Reports, Accounts, VAT

To run the “VAT” report, starting from the “Accounts Menu”…

· Click the “Reports” button

· Click the “VAT” button

· Select the financial year, for example “2003” as shown below

· Select the VAT quarter, for example Oct to Dec inclusive, as shown below

· Click the “Accept” button

You’ll then see a reminder, as illustrated below, to complete a Period End up to the end of the VAT quarter in question (see “Accounts, Period End”) though a Lock Down will equally suffice (see “Accounts, Period End, Lock Down”). You might prefer a Lock Down because, in contrast to a Period End, it can easily be undone if you subsequently find a problem. The point of both of these is that they prevent changes to your accounting transactions prior to the period end or lock down date, so your staff won’t be able to accidentally change the VAT you owed for a period after you’ve paid it.

You’ll then see a report, like that shown below, that exactly mimics your real life VAT form, onto which you should copy the figures.

You should then…

· Use the “File / Print current screen” to get a hard copy of the displayed totals

· Use the “File / Print / VAT trail” to get a detailed listing of all the transactions included in the totals

o You should retain both of these to show the VAT inspectors when they visit

· Create a journal entry, as shown below, to reduce the VAT Control accordingly, and match your payment to Customs & Excise (see “Accounts, Journals”)

VAT Set-up

Which type of VAT the report should calculate (i.e. based on invoices, or based on the cashbook), and which quarterly VAT periods it should use are both set-up on the “Tax & Euro” tab of the “Accounts / Set-up” screen (see “Accounts, Set-up, Tax & Euro”), as shown below.

Shortcut - Use Default Journal Templates

Once you’ve worked-out exactly what ought to be done with a journal, to save it as a template for future re-use simply…

· Highlight it (e.g. the “Transfer into Euros” one, below)

· Click the “Signpost” button

· Select “Use as template”

· Give it a name (e.g. “Transfer into Euros”, “VAT Return”, etc)

· Click the “OK” button

Then the next time you’re starting a new journal to do the same thing just click the “Load default” button and pick the one you want, as shown below.

If you subsequently find the description isn’t quite right (e.g. you wish you’d saved “VAT Return” as “VAT Return for quarter” then just edit the text and click “Save Description”, as shown below, in which case the default template will be renamed AND its title passed to the Description field (see above) of all future journals based on it.