VAT Returns...whaddaya do about refunds for sales?

[HankMcSpank]

Ok, let me put a situation to the learned folks here.

2013 Q4 VAT return (which I've only got 7 days left to subit - eek!) ..... 1 Oct thru 31 Dec..... of the many sales I made, 16 sales are returns/refunds, what does one do about this? (i.e. what's the mechanics from a VAT return/reporting perspective). Do I add the 16 transactions to my Q4 VAT return, but then deduct them via another field (or other) on the online VAT return?

Many thanks

 

[faradaykeynes]

Do you have book keeping software to handle it or doing it manually?

Lets say you made 1000 sale + vat
and refunded 200+vat

total you need to report to HMRC is 800+vat

If you issue credit notes on book keeping software then it is all taken care for if not you have to report sales less refunds

 

[HankMcSpank]

I have quickbooks pro, but still pondering the best way to populate all the data into it (not easy witho thousands of transactions...even with an importer app - it needs a lot of thought!), so for the time being, I'm doing this aspect manually using spreadsheets (no harm, gets me into the vibe so to speak)

In your example, I figured it would just be the £800 + vat that I tell the VAT man about, but just wondered about the £200 of sales that were refunded...how it's recorded (since in your example the VAT man wouldn't know about it - presumably something as simple as a separate file called refunded sales & kep locally would suffice)

 

[faradaykeynes]

if you record credit note in quick book then you are good to go

 

[HankMcSpank]

Thanks...but like I say, I'm not going to have sufficient time to bring Quickbooks pro into play for the Q4 VAT return ....once I';ve got all my data into it, I realise it's going to be fairly simple

 

[faradaykeynes]

in that case you can manually reduce sales figures by refund amount