Question asked by Lisa Beech 8 years ago
Hi, I'm hoping someone can help me please. I'm just entering everything into CB for this company yr, I now need to do our VAT returns. How best do I enter our historical/already done VAT returns for this company yr into CB so that I can do the next VAT return due end of this month. Many thanks for your help.
Hi Lisa,
The best thing to do is add all your payments to HMRC for previous returns as money out transactions on the Money>Bank accounts menu explain them all to the VAT control account. You can lock all your historic invoices and bills to a dummy return (Reports>VAT return) starting from the start date in Clear Books up to the end of the last quarter - just create this return but do not confirm it.
Once this is done you can create the VAT return for the current quarter and confirm it. This will create a bill to HMRC coded to the VAT control account. You can submit the return directly to HMRC using the guide below:
Best answerThank you so much for your quick response and detailed info on how to get our VAT done for the first time. I've just had chance to sit and do this and everything was clear and quick. Thank you.
No problem Lisa :)
Hello, I'm back again. Just need to check... I've done our VAT return in CB and paid it, do I need to separately file the return with HMRC or is that automatically done through CB and I don't need to worry about that part? Thanks for your help.
Hi Lisa,
You can either submit the return through Clear Books or directly to HMRC using their own website.
There is no need to do both.
Submitting the return through Clear Books requires us to be set up as you agent for VAT on the Government Gateway, as per the instructions in the Support Guide below:
Once this has been done you can open up the return and click th button to submit to HMRC, as per the screenshot below.
https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads-eu.hipchat.com/36185/2561547/yEbRwCUd5TQBXoG/upload.png
I hope this helps.
All the best.
Hi, thanks for your quick response. I set up CB as our agent on our Govt Gateway account about 2.5 weeks ago. I don't seem to have the 'submit to HMRC' button as shown in your screen shot, I only have the choice of which file type I want to download. Does this mean I've already done it or has it not set up yet as we've only just registered you as our agent on the Gateway? Is there a way to check on CB if it's been done? Hope this makes sense, I'm just back off holiday and catching up on things.
Thanks for your help again.
Kind regards Lisa
Hi Lisa,
If you have already submitted it then there should be a blue banner on that screen with a correlation id on it.
Could you please navigate to Settings > Configure System > Toggle Features > VAT & Bank Import Tool and make sure that the Online VAT Filing option is toggled on?
All the best.
Brilliant, all done now. Thanks for your help. :D
You must 
