Landscape Software has been a supplier of web-based, property-related software for over 20 years. Our CGT system is in use at some of the UK's largest property owners and our SDLT software is used by many UK legal firms, including three-quarters of the top 20. Our clients typically stay with us for many years, and we pride ourselves on keeping our systems up to date with changes in technology and industry needs. Landscape is privately-owned, well-funded, profitable and can provide excellent references. Landscape takes cyber security and privacy very seriously: we are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ZA335116) and we are certified under the Government's Cyber Essentials programme.
What we do
Landscape® is the UK's leading property tax, compliance and management system, cost-effectively bringing your property record-keeping under control.
Landscape SDLT - the simplest and cheapest way for lawyers to complete and handle Stamp Duty Land Tax forms.
Landscape AP1 - submit your AP1 to Land Registry with as few clicks as possible and with full control.
Landscape Leases - enables capture and processing of lease documentation with the minimum of effort and the maximum efficiency.
Landscape CGT - provides regular tax functions on demand and enables easy post-tax modelling of property transactions.
Landscape Inizio - high-end, light touch transaction organisation and management.
Easy to implement, Landscape is used by both household name companies and their advisors. Many clients find that their Landscape database has become their definitive property record source, storing tax and other information, documents and full audit back-up. Landscape combines detailed knowledge with leading edge technology to bring you the most cost-effective property systems available.
Thanks for taking the time to look at our website and contact us using the links on this site for more details.
Products
Click each "landscape" for more info
SDLT
Stamp Duty Land Tax
Leases
Property Lease Creation
CGT
Property Capital Gains Tax
Data Exchange
Cloud-based client interaction
Service and Consultancy
Support, Integration and APIs
Land Registry Integration
Quick AP1, full requisition support and management
Example Clients
Corporate
Legal
CGNU / Aviva
Kingfisher
Punch Taverns
Allen & Overy
Brian Cave Leighton Paisner
Charles Russell Speechlys
CMS CMNO
Dentons
DLA Piper
Eversheds Sutherland
Freeths
Gowling WLG
Linklater
Mishcon de Reya
Norton Rose Fullbright
Osborne Clarke
Pinsent Masons
Simplify
Simply Conveyancing
Squire Patton Boggs
Taylor Wessing
Plus many other top 20 and top 100 UK firms
Quotes from Landscape Users
"We use Landscape primarily for calculating property capital
gains for tax compliance and accounts provisioning purposes, as well as
estimating the impact of potential disposals, across a number of property
portfolios. We have received an excellent service and recently Landscape
provided valuable assistance and advice, ultimately generating bespoke
reports facilitating a simpler reporting process for a specific area of our
business."
"The Landscape capital gains system produces accurate figures quickly which enables us to advise the business as part of the decision making process rather than after the event. The HMRC trust the results which saves administration time by reducing enquiries."
"Landscape is arguably the most user friendly piece of software I have used and the suppliers have been extraordinarily responsive and helpful in dealing with our queries."
"Landscape has relieved our lawyers of many of the headaches involved in
navigating the SDLT minefield. Not only is the software both easy to
use and kept up-to-date, but the validation tool means that the chances
of Returns being rejected by HMRC are much reduced. I have no doubt
that the time savings are significant."
"SDLT forms exist in a strange parallel universe. Code F is for a freehold - but a tenanted freehold must be treated as an assignment of a lease (code A). You must either put in the whole postcode or no postcode. On a code A transaction, details of extra freehold titles must go in the section of form SDLT 4 headed 'about leases'. All Northern Ireland addresses must include the county. There's no way a busy property lawyer can remember all these absurd 'rules' - but Landscape does."
"The Landscape software has made accounting for SDLT more robust and speedy.
The templating facility, in particular, offers huge time savings when
dealing with portfolios of properties."
"Landscape's SDLT forms software is so much easier to use than filling in the forms by other means. It saves us a great deal of time. The software is easy to use and the customer support is excellent. E-filing the forms using
Landscape saves us even more time and means that we get an instant response from HMRC to say that a valid return has been safely received."
"Landscape offers an efficient support network and package, with the
validation process being invaluable."
"We find that even junior, inexperienced fee earners can make a good
first attempt at filling in the SDLT forms, using Landscape, and this
saves on the amount of time which others need to spend in supervising
them. The Landscape systems are very user-friendly."
Most SDLT software products focus just on filling in forms: Landscape is the only package which addresses the whole life-cycle of SDLT from initial population of the forms, through validation and authorisation, managed submission, fully automatic filing and post-submission auditing. Our enthusiastic user base encompasses both the larger “household name” legal firms and many of the more go ahead smaller firms. Our focus is always on how we can save our clients time and money on performance and management of a process which they’d really rather not do!
