Repository navigation
UK Bookkeeping
Keep your books on your own site, file your VAT return straight to HMRC from the same place you keep the receipts, and get a proper set of accounts and a corporation tax computation out of the same records at the end of the year.
It does: records what you spend and what you take, keeps the receipt with the entry, works out your VAT return from those records, and files it with HMRC. It takes receipts and invoices the day they arrive, before there is an entry to attach them to, reads what it can off them, and offers them back to you against the right payment when your statement comes in. It reads a bank statement - CSV or PDF - and ties it back to what you have already recorded, so you can see whether the two agree. Behind all that it keeps one proper set of double-entry books, which is what lets it give you a profit and loss account, a balance sheet that adds up, a trial balance, and the full history of any single account down to the receipt. It keeps a register of your equipment and spreads the cost over the years you use it. It closes the year off when you are ready, and then works out your corporation tax and hands you every box number for the company tax return. It keeps journals for the things that are not money moving, and a director's loan account for money you put in and take out. It keeps a frozen copy of every return you file, and it locks the entries behind a filed return so nobody can quietly change history.
It does not: run payroll, track stock, or send invoices to your customers. It does not handle the Flat Rate Scheme, partial exemption, margin schemes or bad debt relief. It is not Making Tax Digital for Income Tax. It handles one VAT registration per site. It does not work out anybody's personal tax, including on a director's loan - it shows you the position and points you at your accountant.
And it does not file your corporation tax return. That is not an oversight. HMRC has an interface software can use to file a VAT return; it does not have one a small company can use to file its company tax return. So the module does all the working out and gives you every figure with the box number beside it, and the last step is copying those into HMRC's own online service, or handing the page to whoever does that for you.
The important bit: you never type a VAT box figure. Every one of the nine boxes is worked out from your entries, and there is no box on any screen you can type into. That is what HMRC means by digital links, and it is the whole reason this exists in the shape it does. The corporation tax computation follows the same rule: every figure on it comes from something you can go and look at. What you type there is a judgement - "£340 of that lunch was entertaining a client" - never an answer.
You will want:
- Your VAT number.
- To know whether you are on the standard scheme (VAT counts when you invoice) or cash accounting (VAT counts when the money moves).
- To know how often you file - usually every three months.
- A Government Gateway login for the business, if you want to file from here.
You do not need HMRC to start, and it is worth not bothering with them until you have seen this working.
Settings → Bookkeeping is split into tabs: Business, VAT and HMRC, Sales and records, Categories, Bank accounts and Ledger accounts. The first three share one Save settings button; the last three save the moment you press a button. In Bank accounts, the up and down arrows set the order your accounts appear in every dropdown across Bookkeeping (it is no longer alphabetical once you have set one).
Go to Settings → Bookkeeping, Business and VAT tabs, and fill in your business name, VAT number, scheme and how often you file, plus the dates your first VAT period starts and ends - both are on your HMRC registration letter and in your VAT account.
The end date matters more than it looks. HMRC ends every return period on the last day of a calendar month (quarterly filers sit in one of three "stagger groups": periods ending Mar/Jun/Sep/Dec, Apr/Jul/Oct/Jan or May/Aug/Nov/Feb), so the first period runs from the day your registration took effect to the end of your first stagger month, and is rarely a neat three months. Registering on 10 July with periods ending in October gives a first period of 10 July to 31 October; every period after that follows calendar months. If you leave the end date empty we assume the nearest month end, which is right for most people but can be a month out either way - HMRC's letter settles it.
Each period is laid out with its due date: one calendar month and 7 days after the period ends (the 31 October period is due 7 December), which is also the day the payment must have cleared. Annual accounting differs - two months after the period ends - and any period matched to a real HMRC obligation shows HMRC's own due date instead.
Changed the dates after periods were already laid out? Press Lay out periods from my settings on the VAT returns screen: untouched periods (open, nothing finalised or filed against them) are re-laid to match; anything with history is left exactly where it is.
Then open Bookkeeping in the sidebar and start recording.
The first tab is an Overview: where the VAT stands so far this period, when the next return is due and how many days you have, this month's money in and out, anything still waiting for review, and your latest entries. Every figure on it links to the screen where you can act on it.
From here everything works except the actual filing: entries, receipts, the nine boxes, reports, exports, and marking a return as filed once you have sent it some other way. Most people run it like this for a few weeks first, and some people run it like this forever.
