accounting invoice numbers

[k100danny]

I wonder if someone could help me, I use ncr pads to hand write my ivoices, they are obviously printed with all required legal information including an individula invoice number, when i order these they come in packs of 5 pads, I seem to have either missplaced one of the packs or have pulled a pack out out of order leaving a number gap of 250 between invoices, is this a problem/ Ie do all invoices have to run in consecutive order?

I will wait until tomorrow when i go to the stock room to try and get the correct numbered pads if this is not allowed but i have lots of invoices to do and wanted to do this this evening at home.

Any help much appreciated.

 

[StevensOnln1]

I doubt it would cause you any problems, but might be worth making a note inside the cover about it.

 

[MikeJ]

Too late now, but in our early days we were heavily reliant on one customer. In case they noticed 80% of our invoices were to them, we skipped a number of invoices so they weren't getting consecutive numbers.

 

[Gecko001]

As far as I know the invoice No. is just for your own admin. purposes. It does not matter if there is a gap or if two are issued with the same number. In fact it does not matter if it is there as far as I know.

Like MikeJ I sometimes place a gap in the numbers if I am invoicing the same client so that they think that I have a lot more clients than I have.

 

[Anna Chandley]

As far as I know the invoice No. is just for your own admin. purposes. It does not matter if there is a gap or if two are issued with the same number. In fact it does not matter if it is there as far as I know.

Like MikeJ I sometimes place a gap in the numbers if I am invoicing the same client so that they think that I have a lot more clients than I have.

If you are VAT registered then each invoice number should be unique and follow on from the number of the previous invoice. If there are missing invoice numbers a VAT inspector will want to see evidence that these numbers were not used otherwise they may assume that they are undeclared sales.

In the OPs case it would be fairly easy to show that a gap of 250 sales invoices numbers were due to a missing invoice book.

Anna

 

[Gecko001]

Really!

My accountant sends me out bills which have no number and they are Registered for VAT. They are quite a large frim of accountants.

 

[David Griffiths]

The VAT rules say that the invoices must be consecutively numbered in a sequence or number of sequences. So that covers the case where you have delivery drivers out on the road with their own invoice book.

In this case, the "missing" book is presumably in the store and will be used at some time, so there won't be any issues. As Anna says the gap is easily explained in any event.

The point raised above about skipping invoices to give a customer the wrong impression does cause issues. One of my clients did it on start up and although the explanation was accepted he was told that he must stop. One way round that is to have a sequence for each customer.