I have a client who is on the Standard scheme for VAT. I was looking for some advice on how best to process his bookkeeping on Excel.
In the past I have maintained two spreadsheets, one for the bank analysis and reconciliation and another listing the net, VAT and gross value of every sales and purchase invoice by date. As his business is growing this is now becoming very time consuming.
My aim is to make it as easy to process the VAT return as possible while still analysing and reconciling the bank account does anyone have any suggestions?
When I started my own business before I went VT Transaction+ I went with a five worksheet spreadsheet in Excel.
Four sheets representing each VAT quarter and a final worksheet that auto populates from the totals from th other sheets.
When I first set up the spreadsheet it would autocalculate the VAT but I found that in all too many cases vatable and non vatable items were being mixed and the VAT figure was out of step with the actual VAT. For example on a mobile telephone bill the calling plan is vatable where the compulsory handset insurance is not.
I soon found it faster to type in the VAT figure directly from the receipt / invoice seperately.
I have revenue and capital accounts to the left and expense columns to the right with one column for each expense and one row for each date.
I found totals easier to put at the top of the page as it means that you don't need to insert rows, just keep typing. However, being a traditionalist I personally still like to keep them at the bottom of the page.
The left most column was a reference number relating back to a reference on the bank statement.
At any time of the year the main spreadsheet gave me a snapshot of the business as it stood at that moment
At the end of any quarter the figures for VAT in and out and the totals of the various columns that they were derived from are used to populate the VAT return.
All in all very simple and it's software that you control rather than vice versa.
The spreadsheet is now out of date as I'm now all VT as it feeds nicely into VT accounts to produce a professional looking set of accounts that is easy to file but I really loved my little spreadsheet that worked perfectly if you are only sticking with the bookkeeping and not taking things forwards to a full set of accounts... And as the cherry on the cake it's an incredibly cheap option.
Hope that's helped give some pointers if you decide to go the spreadsheet route.
kind regards,
Shaun.
__________________
Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Very interested in your spreadsheet description, and it runs on similar lines to what I do for
some of my clients.
I have considered VT Cashbook in the past but I have always steered away from using it as
I can't work out the most efficient way of doing so.
The invoices/receipts come from the client in all sorts of random order, so when you enter
them into VT do you just post them in the order that you've got them and then try to reconcile
the bank from there, or do you enter them in the order in which they appear on the bank
statements and then fish through to find the relevant paperwork to enter it correctly ? This seems
a little clunky to me, which is why I haven't done it and continue to use a spreadsheet, on which
I enter the transactions as they are on the Bank statement and then find the relevant paperwork.
VT Cashbook isn't the software that you want. Thats something that you give away free to clients if you can trust them to enter their own transactions (seemed a good idea at the start but you quickly realise that clients really should not be entering their own transactions).
The software for bookkeepers is VT Transaction+ (free two month trial is available but make sure that you are ready to trial it as soon as you get it, I've let too many trial periods expire before getting to trial the software).
When you enter input into VT transaction+ it stores the date in the sequence that you enter it (view from the VT front screen) but in the background the transactions are correctly allocated to the period to which they belong and everywhere but the front screen the transactions are listed in date sequence.
In some ways I think that the front screen should be looked at as more of an audit trail but you can pretty much ignore that.
When you are doing your bank reconcilliation all transactions are displayed in date sequence and reconcilliation is simply a matter of clicking on the entries that belong together (as with most accounting software).
Its all very easy and in answer to your question it really doesn't matter what sequence they come in, you just plug them in as you get them and let VT sort them out for you ready for you to reconcile.
HTH,
Shaun.
__________________
Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
