EC Sales List Submission

Indeed, after the disastrous attempt to change the layout on invoices to make it look "contemporary", and other such frivolous issues, you'd think they'd focus on the long list of functionality issues rather than on how some layouts look.

It's interesting that the 'Community Ideas' box at the top of this page refers to a Product Road Map from May. May 2016. It's also not encouraging that a company that raised significant sums from going public asks for a 'pledge' from its subscribers to back product development, even when they are basic system functionality issues such as this.

Sorry Stephen I'll be retiring in a year's time (to everyone's relief) so need to withdraw my £2 pledge but, a bit like the topics in this thread, CB don't appear to have thought deeply enough about this feature and so has not enabled "withdraw pledge".

Best to treat this and similar threads as a running joke.

MTD is changing the way EC sales are submitted to HMRC so we will likely wait to change things until it is required for us to do so. I will raise this with our product team.

Having waited three years for this basic functionality I thought I'd pledge a fiver to see if that encourages a little interest from CB!

11 months on and......

Hi all,

I understand everyone's feedback and we do appreciate it. However, currently, we are trying to categorise and prioritise all the various community ideas in our product management software. In addition, at the moment we do have limited development resources but is gradually increasing. Our development team is working on several major tasks such as subscription issues, development of ClearBooks Micro, quality and ad hoc tasks.

We are definitely planning on making significant progress with community ideas in the near future. In the meantime, we are also constantly releasing monthly updates on our blog announcing different product improvements and implementations, which you can follow here: https://www.clearbooks.co.uk/blog/

Again, thank you all for your patience!

Thanks, Tommy

Paul makes a very good point about the abandonment of listening to what customers are asking for.

Maybe an honest roadmap (rather than a PR wishlist) of what CB is going to tackle this year/ next year would be useful - doesn't have to be in the public domain, just available to customers. Then we acn measure what CB management think is important to our own individual wishes.

Tommy - Tim's email notifying customers the Ideas section had been "temporarily" disabled was 25 May 2016 ie "for the past 14 months". It is only reasonable that people ask "what is temporary?"

As you say, the devs always look at user requests to determine the fixes to push forward and so as users can no longer see "Ideas" and so can not vote on this one, they are bound to just ignore your internal reference as they did mine two years ago.

Sometimes it is best just to be honest and say that there are no plans to implement this, then we all know where we stand, leaving many to do the EC Sales list outside CB, using HMRC's login

Hi Paul,

I have just been told the ideas section has temporarily disabled for the past months, but I have raised this suggestion internally with our development team and hopefully, it can be implemented soon!

Thank you for your patience!

Tommy

Hi Tommy - the mess created by CB's insistence on being appointed agent was discussed many times internally and externally when I was involved there and is even more annoying when you consider that none of the other Cloud products I use have ever enabled or wanted to be appointed agent, why would they?

Given that CB made the decision last year to deactivate the ideas section, to stop users making suggestions that could be voted on, it's a bit of a insult to say that CB is now waiting for more than 2 people to vote on this one? (BTW what's an upvote?)

So, to incentivise CB to take more notice, I've pledged £2, but then, that system has never worked ether, so don't hold me to it :)

Hi all,

We really appreciate all the feedback, I will pass this on to our development team to take these points into consideration. Also, a customer idea/ request is usually decided on the number of upvotes in the community, so, the more upvotes, the more likely it can be implemented sooner.

Hopefully, we can see this request implemented in the near future!

Thank you for your patience,

Tommy

There are numerous issues on basic functionality which could be improved. Although it sounds like I am criticising the product, I wish they would kick on and iron out the irritating small points (and also improve weak areas) as overall it is extremely good - but has the potential to be even better/enjoyable to use I do sometimes wonder if the product has 'lost its way' in terms of focus on users

Thanks, but it will probably get ignored like most of my suggestions and requests !

However, perhaps you are more important or influential than me !

Hi Martin,

Fair point, I have forwarded this comment to the feature request to our development team.

Thanks, Tommy

OK. If you should decide to proceed with developing this, then please consider that CBooks can have the facility for different agents for different submissions eg CIS, VAT,EC sales list. It is highly undesirable, a heightened security risk and creating potential to make input errors to keep changing the details for each different type of submission.

There are situations when I think the software is not designed with real humans in mind !

Hi Martin,

Apologies that this feature has still not been added in, I have raised this request with our development team. In the meantime, the alternatives would be to appoint ClearBooks as the agent as explained here: https://www.clearbooks.co.uk/support/guides/vat-return/new-navigation-submit-vat-ec-sales-returns-online-hmrc/ or to take the details from ClearBooks and transcribe it directly to the HMRC system.

Hopefully, this request can be implemented in the near future!

Thanks, Tommy

i year on and still not working ...

Hi Jonathan,

Unfortunately you can only submit the EC Sales List online if Clear Books is set as your agent, at the moment. However, if you do have us set as the agent then it is worth double-checking the following:

1. VAT number
2. Registered post code must match on both the Gateway and Clear Books account. Any changes required for the registered address, can be updated on the Settings>Organisation>Details menu.
3. Authorisation on the Government Gateway is set, for EC sales lists to be submitted via Clear Books. Step three on the guide here https://www.clearbooks.co.uk/support/guides/vat-2/submitting-online-vat-returns/ will show how to complete this.

If you need any further assistance, please do let us know.

All the best,

Natasha

Has never worked for me either, have to enter details manually as well

Thanks Stephen - this is clearly wrong, I'll make sure it's passed on to the boffins

Yes Paul, as far as I can see authorising ClearBooks as your agent is still the only way to use the ECSL online submission feature. My client uses the online VAT100 submission, but is unable to use the ECSL feature to submit online, we just take the details from it and transcribe to the HMRC system.

Hi again Stephen - I've not actually got any clients on CB who have to make use of this and so can't test it out. Are you saying that the HMRC VAT toggle (where you set CB or Other as the Government login) doesn't work with EC SL?