Sage vat return help please

Blonde Accountant

Hi, I have a new client who has been using his own excel system to log all of his income and exp. He has recently changed to Sage and I have put on all of his income, exp invoices etc since his business started in Aug 07. I am about to do his first vat return on Sage, but I have done no period/month end routines on it. Is this alright and will the vat return work does any-one know? Or should I do all the period ends first, or does it even matter? Any help would really be gratefully appreciated.

Anne Boleyn

VAT/Sage

Hi

When did they register for VAT? Was it from the beginning or recently?

I can't see that it would make any difference to the VAT return whether you have done the year/month end procedures, as you select the dates for the return and it calculates it from that.

Could you provide a little more information.

Regards

Vonni

Mmm interesting why would you enter all this old information on to sage. Surely you should only enter the opening balance figures to start from his last year end and enter data from that point on.

The VAT return on sage is very straightforward (assuming you are not using cash accounting) you put in the relevant date for the quarter, obvioulsy in this case the report will ask if you want to include unreconciled transactions from previous periods, you will need to select 'no' then print the reports and check thoroughly.

You can for checking purposes calculate and reconcile all previous VAT return periods so that you have a record and can confirm that these are in agreement with the VAT returns already submitted.

Regards

Bluewednesday

Surely you would want to include unreconciled transactions from previous periods as they are usually late invoices with dates relating to the previous period. If you don't include those transactions they will never appear on the return.

We tend to run the report for the previous period separately to check what those unreconciled transactions are first.

However when we run the quarter we always include those unreconcileds.

What makes you say that it is not straight forward with cash accounting? It works the same way, taking the info from the bank and cash accounts rather than the sales/purchase ledgers. It's only what you have to check that differs

Poodle

With BW on this

I run a prior period return separately as well to see how any undeclared transactions have to be reported, before running a final report including the unreconciled if I am able to make the adjustments in the quarter being reported.

Vonni

I agree you are technically correct; but this sage data includes information that has been put on going back to 2007 so you quite clearly don't want to include that. I was answering the question on that basis not on the basis that sage was being used in the normal way.

Sorry if I caused any confusion here.

Vonni

Bluewednesday

Right I see where you are coming from.

However I would still include all the unreconciled transactions and then take off all the old VAT return figures - a complete nightmare but it's the only way not to miss transactions.

I also agree with why you are questionning the wisdom of putting on 2 years transactions rather than just putting on the opening balances from the last set of accounts, have you run the year ends blonde accountant?

Blonde Accountant

Hi, thanks everyone for your reply's. The client wanted it all put on like that and as there really weren't that many invoices etc, it didn't take very long. He has been vat reg since he started out and is on a cash accounting basis. I haven't run a year end routine yet either.

sheelagh

Sage VAT Returns

In my opinion you need to select the option "include previously unreconciled" at some point otherwise you will always have these old tranasactions sitting on Sage as unreconciled.
If I was doing this job, I would want to find out if there was going to be a huge difference between the original VAT returns and the data recorded on Sage. You can do this by running a VAT return on Sage for the period 1/8/07 (start of trading) to the end of the last VAT return. In theory the figures should match the total of all submitted VAT returns. You will be lucky if it matches exactly, but if the figures are significantly different you should find out why, and make the necesaary adjustments. I can think of a number of reasons for such a difference, but in my experience it's not worth speculating at this stage. A difference here might mean that future returns will be wrong.
When you have generated a Sage VAT return for the older periods and are satisified the figures are correct, hit the reconcile button in the VAT module so that these old transactions don't appear in future VAT calculations. When you run your next return, select "include previously unreconciled" to ensure you pick up any older transactions posted after the VAT return was run.

"but I have done no period/month end routines on it. Is this alright and will the vat return work does any-one know?"
No it doesn't matter if you haven't done period ends - the VAT module works on the date range you enter, regardless of period end routines.

Blonde Accountant

Hi Sheelagh, thank-you sooo much. This really helps, thank-you.