing is blocked by leaving it unticked. It exists because “update the VAT rate” is a task somebody will do incompletely and “update these four specific things” is a task somebody will do completely, and the difference between those two outcomes is a customer finding an error in a price list eight months later.

Why ticking is optional

Because making it mandatory would make the system something people have to serve, and systems that people have to serve get worked around. If somebody updates all four places and never touches the checklist, the change still happened correctly and the system was still useful. The tick is a convenience for the person doing the work, not a control.

The one place it has teeth is the escalation: if the effective date arrives and places remain unticked, one message goes to whoever files the returns saying which places were not confirmed. That is not an accusation — the work may well have been done — it is a prompt to check, from the person who carries the consequence of it not having been.

The annual review of manual rates

Rates with no watchable source get a different treatment: a single message on a cadence you set, usually shortly before the fiscal year, listing them and asking for confirmation.

One year of the tax rate register summarised in five numbersA horizontal row of five boxes. Watched: fourteen rates have an official source. Manual: six do not. Changed: two changed this year. Actioned: both were fully actioned across every place in the register. Unconfirmed: one manual rate has not been confirmed. A note says the fifth number is the only one that needs anybody to do anything.ONE YEAR OF THE REGISTERWatched14 ratesManual6 ratesChanged2 this yearActionedboth, fullyUnconfirmed1 manual rateThe fifth number is the only one that needs anybody to do anything.
Fig 2. A year of the register in five numbers. Most of it is quiet, which is what a compliance control should look like when nothing is wrong.
  • Machine learning
  • Management
  • Analytics

That last number is the honest weakness of the system, stated plainly rather than hidden. Six rates that nothing watches is six rates that could be wrong right now, and the only control on them is somebody reading a list once a year and thinking about it. Naming that in the annual summary is better than a dashboard that shows fourteen green ticks and does not mention the other six.

Next: what all of this costs to run.

All posts