Making Tax Digital without Copy & Paste

With Making Tax Digital for VAT coming into effect on the 1st of April, we spoke to account experts at Tradebox to find out more about how it will impact online retailers. It turns out that it’s not enough to submit your VAT return digitally, there has to be an electronic trail from where the sale was recorded right through to the submission to HMRC. If you’ve been in the habit of a quick bit of copy and paste into your VAT return you’ll need to find alternative ways of working, one option to do this would be with Tradebox One Software.

This is what we learnt from the experts at Tradebox:

Making Tax Digital Made Simple with Tradebox One Software

Making Tax Digital Service Launches on 1st April for most VAT registered UK Businesses. Making Tax Digital (MTD) is a key part of the government’s plans to make it easier for individuals and businesses to get their tax right and keep on top of their affairs. From 1st April, this new service will require most VAT registered businesses to use software to keep records of their accounts digitally and to submit their VAT returns. The main thinking behind this service is to transform tax administration across the entire UK, making it more effective, efficient and easier for taxpayers to get their tax right first time around.

Showing how VAT has been calculated

The biggest challenge facing most online retailers is adhering to the transparency requirements of the new MTD service by showing how VAT has been calculated on every item on every order. The obvious way to do this is to create individual invoices for every order; providing a granular level of detail that meets the MTD requirements. This may mean a change in the day-to-day management of your business especially if you have any volume of sales because it will result in them entering this data into an accounts package that meets the MTD requirements. For many, the data entry burden will be significant, incurring costs, needless pressure and costly entry mistakes.

What does Tradebox do?

Tradebox have been providing automated accounts integration for online retailers since 2006. The initial solution, Tradebox Finance Manager, was launched in March 2006 and was a middleware solution specifically for retailers using Sage 50 Accounts.

The latest incarnation of the software, Tradebox One, was launched in June 2017 as a standalone solution that can operate independently and is designed to work with Sage 50 and Xero accounts, or, as an independent solution that can calculate VAT on all downloaded sales without an accounts’ integration.

Tradebox integrate with Amazon, eBay and many popular ecommerce webstores such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, Bigcommerce and EKM.

Tradebox recently became a Gold Partner with software giant Sage. As the UK market leader of Sage integration for online retailers, Tradebox welcomes this recognition. Becoming a Gold partner required independent rigorous testing of their software, and part of the agreement is they now appear as part of an additions network website of fully approved Independent Software Vendors, as well as inside Sage 50 accounts as an approved solution. This partnership will add value to all of Tradebox’s current and future customers who are keen to meet MTD requirements with world class software that is plugged into HMRC’s current and future requirements.

“Making Tax Digital changes how businesses submit VAT returns from 1st April 2019. We abridge the sales activity of Online Retailers, across multiple sales platform such as eBay, Amazon and their preferred website solutions and pull that data automatically into Sage 50 (and more recently Xero). We also export sales orders, stock control and financial management information to other packages such as Excel and .CSV. However, to comply with MTD, Sage 50 completes the circle by accounting for all financial records pertaining to VAT within an approved accountancy software package.”
– Stephen Bales, MD, Tradebox

Taking control of your accounts, orders and specifically your sales & VAT is Tradebox’s priority and combined with Sage 50, customers will be able to:

• Record and preserve electronic records in an electronic form
• Provide to HMRC information and returns from the electronic records in an electronic form and by using the Application Programme Interface (API) platform
• Receive information from HMRC

Copy and paste to be banned under making tax digital

Although HMRC don’t prohibit the use of spreadsheets at present, they do require some form of abridging software to ensure the submission of data for VAT is electronic and data is not copied and pasted.

“The strong advice I’m giving to people is: if you’re an accountant and you’ve got new clients joining, or you’re newly setting yourself up in business, you should probably go digital first rather than use a spreadsheet.”
– Theresa Middleton, director, Making Tax Digital for Business

If you would like to talk directly to a Tradebox customer services agent, please give them a call on 0191 257 4707, email [email protected] or visit their website for more information. We run a 14-day free trial, offer free demonstrations and free support throughout the testing period and all the way through your licence period. Our support is 5*, supported by some fantastic reviews on Trustpilot.

Our earlier Tamebay article published no the 6th of March discusses the fundamentals of this new legislation. It explores what type of software businesses will be required to use to ensure they are compliant now and in the future with these changes. Many businesses may already be using the required systems, but for those who are using paper or spreadsheet software, they will need to switch to an approved accounts package or use a bridging software to supply the data required direct to HMRC.