VAT apearing on VAT Return when none on Sales Invoice?

[mummyhodglim1]

Hi has something changed or what have i done different

I am trying to tag my last Sales Invoice so i can submit my VAT return
The Sales Invoice has NO Vat on it
But when i tag the payment to it the VAT return has put Sales Tax on it ???
Can you help please , i cant see anything different than any other Invoice that i have tagged

[ian_roberts]

Are you on cash accounting? Do the payment and invoice dates fall in the same quarter or does the payment pre-date the invoice? If the payment is in February but the invoice is dated in March (or whatever quarter dates you’re submitting for) then it might be that it’s treating the pre-payment as subject to VAT and things will even out in your next return.

I explained how the VAT estimation on pre-payments works in another post a couple of days ago:

Tagging money in - why do I need to declare VAT?

tl;dr: It’s necessary to handle pre-payments. When you receive a prepayment from a customer the VAT is due to HMRC in the quarter that includes the date of payment, even if the payment has not yet been allocated to an invoice (this is definitely the case on cash accounting but I believe the rule is the same even on accrual accounting). As such, QuickFile needs to know how to estimate the VAT on payments for which it does not have an invoice specifying the amount exactly. When you enter an una…

You might find you have more success if you tag the money in as a pre-payment (“pay down multiple invoices” but then don’t assign it to an invoice) and explicitly tag the payment as 0% VAT, then go to the invoice and log payment → apply from credit.

[mummyhodglim1]

Thank you so much Ian you are a star
I had the date wrong on my Invoice
Thank you for your quick response