NutriPlanner Zest Finance : Tutorial

Setting your VAT status.

The Finance module is sensitive to whether or not you are VAT registered and will display additional boxes for VAT amounts on the various option pages if you are.

The setting for this is on the Account / My Details page. There you will find, about three quarters of the way down the page, two tick boxes where you indicate your VAT status.

The first simply indicates whether or not you are VAT registered. Tick this box if you are.

The second indicates whether or not you operate the VAT Cash Accounting scheme. Tick this box if you do.

Note: Standard VAT accounting requires you to declare on your VAT return whenever you create an invoice for your customer or your receive a bill from a supplier, regardless of when you actually receive or pay the money.
Cash accounting means that you only declare on your VAT return when you actually receive or pay out the money.
If you need more information about these, visit the HMRC web site or talk to your accountant.

Changing your status

You can change your VAT status at any time but there are several implications if you do this after you have recorded some transactions in the system. For this reason it is best to be certain that you set this status correctly at the beginning.

However, sometimes your status will change so these are the considerations you need to be aware of.

Firstly, any records that you have made prior to changing your status will not be altered unless you recall them and save them.

What this means is that your reports will continue to be accurate even after you have changed your status. However it is absolutely vital, if you are going to change your status, that you make sure ALL your transactions prior to the change are recorded fully and completely BEFORE you make the change.

If you do change your status and then recall and save a transaction, the following will occur to that transaction.

1. If you are changing from unregistered to registered then the transaction will be relatively unaffected. When you display the transaction a VAT box will be shown on the screen but it will be empty. The system will not extract the VAT element automatically. If you need to do this you will have to make the calculations and entries manually.
   
2. If you are changing from registered to unregistered then the VAT element will be combined with the amount element and a single, total value will be recorded. The VAT box will no longer be displayed on the screen and there will be no way to undo the combination of VAT and amount.

Changing your VAT status is never a trivial exercise under any circumstances but occasionally it cannot be avoided if your business turnover changes significantly.