I am on the Flat Rate Scheme and am doing my first QuickFile Vat Return. The figures showing on the generated return are not correct. If I take my total receipts from the Chart of Accounts report - these are correct, but the figure on the return Box 6 - is £807 greater. Also, my rate is 7.5% - if I manually calculate the total from the generated Box 6 this is not 7.5% and is different to the generated figure in box 1. I don’t think I have explained this very well but, hopefully, someone will understand and help.
I know I can manually adjust the figures, but I would rather know what I am doing wrong.
Hi @NewUserT
There are a few things to consider here:
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Are you on cash or accrual accounting for VAT? If you’re on cash accounting, only payments rather than invoices will be taken into account. This means it’s likely to differ from the chart of accounts report which uses invoice value.
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The flat rate isn’t necessarily 7.5% VAT - it’s 7.5% of the gross total. For example, if I invoiced you for £100.00 + 20% VAT, the gross total is £120.00. The VAT I actually pay on this would be 7.5% of the £120.00, which is £9.00, rather than £7.50.
It’s always good practice to download the calculations report as this shows you a breakdown of how the figures have been calculated.
Thanks for getting back so quick - I am on Cash accounting, I do not invoice and do not have any outstanding invoices.
I did download the calculations report, but this did not really help. For example - total in box 6 on generated return is 24076. On the calculation report it is shown as 22596.35 plus 740.04
ESL sales - total 2336.39 which 23332.17 not the 24076 shown on the return.
Don’t really know where else to look.
How are your payments tagged at the moment? Are they all held on account for example, or have they been tagged directly to a nominal code (e.g. “Something else not on the list”)?
Income is imported from PayPal and Stripe and is automatically tagged. Daily I check these via Sales - show all sales - and make any nominal code adjustments there. Expenditure and income from bank accounts, I open the Bank Account and “Input new transaction”. I have a number of personal purchases from my PayPal account and I tend to tag these as “something else not on the list”.
The amount different is very similar to the total of my ESL Sales, these come automatically from PayPal and I usually “de Tag” them and then delete them. I then create a new invoice which I can tag “apply VAT reverse charge” and mark as paid - could it be anything to do with these?
QuickFile VAT returns only consider sales and purchase invoices, not “something not on the list” tags, so you definitely need to treat income as “payment from a customer”. Purchases I guess it makes less difference on flat rate as you’re not reclaiming anything but it’s good practice to do those as proper purchase invoices too.
Thanks for your help - I have checked all my transactions and amended any I had input as “something not on the list” and rerun the VAT calculation. I have downloaded the calculations and checked them all and they are all correct and the amount of VAT to be paid is correct. However, Box 6 is showing incorrect. It is adding the EC Sales twice - the downloaded calculations show Box 6 total on Sales as 22592.13 and Box 6 total on EC Member States 740.04 - these total 23332.17 which is correct - however the figure automatically entered in Box 6 VAT Return is 24072 - which is 740 more than it should be.
Hope this is clear.
Would it be possible for someone from QuickFile to contact me regarding this? I am now into new VAT quarter and checking the calculations Box 6 is showing an incorrect figure - it is counting the EC sales TWICE. Please can you help?
Hi @NewUserT
We’re not able to assist with individual accounting queries, so it may be worth asking your accountant about this (I’m not one).
But in general, double check the calculations for anything which isn’t correct. Things like client settings and invoice settings may affect the VAT calculations.
Thanks but this is not an accounting issue, it is a technical issue. The downloaded calculations are correct, but the totals transferred to Box 6 are incorrect.
I’ll send you a private message now to get some more details from you.
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