Zero VAT Sales (VAT already paid elsewhere)

Hi… I’ve just started using QuickFile today as I wanted to be prepared for MTD. The main reason for joining was MTD for UK VAT. I’ve successfully imported accounts from the beginning of this financial year. We are internet only and don’t have any debtors or invoices, just sales that come in from our website and other online venues.

There’s only one thing I’m stuck on. How do I set a sales transaction to zero VAT? My company is VAT registered in 7 EU countries because we sell across the EU with Amazon. I have an accountant that does our VAT returns in 6 countries. I do the UK VAT because obviously, I have to pay VAT on all our sales outside Amazon too.

I don’t want to pay UK VAT on sales I have already paid VAT on in Germany, France etc. I’ve searched but I can’t seem to find how to do this.

Hi @AnnieC

The exact treatment of these is probably best answered by your accountant.

But we do allow you to mark invoices as reverse charged (for goods), exempt and out of scope. It’s initially done at a client level which enables a tick box on the invoices for you. We have a guide which may help you here: VAT rates explained

Thank you, I figured it out… Just another question on VAT.

Is there a way to manually change the amount of VAT on an invoice from a supplier?

2 examples:

Royal Mail has UK/EU post at 20% but outside these areas it’s zero rated so our invoice never has exactly 20% VAT. It’s always a few pounds out.

We import a container from China and our freight handler pays the VAT for us and then invoices us for VAT and duty on one invoice. It has say, £800 duty and £3000 VAT. It’s not an invoice for goods as such but I can claim all the VAT .back.

I can’t see a way to change the VAT amount on the invoice or transaction. In my old software I could change the VAT amount so it was correct in both these examples. Newbie sorry!

QuickFile lets you adjust the VAT a bit to account for rounding differences but if you want to put in a VAT value that is significantly above 20% then you have to do a workaround of entering two lines on the invoice, one at 20% with the full net amount on which that VAT is calculated, then a second line for minus the same amount at “no VAT”. This cancels out the net leaving the invoice as VAT only.

Thanks Ian. I mainly want to put in VAT that is below what the software is saying. If I don’t adjust to reflect that some of the items on the supplier invoice are zero rated, I am committing VAT fraud.

This is a major flaw I’m afraid. You need to be fully and exactly change the VAT amount to match the supplier invoice. Our Royal Mail bill is always out by minus £50 per invoice because of the items that we ship outside the EU/UK. With my current software, it comes up with the 20% rate but I can manually adjust it down to the correct amount as shown on the invoice. We have other suppliers with invoices that have mixed VAT’able products on them too. I won’t be able to change those either. We would have to reclaim more VAT than we have paid.

Then we get invoice where we need to reclaim a lot more VAT, where our import agent has paid the VAT on our behalf. 90% of the invoice is reclaimable VAT. (We get a certificate from HMRC in the post a week later.) I NEED to reclaim that VAT and I can’t if the VAT amount it fixed at zero, 5% or 20%… with no flexibility.

You should be able to do that already by just editing the VAT column. It will calculate an initial value based on the rate but you can manually override that with a lower value.