As we work with quite a few smaller businesses, we would like to offer the option of splitting the payments over a couple of months rather than charging one lump sum. We would do this by using the recurring invoice option, but just to check if this is correct in terms of tax.
Should we raise several invoices (one for each payment) or should the invoice date be of when we actually do the work?
Some jobs may start, for example today, finish in 2 weeks, but could still be invoicing in part in September.
It’s my understanding (although I may be wrong), but the invoice date should represent when the work was complete. Just want to make sure that I’m doing it correctly to keep Mr Tax man happy!
From my understanding here, if you’re completing a job and offering your client a deferred means of repayment you should put the full balance on a single invoice and lodge payments against this invoice over the agreed repayment period.
If however you’re providing some sort of ongoing service on a retainer basis, then you would typically raise individual invoices for the duration of when that ongoing service is provided, e.g. monthly, quarterly etc.
Within QuickFile then, would there be a way of automating a direct debit payment with GoCardless, or would this need to be done through GoCardless itself? Or could it even be done via the API (not something I’ve looked into yet)
You can definitely achieve this through the API, there’s a method called Client_NewDirectDebitCollection in the client section. This will allow you to take arbitrary amounts based on your own schedule.
