Prepare your VAT return

Open Taxes → VAT returns and pick a period. The nine boxes are worked out from what you've already recorded:

• Box 1. VAT on your sales invoices and on bank receipts you explained as income with a VAT rate. Credit notes reduce it.
• Box 4. VAT on your bills and expenses (and supplier refunds reduce it).
• Box 6 and 7. The net value of those sales and purchases, in whole pounds. Zero-rated and exempt lines count; lines outside the scope of VAT don't.
• Boxes 3 and 5 are worked out from the others. Boxes 2, 8 and 9 only apply to trade with the EU under the Northern Ireland protocol; they stay at zero unless you add an adjustment.

Under cash accounting, VAT counts when money changes hands: an invoice appears when the customer pays, split across its VAT rates in proportion. Under the flat rate scheme, box 6 is your gross turnover, box 1 is your flat rate percentage of it, and box 4 only holds VAT on capital goods of £2,000 or more that you've ticked as Capital goods.

Open What's in this box under any box to see every invoice, bill, expense, payment and bank receipt behind the figure, with the VAT rate applied.

The VAT Checker

Before you mark a return as checked, the checker lists:

• Needs fixing. Things HMRC would reject, such as a period that hasn't ended or missing VAT settings.
• Check before you send. Unexplained bank transactions in the period, draft invoices or bills, purchases without a receipt, corrections above HMRC's limit, negative boxes.
• For information. Nil returns, corrections included, invoices not yet paid under cash accounting.

Fix what needs fixing, tick I've reviewed the warnings above once you're happy with the rest, and choose Mark as checked. If anything changes afterwards, the return shows Changed since checked so you know to look again.