Switching from cash to accrual accounting

I know there have been earlier posts on this. My VAT settings are set up for cash accounting, but as a limited company I should be on accrual accounting. My two questions are:

  1. If I switch over I can see I get very different figures - do I just make adjustments to put these right?
  2. The appearance on the VAT return screen on the accrual accounting option looks very different - it doesn’t look MTD ready - how would I resolve this?

For technical reasons that aren’t relevant here, I did not submit a return in April so am about to submit a 6 month return Jan-June.

Any advice or comments would be appreciated.

Hi @EHRHG

I just want to clarify here, that being a limited company doesn’t specifically mean you have to be on accrual accounting for VAT. As long as you meet the criteria for cash account, this is acceptable.

Because the one scheme is based on payments and the other is based on invoices, naturally there will be a difference. It will require a bit of manual work to cross reference things and ensuring everything is covered and accounted for, but in short - yes, an adjustment would be correct.

There is a newer version of the VAT return. It’s more widely available for accrual accounting at the moment, but it is being rolled out for cash accounting too.

This is the newer version:

As long as the “Send electronically to HMRC” option is ticked, it will be submitted to HMRC for you.

Thank you @QFMathew, that solves my problem - I don’t need to switch after all!

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