I've been doing the books for a brand new company. They started trading in February and their first VAT return is due by next week.
It's a friend of my boyfriend so started as a favour but then paid me for time spent to date.
I prepared it all ready and then the director sent me a text to say he has resigned. In the meantime the accountant has emailed me(must have got my details from the director) asking if I am submitting the VAT and do I need any assistance. I emailed back and said I would be happy to submit and could I have the log in details for HMRC.
More importantly I now want to impress the accountant. What reports should I run as back up/audit trails to put on a VAT file?
Shall I print off the day books, cash books, VAT nominal report.
By the way I wasn't supposed to be submitting the VAT i was just helping them get it ready for the accountants to do. The accountant wasn't even aware I was doing the books but good job I was.
Help and advice here on getting it right first time. You never know it could lead to more work through the accountant.
Elaine
-- Edited by Elaine R on Thursday 30th of May 2013 01:25:37 PM
Sage Instant should offer broadly similar VAT functionality to its bigger brother - and that's the most recent version.
In which case, you don't actually need to print anything if you don't want to and are comfortable with the idea of not doing so - you can call up the VAT return and reports from within Sage any time, so the information is always available. Just make sure your backup regime is good.
And in that context, even though modern versions of Sage make this unnecessary if the VAT functions are carried out correctly, I always advise that a backup should be taken once you reach the point where the VAT return can be produced with no further transactions to be entered, immediately before producing the return and telling Sage to reconcile/flag the transactions.
Since this is your first return, I'd doubly emphasise the need for that particularly backup.
__________________
Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
For VAT, I usually run the return, click print and then tick "VAT return" and "detailed". Then export these to PDF, and print also. Then you can run the reconciliation.
I run a paperless office, with back ups of my system, but how it is stored is personal choice.. those two reports are just good ones to print out, and the only ones I, as an accountant, couldn't live without.
I'll print off and keep in a file for the client in case the accountant needs to see anything. I'd rather it was either a paper copy or a pdf so it's easy to get your hands on. The client wouldn't know how to go in to sage to find it and I'd rather they didn't try as they have made a mess as it is.
I'm only working evenings and weekend to it's a bit tricky.
