I have been doing a lot on MTD recently and I know many landlords are annoyed at the prospect of having to subscribe to an expensive online accounting package and in the case of husband and wife landlords like Rachel and I, paying twice!
We were unable to attend the MTD meeting a while ago, so don't know if you discussed free solutions for MTD. If not then this might be of interest to other members.
I have come across a free Open Source platform that allows you to submit your cumulative quarterly accounts and connect this directly to HMRC. The URL is mytaxdigital.co.uk and you simply register, connect to HMRC with your National Insurance number (not done this yet as I am testing with data imports) and then upload a CSV file of your accounts data.
You can use accounting mode where you upload every transaction (remembering to take account of the ownership profile of the portfolio) or bridge mode where you simply upload a summary, the second mode you can either upload a CSV file or enter the figures manually. The categories match the boxes on the SA105 form. You do submissions each quarter of the year to date and at the financial year end you make a fifth and final return adding in other income and other items like the Replace category for Box 36. When that is done your accountant will see a copy and make any changes.
The upshot is that folks can use their current accounting method such as Excel, back of envelopes etc. and upload their data to the platform and HMRC. I have created quite a fun MS Access D/B and Rachel and I are now essentially MTD ready.
I have identified one glitch with the platform whereas you know that at the end of each quarter the submissions are cumulative but the platform does not delete the previous submitted data so the values are incorrect. There is a work around where you simply delete the previous import file. It was also a bit of work getting the layout of the CSV right with the right column headings and the right text for the SA105 categories, but that now comes straight out of our MS Access D/B
I think this is far simpler than learning a whole new accounting software and a lot cheaper but I think there would be complications for complex ownership portfolios, unless they have addressed that in their current accounting workflows.