I’m trying to complete my quarterly VAT return for October to December 2019. As I am unable to type or paste into the boxes directly I have tried clicking on the pencil which brings up an adjustment box and I can type my figures in here. This worked perfectly for my last return (July to Sep 2019) and I was able to complete that return in literally 30 seconds. Now I am getting a message saying my returns are adjustments only and are not acceptable and a prompt to use the bridging model at a cost of £45. Any suggestions? Can I keep using a simple FREE method?
Your essentially using quickfile as a bridging module because your not using it to prepare a vat return so obviously the only option is to pay £45 or actually use it as it was intended.
I’m afraid under the new MTD rules you have to actually use software to keep your records, you can’t just add things up by hand and type the totals into a form like you used to do on the HMRC website. You are allowed to keep your records in spreadsheets or similar but there has to be a “digital link” from the master records to the VAT return, not simply a manual copy and paste of the figures.
This is what the bridging module supports. With bridging you can do your VAT calculations in a spreadsheet then upload (not manually transcribe) the final calculation sheet into QuickFile to be forwarded on to HMRC. This satisfies the requirement to have a digital chain from source data to the final return.
Or you can bite the bullet and start keeping your master records in QuickFile properly, in which case you can submit MTD returns for free as long as you stay under the “L” threshold of roughly 4 sales and/or purchases per week on average (in total, e.g. 3 sales plus 1 purchase) across the year.
That’s assuming their under MTD. You can be vat registered and be below 85k turnover and not be required to follow mtd rules.
True, but then you wouldn’t need to use software like QuickFile to submit returns at all, you could just type the numbers into the HMRC web form as before.
Ian - I have 1 company with 2 businesses running two sets of accounts with Quickfile, I manually add the vat from one into the other with “manual additions” before sending, are you saying this is now wrong??
You say above ““you can do your VAT calculations in a spreadsheet then upload (not manually transcribe) the final calculation sheet into QuickFile”” can we do the same from another Quickfile account??
You didn’t mention that to begin with. That probably changes things.
So you generate a vat return under one account and add adjustments using figures from the other account?
As Ian has said. You can’t enter manual adjustments under MTD. It defeats the purpose of the legislation.
You need a way to combine the figures electronically to produce a vat return.
I don’t think QF is the software for you in this instance. There are other softwares which allow importing of figures but I don’t know whether they work with QF or indeed allow two separate groups of data to be combined.
If I’m honest your probably one of the very large group of people hmrc have not thought about when implementing mtd.
I think your best option is to look in to how you can get excel to pull the data from the vat return calculations you can download and group them together to form one vat return totals. Then you can tag these fields and submit them using a 3rd party solution.
There are free excel tools which allow you to submit vat returns. I just can’t think of their names off hand.
Paul, you say ““You didn’t mention that to begin with”” This is a new question from a new contributor.
Many thanks anyway.
If it’s one legal entity then you might be better off keeping both sets of accounts under one QuickFile with trading styles for the different businesses. You can work the way you currently do but under MTD you’d need to export the calculations CSV from each of your main QuickFile accounts, combine them into one totals sheet using excel formulas (not manually adding it up), then use a third QuickFile account set up for bridging to do the actual submission from that combined sheet.
Hi Guys. Thanks for the feedback. I have searched for a free bridging tool which will let me import from Excel. Think I’m sorted!
Can you see and treat them the businessess separately??
Hi @jm23bg
You cannot see and treat them separately by using multiple trading styles alone. However, if you use project tagging, you could set up tags for the separate businesses which would allow you to specifically view a Profit & Loss report for each project tag.
Right, if I exported them both to excel, merge them within excel, then use QF as bridge for the merged report, would that satisfy MTD??
Hi @jm23bg
I think this is something that HMRC would be better placed to answer.
How you would merge them would put a question mark over it in my view, as “copying and pasting” or “cut and pasting” isn’t permitted under MTD.
Thanks for all your help guys, not sure what I am going to do.
As I said before. You can create a excel file which imports your data from both csv files and groups them together in the correct structure for vat return filing.
There are also free software out that which will add on to excel as a bridge to allow you to file your vat return.
The key to mtd is no copy and pasting, no manual alternations or adjustments. It has to be a digital link. However an excel file which pulls the data from the csvs is perfectly fine since you are not manually entering the data nor manipulating it.
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