Landscape will save you more than its annual cost in professional time year on year and help you to provide your clients with an SDLT service which is second to none.
Total flexibility
Landscape provides total flexibility for getting data into forms. You can, of course, type the data into a blank form, but you can also use one of our standard import options to pre-fill details from your case management system, use a template to fill in a user-definable selection of fields, copy a previous set of forms, or use our intelligent forms advisor to ensure you get the correct forms every time.
All your users, no matter what their level of skill and knowledge will benefit from Landscape’s “hot links” to the SDLT6 guidance notes and targeted FAQ pages.
You are in control
Landscape fully validates the data on your own computers before you submit anything. This completely preserves client confidentiality and keeps you in control. Our database technology ensures that the data within each form is validated and also checks consistency across forms, greatly reducing failed submissions.
Our fully managed electronic submission process with pro-active email-based response system allows you to get on with other fee-earning work whilst each submission processes in the background. Landscape is unique in that it also allows you to submit paper based forms from the same system, giving you full flexibility. Automatic payment reminders ensure that you submit the duty on time.
Compliance and proof
At each stage of the process Landscape automatically files away the documents and keeps a detailed audit log of everything that happened. Nothing is ever deleted. This, together with the ability to record notes, set reminders and attach supporting documents provides a complete audit trail to support any future HMRC investigation, and provides you with a complete “bible” of the process for your clients. Links to Document Management systems are also available.
A full SDLT management solution
The most important reason for using SDLT software is NOT because it helps with filling in the form!
The main reason why you should use
SDLT software is to manage the timely processing of the case and to ensure retention of evidence for the future. HMRC can investigate SDLT returns for years to come, and it is vital to retain all relevant data in an easily accessible form.
In Landscape we tackle process management and information retention in a number of areas:
Validation - in order to reduce the number of incorrect returns the system performs validation as specified by HMRC.
Supplementary forms - so that you're always reminded that a supplementary form may be needed, we automatically put them next to the relevant SDLT1 page for you to fill in if needed. This means you are reminded to fill them in when the information is to hand.
Schedules - for notifying HMRC of multiple-acquisitions and occupational leases are provided.
Audit Trails - every action taken on an SDLT return - creating, printing, updating, etc. - is user, date and time stamped.
Reminders - reminders can be automatically generated based on the dates or added manually to the system for a specific case. The reminders are emailed at the appropriate time. Reminders can be set up years ahead of the action if required.
Notes - notes can be attached to the return purely for internal use.
Document storage - documents of any kind can be stored safely alongside the return - plans, spreadsheets, agreements, etc. Links to leading document management packages are available.
Guidance notes - Landscape links at a field level to the latest available HMRC guidance, saving time and making it easier for occasional or new users to get to grips with SDLT.
Benefits for Lawyers
Landscape software is the SDLT system of choice for Law firms:
The product has been designed and refined based on our clients' real working practices.
The process has been designed to produce a complete return efficiently and quickly.
The risk is mitigated by use of validation and checking functions.
An audit trail tracks every input and identifies who did what.
Existing document management systems can be used alongside Landscape.
A full support programme updates the system to meet rapidly changing HMRC requirements.
An integrated reminder system automatically prompts for key tasks and actions, including emailing users with reminders.
Electronic submission offers almost real-time approval of submissions.
An active user group of fellow professional firms keeps the product at the cutting edge.
Full training course, user guide and training materials available
User references are available on request.
The only complete SDLT solution
Landscape is the only SDLT product available which attends to the whole of the SDLT process. This website can give you a flavour, but can’t show you the quality of the product, the breadth of its features, nor the dedication that we put into ongoing development and support.
Lease Creation
Lawyers are often required to capture key facts so that a Property Management System (PMS) can be populated following completion of the transaction.
To date, the end result of this process has often been ad hoc Excel or Word documents. Whilst these are fine for general information and review purposes, any data contained within them commonly needs to be re-keyed into the client's PMS which is a potentially error-prone and always time-consuming process. In addition, the use of individual document-type technology makes it more difficult to share tasks, compare leases and see overall progress.
To address these issues, Landscape Leases presents a fully multi-user, browser-based system to assist with the task of lease creation and reporting. The system can capture the data-based information required for populating a PMS at the same time as other facts useful for reporting. The Landscape system still allows the lawyer to provide the skill and legal interpretation, but allows this legal intelligence to be captured in a highly flexible and multi-use form.
The system is built on our well-proven technology platform in use at some of the UK's largest legal firms and property companies.
