I am a bookkeeper and very new user to Quickfile (QF). I was trying to generate a VAT return on QF and find that all the invoice was included in the latest quarter i.e. invoices from previous period as well as current period. How can I solve the issue. Help please.
Is this for a newly VAT registered entity or have you previously been using other software to submit the previous quarter’s return?
By design, when you prepare a VAT return in QuickFile it will include all entries (invoices if you’re configured for accrual accounting, payments if you’re configured for cash accounting) that are
dated on or before the last day of the period you’re filing, and
dated on or after your “VAT start date” if you’ve configured one in settings, and
not already accounted for by a previous return that QuickFile knows about
This is deliberate behaviour as it means that if you submit a return and then subsequently find extra items that should have been included, you can enter them with their correct dates (during the submitted quarter) and they will still be picked up and accounted for at the earliest opportunity. But it does have a few implications:
if you have multiple returns outstanding they must be submitted in chronological order from oldest to newest, otherwise the later one will include all the earlier items
if it’s not yet past the deadline for submitting one period and you try to preview the next period return before submitting the last one, the numbers will be wrong. The preview of return N+1 is only accurate once return N has been submitted
if you’re running QuickFile in parallel with some other software that you have been using for the returns, you must still prepare and save the previous return(s), in date order, within QuickFile if you want it to calculate the next one correctly. You need to disable online filing in your QuickFile VAT settings in order to save returns for periods that HMRC doesn’t think are “open”
If this is your first return on QuickFile following a transition from other software, or the first return following a new VAT registration, then most likely you just need to set the “VAT start date” to the start of this period, but it’s worth double checking the “export” before submitting to make sure that everything that should be there is there and there’s nothing included that you already dealt with in the previous software.