Basic Bookkeeping Question

[sapphal]

I run an on-line business selling physical goods and 99% of payments are by processed by Worldpay who then transfer the money to our bank account on a weekly basis. The other 1% are cheques. From a bookkeeping point of view can I just use the worldpay payments as the income payments rather than listing individual purchases? Obviously the Cheque payments would be listed individually.


Similarly, can I use my suppliers monthly invoices as 'cost of sales' rather than list individual invoices.

Copies of the individual orders/invoices will be kept.

TIA

[Watermill Accounting]

How do you keep your books? Do you use any accounting software or just using excel?

[KidsBeeHappy]

If worldpay provide you with a listing of the payments that make up the total that is banked (and any deductions there off) then yes, you can just use the banking total.

The way to look at this is to think of it as batch processing.

Always think that the HMR&C want to be able to go from a transaction through the bank, into your ledger/books etc. So make sure that you have that trail. But if the first half is in worldpay and the second in your ledgers, that's fine. Just as long as you can go quickly & smoothly from one to the other.

[sapphal]

Yes Worldpay provide a list of transactions which can be filtered to show 'settled', 'refused' etc.

The other advantage of doing it the batch way is that it shows a true sales figure - i.e. commissions, refunds and the like have all been accounted for.

[KidsBeeHappy]

You should make the ledger entries gross though partic if fees are deducted. This is because the sales will be SR and the fees probably Exempt (or zero, can never remember which). Which is a small thing, but if you've a petty vat inspector on a bad day, it just may be excuse they need to start digging further.