Hi Mark
We are winding up operations here and over the last couple of months have posted the last of the transactions and tidied up, everything seems to be balancing and tallying up as expected with one exception:
The VAT Liability account is almost -£1200 pounds (ie in our favour) after our final (de-registering) return. I would have expected it to be zero after posting final payment transaction to HMRC?
I have never paid too much attention to the account balance over the years as the timing mismatch between payments to HMRC and return dates has made reconciling the account near impossible (now I wish I'd made the effort!).
The VAT returns have always been calculated from Solar so should be based on the VAT Liability account. I'm sure we have edited the occasional invoice for minor errors over the years but only pounds or pence not 5-6K's worth!
Can you think of something I'm missing, am understanding incorrectly?
Or do I have to trawl through a decade of transactions looking for small cumulative errors?
Best regards
Simon Willett
Hi Simon,
Unfortunately there is nothing in Solar Accounts that forces the VAT Liability balance to match the total of the Box 5 figures on your VAT returns. The most likely
explanation is that you have made a change to a transaction in a previous VAT period after you submitted the return for that period. I recommend you view the VAT Period Detail report for the past 12 months, and check that it matches the total of the 4 VAT returns you submitted. If you find a discrepancy, you can narrow the period range until you find which month it occurred. If you submitted the return using Solar Accounts or you have a
copy of the VAT Period Detail report from the time you submitted the return, then you can compare that report with the current report and look for a difference.
It could also be that you have used VAT Liability as an explicit account on a transaction - for example, if you created a General Transaction that involved the VAT Liability account it would then affect the balance of the
VAT Liability account but would have no effect on your VAT return figures.
To look for such a transaction, go to the Transactions list and tick the Advanced Filter checkbox and set the filter to show General Transactions where the account is 'VAT Liability'
Hope that helps. Let me know if you are able to track down the source of the discrepancy.
