I wonder if anybody can help me, we raise our invoices for the clients full order total but they only pay us a deposit at time of booking and can revise their order anytime up to a few weeks prior to their event date when the final payment is taken. (this can be anything up to 18 months in the future)
We used quickfile to file our first VAT return this month and it has locked all invoices raised in that VAT filing period meaning we cannot make any changes to our clients orders now. Is there a way of unlocking the files as we really need to be able to amend these invoices and copying or having 2 invoices really is not an option for us as the clients invoices are also their order lists.
They are locked down as editing them after a VAT return is filed would result in different calculations. You can unlock them but only by rolling back your VAT return.
Otherwise what you would typically do is credit note them or issue additional invoices to cover an increase in the value.
Thanks Glenn, even for cash accounting? our vat returns are based on the date of payment and not the date of invoices so should have no effect?
we can still allocate payments to the invoices too so that doesn’t really make sense to me?
can you kindly explain rolling back the vat return for me? will this effect the HMRC submission or just on quickfile? is there a way to stop the invoices being locked after each vat submission?
Yes it would lock the invoice for cash accounting too, this is because you may create and pay an invoice, file the return, then change the VAT rate or add new zero-rated lines on the invoice at a later date which would affect the VAT calculations.
You can rollback a VAT return by going into the VAT return detail screen.
Rolling back will only remove the return and unlock the items on QuickFile, it won’t revoke the return with HMRC.
EDIT:
Personally I would not go down the route of rolling the return back. Instead if you need to amend an invoice, make a new copy and credit note the original. If the amendments to the order results in an increased amount, just issue a new invoice for the difference.
Editing invoices 18 months after issue, or even after payment is not really standard practice and would make your audit trail very confusing.
