I am more now than happy using PHP and MYSQL with Drupal so would love to move away from "commercial software" so now would be a great time to try FrontAccounting if it can handle the VAT in europe and UK.
The above link is all about the API requirements as online manual submission of VAT returns will no longer be allowed or possible after April 2019, which could mean that there would no longer be any FrontAccounting users left in Europe after that date!!!!
I am willing to help anyway I can but do not have coding experience.
Hoping to read lots of fresh posts on this topic.
Just realized some of our overseas suppliers are going to be effected.
In fact what am I saying - of course any business hoping to do business with UK customers and are over the threshold are all going to need this feature.
I am not sure, whether this post helps you or not. But the basic things of HMRC is required to submit in their provided format. Though the given link is not developer understandable API program document. its the instruction document.
Somebody else coming in often encourages me to dig deeper.
Not sure if its going to help me, or anyone else, but I do hope so.
Hope you have an idea to start implementing the HMRC with FA.
I am going to start by following another post.
Also, does anyone run a "check report" of any kind on their VAT entries. For example if the standard VAT rate is 20% the report would "flag" entries which didn't seem to match that calculation because of user input error.
These are all things the tax regime is trying to see built into the system.
simple really - at least in the mind it is !
Seems I completely missed this very important bit of information on VAT, thank you for bring this up @Hirum.
Going through the links, it seems that to get started we should be fine if we use the so called "API-enabled spreadsheets".
The process I currently follow is very similar, where I download all the tax related data from front accounting and then literally copy paste it in to an excel template I have created.
The only exception to above is when I have made journal entries for expenses and vat needs to be reclaimed, for these particular entries I copy paste lines in to above excel sheet, and every quarter the numbers match 100%.
The only new thing I see is that I'll have to use a excel sheet which would communicate with HMRC directly. So some work required.
With regards to the point of late entries or entries which need to be entered in next quarter, I follow a process where I reconcile every bank transaction (80% purchases in my case, and 20% comprises of sales/expense etc). Effectively I check what transaction are pending reconciliation from previous quarter, and they would be included in present quarter.
The template I use has some basic excel formula, which looks up net amount, tax rate from tax report via front accounting, and calculates vat amount on net price, and then check if it matches to what vat amount is in tax report(rounded to two decimal places, for avoiding penny errors).
Hope this long post helps. And please let me know if I can be of any help.
I am sure we'll be fine when the time comes for MTD (Making Tax Digital).
Any excel manipulation can be coded into a PHP file and executed on demand and later made into an extension. Exporting data from FA and then doing copy/paste and excel formula gymnastics will certainly make for un-appreciated "hard work" and time drudgery.
This excel manipulation would be a boon, especially for someone like me who's had to take multiple steps in order to 'comply' with so called regulations.
Any experiences or advice in this area would be much appreciated as April is not so far away!
I'm happily using front accounting in the UK for 4 small companies. I'd love to stick with it if possible.
Is anyone actively developing an extension to give us the functionality required by HMRC after April? If not, is there a plan to support it in the future?
If nobody has the time to develop it, perhaps we can crowd-fund the development? I for one would be up for contributing financially to such an effort.
Post your bounty and specs on the Job Offers Board.
The API is fairly simple. There would appear to be 2 issues. One that front accounting needs to have OAuth2 embedded in order to authenticate the HMRC - and the chart of accounts will need to specifically identify those transactions and VAT that relate to other EU countries. So the current Tax Report isn't quite comprehensive enough.
If anyone reading this has the knowledge to implement this functionality, please let us know what you would want for your work and perhaps we can set up a crowdfunding thing?
I've created a post in the jobs offers board to see if we can find an interested developer.
If you would like this functionality to be developed, and are willing to contribute to the project (even if in a very small way) please respond here so I can gauge interest!
I'm also exploring some bridging software via my auditors Deloitte, but would prefer a more seamless integrated solution. Willing to help, but not enough time to fully develop solution.
I'm sure an integrated solution to this would further promote the use of FA in UK... I'm not sure how many UK users there are? It's a great flexible system that continues to evolve, with a fantastic community of support. The more people using it the better for everyone.