For businesses who are registered for Consumer Taxes, or VAT in the UK or Sales Tax in the US, reporting is one of those processes that is sheer bureaucracy. This document will discuss how you should organise to report for consumer tax from the UK perspective.
Location: Finance Manager, Taxation
Overview
Business Administrator can change the names of consumer taxes to suit you. To edit the phrase, go to Business Manager, Edit Business Details, and you can select you favourite name from a drop down list.
From time to time, it is necessary to report for VAT. The reports from Business Administrator do not analyse VAT in any way. The reports simply make a statement on the trade that has taken place in the period concerned. When the report has printed, you, or your accountant, need to assess it, and conclude the amount of VAT due to your tax office.
Business Administrator provides a fairly easy route to completing the process, but it is a multi-step process.
To tell Business Administrator that you are registered for VAT, visit Business Manager, Edit Business Details. There you can tell Business Administrator what your registration number is, whence it will ask you some questions about your VAT environment. Having completed that, Business Administrator will build VAT issues into everything it does.
Business Administrator is very strict about the tax periods. It is therefore essential that you do any invoice runs within the period concerned. If you do it the day after, Business Administrator will log the invoices for the next period, and they won’t be reported.
The following steps must be taken within the tax period
- Ensure all supplier invoices have been logged on to the system
- Ensure the invoice run is complete, if you want it to be
- Ensure all receipts and expenses have been logged
- Ensure the wages have been paid
The following can be done at the beginning of the next period as you account for the tax
- Do a Cash Book reconciliation. The benefit of this is that it ensures that everything you expect to be included is included. You ought to do a reconciliation every month as soon as your bank statement comes in
- Run the VAT reporting tool. This will get everything ready for a report. Business Administrator will offer you a number of report choices.
Reports
You can get three types of report: two of them are Mock Reports, one to the screen, the other to the printer. On printing these, Business Administrator will not declare anything as having been submitted for VAT: it is to give you the opportunity to get everything together in preparation for the VAT Return. You can see the Report on-screen (Preview) or print it out (Printer)
The only way that Business Administrator will officially declare everything as reported is if you print a Conclusive Report. It will print a summary report and a copy of the invoices and receipts that have been raised in the period concerned.
Even when you have printed a Conclusive Report, the process is not complete. It won't be complete until you have told Business Administrator that you have sent the payment to your tax office. Business Administrator will then close off all items, and mark the job as complete.
The printouts of the Conclusive Report is to be handed to your accountant. When your accountant reports back to you, you can pay the VAT in Finance Manager, Taxation, Pay taxes.