I am having a look at the “Total Distributable Profit” functionality, and it seems to provide no information of use (assuming that my understanding is correct).
The knowledge base sells this feature on being able to tell a user how much profit is available to distribute as a dividend.
My understanding is that dividends are paid out of distributable profits available on the date of the dividend. If I want to distribute a dividend on 5th January I need to know the distributable profits available at that point in time (independent of accounting years). Right?
The current functionality only display data for 12 month ‘year’ periods. This is also confusing as my companies first accounting period is greater than one year. Some profits made in this extended first year are displayed under the period “01/04/2014 to 31/03/2015” yet my first period is in fact “23/03/2015 to 31/03/2016”.
I.E The rigidity of the available options means that the functionality is highly unlikely to cater for many companies actual situations…
The distributed profit section of the tax summary uses the overall profit of the company rather than just the profit for the current year, although this is taken into consideration too.
So your tax summary is shown as follows:
Profit after tax (current year) P&L brought forward (from previous years) Aggregate Profit/Loss (combination of the two above)
Dividends paid this period (sum of nominal 3102 for the current year) Dividends brought forward (sum of nominal 3102 prior to the current year)
Total distributable profit (aggregate profit / loss minus all dividends paid)
I am appreciative of what it does, my point is rather that this information has very little value in… well… any situation (as far as I can see), and is in some situations incorrect.
I was requesting that this feature be updated to provide more appropriate information…
With a dividend payment, the Total distributable profit figure is the one to use, which would be correct at the time of viewing (providing the information in the account is up to date too)
Essentially I want to be able to see the total distributable profit on a given date.
The user should basically be able to modify the date range of the ‘Tax summary’ screen.
In reference to my first tax year for example (which is longer than 12 months) I should be able to specify the date range as 23-03-2015 -> 31-04-2016 such that I can apportion the profit appropriately when I submit my tax returns. The current setup only allows me to see the ranges 01/04/2014 to 31/03/2015 and 01/04/2015 to 31/03/2016 which both display data that is completely wrong.
The data is not “completely wrong”, the figures are accurate for the corresponding dates. There is perhaps a case for handling year 1 LTD accounting periods, although this hasn’t come up on the forum before (to my knowledge).
You could alternatively sum the figures together for both periods or run a trial balance report (which does allow you to specify a custom date range). The Tax Summary is essentially an abstraction of the TB anyway.
What I mean is that the data shown is not really the data that one would want.
I appreciate that it is an abstraction of TB data, but my making the date range modifiable you would create an extremely useful and flexible little tool.
It’s sitting on our mid-term schedule (1-2 months). Sorry we can’t expedite this as we are involved in other projects at the moment. I will update you as soon as we’re able to look at this in more detail.
I have just had a look. There seems to be a few issues with the calculations/numbers.
For a custom period, when I click to view a break down of the ‘Add backs’, the listed items are not correct for the period and do not add up to the total displayed above.
When clicking to request an overview of ‘Distributable profits’ the ‘Dividends paid this period’ displays £0. This is incorrect.
The initial problem for me was being able to type in a date range e.g Company formation date until now such that I can see how much I can pay out as a dividend tomorrow.
We have identified the issue with the add backs and deductions not picking up the custom date, a fix is imminent here.
Regarding the second point, would you kindly let me know what date range you are querying?
Thanks!
EDIT:
One thing I did notice is you have one dividend journal but you are crediting and debiting 3102 in the same journal by exactly the same amount, so the net effect will be zero.
If you click on the magnifying glass next to the dividend line it will show you the backing calculations.