I have had a couple of questions recently about how Kashflow handles VAT. Users do not seem to fully understand the use of the “submit VAT” button. So here is a brief overview of what needs to be done to have accurate VAT reporting.
When you first submit a VAT report, it is important that you make sure that your submission agrees with the relevant VAT management report in Kashflow. If your VAT submission for Jan Feb 10 says VAT on sales 5000, VAT on purchases 3000 then these numbers should agree to the relevant figures on the VAT Management Report for the same period. If they don’t agree, you need to understand why. Either the VAT submission is wrong or Kashflow is wrong. I recommend that you check the Kashflow report, making any amendments necessary, and make a submission that ties back to Kashflow.
Once you have the submission made you run the VAT management report which agrees with the submission and hit “Submit VAT” button. This does not actually submit anything. It effectively tells Kashflow that all the transactions on the report have been reported to the VAT authorities.
When you run the VAT Management report for the following period, it will pick up all transactions for that period but it will also pick up any transactions in earlier periods that have not been reported (submitted) to the VAT authorities. For example, if in late April, a Purchase invoice dated February comes in with VAT of € 1000, we cannot add it to the Jan Feb return which was already submitted. Kashflow knows that it was not submitted because it was not on the report which you marked submitted. Therefore, it will be brought forward and added to the Mar Apr report. When you download the detail for the report you will see a transaction in there with a February date.
It is important then that when making a vat return the return should agree with the VAT Management report for the same period and that you hit the “Submit VAT” button to let the system know that all transactions on that report have been submitted. Here are 8 things you need to know about VAT
If you have any questions on this, or any other aspect of Kashflow, feel free to give me a call or email me on jim (at) accountsplus (dot) ie.