Capital Gains
Landscape calculates the chargeable gain or loss that arises on the disposal of an investment property. Particular computational features include:
1965 and 1982 rebasing, with "kink" tests where no rebasing election has been made;
Indexation of every item of base cost expenditure, with restrictions where required;
Restriction of base costs of wasting assets, automatically generated on the basis of lease termination and disposal dates;
Calculation of part disposal factors where required and tracking of the unsold residue for subsequent disposals or part disposals;
Restriction of a loss as required by Section 41 TCGA 1992;
Contingent gain or loss calculations for individual or groups of properties;
Full ability for "what-if" disposal calculations;
Manual amendment of tax treatment where required.
Rollover and Holdover
Business asset roll-over relief lets you defer any capital gains tax due when you dispose of certain assets by using the proceeds of the sale to purchase new assets of the same or greater value. Landscape's rollover module features:
Recording of historic claims;
Matching of qualifying disposal proceeds with expenditure on replacement assets;
Restriction of the base cost of an asset in a gains computation;
Automatic crystallisation of heldover gains;
Multiple chargeable gains groups;
Optimisation routines to automatically create the most efficient rollovers.
Heads of Terms
The Landscape Heads of Terms system provides a secure platform for all interested parties to capture and review pre-agreement lease data in a consistent and compliant way, generating high quality output in a variety of formats without any need to re-key or re-check data. Each party benefits in its own way, but all benefit from reduced workload, shortened overall transaction time, fewer queries and clearer contractual objectives feeding into lease creation.
The system is hosted securely on a “cloud” server and is accessible by registered users via a web browser.
Any party to the transaction can set up a new heads of terms and then invite others to join in the process. This gives flexibility for different scenarios within a transaction - for example, in-house or external asset mangers, tenant or tenant agent, etc.
Data entry can be centralised to one party, or parties can be invited to add or review their own data.
At all times, the system shows the current state of the process
A package of output documents is created for authorization, which can take place within the system if required.
Once authorized, a full package of information, including formal instructions is created for the lawyers.
Data Exchange
Landscape data exchange (LDE) is a cloud-based solution allowing you to interact with the counter-parties on a transaction in a seamless and efficient manner.
Our thinking is that it’s in everyone’s interest to improve the way in which data is passed between the various parties to a transaction, reducing the amount of re-keying and re-checking that is needed, cutting costs and time.
Our unique position of having clients both in the property owning sphere and their advisers means that we’ve been able to use our wide knowledge of processing and data requirements to the full.
The system encourages you to continue using the formats with which you, your clients and advisers are familiar. We’ve created a secure, format-agnostic transport mechanism which will capture data and serve it to the next party in their preferred manner and with as little manual intervention as possible. You can automate as much or as little of the process as makes sense to you and it can be different for different counter-parties. We will support new formats and standards as they become available: we will welcome new input and output methods as industry needs dictate.
The system is cloud-based, needs no involvement from your IT department and there’s nothing to install on your computers.
Services
Landscape specialises in property related systems. This means that all our attention is devoted to these systems and making sure that our clients get the best from them. We have an enviable track record of commitment to our software. Our deep experience of customer care means that we listen to what our clients say. We hear how we can make the software quicker, easier to manage, more usable, more efficient - and we react.
We also pride ourselves in our abilities to make our software seamlessly integrate with your existing systems and tools. We have extensive experience in linking our software to accounting systems, document management, workflow and document automation products.
We have a range of tools at our disposal including our tried and tested transaction management system, "Inizio". Inizio has been designed with the mind-set that creating a template for your transaction should be no harder than creating a spreadsheet. Once created, this template can be re-used time and again, easily amended and re-saved as a new template.
Inizio has been designed to provide assistance to lawyers and knowledge workers without getting in their way and without requiring expensive or time-consuming consultancy to set it up.
Land Registry Integration
Landscape's Land Registry Integration allows you to create an electronic AP1 submission to HMLR without having to re-enter any details. The system automatically attaches relevant documents, validates the submissions and tracks HMLR requsitions and responses to ensure that these are swiftly dealt with.
Because it's part of the Landscape system, you get all the audit trails, user management, templating, look-ups etc. that are a standard feature of Landscape.
Data is retained forever and can be queried, re-used and reported on at any time in the future.
Legal Info and Terms of Use
"Landscape" is a registered Trademark of Landscape Software Limited.
Flint House® is a registered Trademark of Flint House Limited.
Landscape Software can accept no responsibility whatsoever for the content of any non-Landscape sites to which these pages link. Please advise us if any link you have followed is broken or has caused any offence.
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This site is for information only and does not purport to provide any kind of legal or tax advice. You should consult HMRC or your own advisors before acting on any information which is provided by this site.
Whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this web site, nothing contained on this web site forms part of any contract. Any information contained on this site may be subject to amendment without notice.