The entry form suggests names you have dealt with before as you type, and when you pick one it pre-fills the category their entries usually go under - a suggestion only, and it never overrides a category you have already chosen. Pressing Enter saves.
"What it was for" is asked on each line, not once at the top. The top of the form is who it was with, when, and their invoice number; underneath, "What it was made up of" is where you say what you actually bought or sold. One line is usually plenty, but a receipt with a tank of fuel and a sandwich on it is two things, taxed differently, and one box at the top could only ever hold one of them. The entries list shows the lines folded into one line of text, so a receipt for three things reads as all three rather than the first one.
Entries recorded before this changed keep their wording: the text that sat at the top is handed down to the lines the first time you open one to edit it.
"Money in or out" has a third setting: Internal transfer. Use it when money moves between two accounts you already own - current to savings, current to a card you are paying off, cash banked. It is neither a sale nor a cost, so it has no category, no VAT and no receipt, and the form puts those questions away as soon as you pick it. What it asks instead is: the date it moved, which account it came out of, which account it went into, and how much.
The amount is always positive. To send it the other way round, swap the two accounts over rather than typing a minus.
This matters more than it looks. Money moved between your own accounts and never recorded leaves both balances wrong by the amount, in opposite directions, for ever - and setting the two statement lines aside without recording the transfer does exactly that. Recording it properly puts each balance where it belongs and touches nothing on the VAT return.
Transfers show in the entries list alongside everything else, marked as transfers, reading "Current → Savings" with no VAT figures against them. The In or out filter has an Internal transfers setting if you want only those. They also appear under Journals, because underneath that is what they are; either place, Open the transfer takes you back to the form you filled in.
"Date it was paid" starts empty, and empty means not paid yet. Fill it in when the money actually moves. Until you do, the entry counts as outstanding: it sits under Who owes what, aged from the invoice date, and it shows in what you are owed or what you owe on the balance sheet. Filling it in is what settles the entry and moves the money through a bank account.
It used to arrive pre-filled with today's date, which meant a bill typed in on the day it landed recorded itself as already paid unless you noticed and cleared the box. If you have entries from before this changed that you have not actually paid, open them and clear the date - they will move onto Who owes what where they belong, and the bank figure they were wrongly taken out of goes back up.
"Paid from" says which account the money moved through. It only appears once you have set up an account under Settings → Bookkeeping → Bank accounts, and a new entry starts on the first account in that list. Change it when the money came from somewhere else: the card, the petty cash tin, or a balance you hold with a supplier. On a sale it reads "Paid into" and means the same thing the other way round.
Getting this right is what keeps the bank column honest. An invoice paid out of a prepaid balance never touched the bank, and saying so is the difference between a bank figure that matches your statement and one that quietly does not.
The box used to start on "Main current account", which sounds like one of yours and is not: it is a built-in account that exists so entries have somewhere to settle before you have set any accounts up. Leaving the box alone therefore put the payment somewhere you never reconcile, and the balance sheet grew a Bank current account line for money that had actually left your real account. If you have entries from before this changed, the reports page now names them - it says how many there are and what they add up to - and the fix is to open each one and set the account it was paid from or into. An older entry keeps whatever it was saved with until you do; nothing is moved behind your back.
Changing the VAT rate re-splits the figure you typed. Type a total and put the line on 20%, and the VAT comes out of that total: £20.00 becomes £16.67 plus £3.33, and the total stays £20.00. Type the net figure instead, off an invoice that shows the two separately, and the VAT goes on top of it. Whichever box you last typed in is the one that holds still, which matters most on an entry brought in from a bank statement: the total there is the money that actually left the account, and it should not move because you told the entry what rate it was at.
"No receipt needed for this one" is a tickbox at the bottom of the top card. Some entries are never going to have a receipt: money put onto a balance held with a supplier, a bank charge, a payment on account. Tick it and the entry stops counting as paperwork still owed - it drops off the "waiting for a receipt" figure on the overview, the nag on the entry goes, and the entries list shows a grey cross in the evidence column rather than a blank, so "dealt with" reads differently from "nobody has looked at this yet". Nothing else changes, and you can still attach something later if it turns up. Nothing ticks it for you: a receipt that is genuinely missing and one that is never coming look identical from here, and only you know which is which.
The Evidence filter on the entries list now offers Still needs one, which means no receipt and not ticked, and None needed for the ticked ones.
One file for several entries. Some paperwork covers a batch: a card processor's monthly statement of fees, against every fee its payouts recorded that month; one invoice for several deliveries. On Bookkeeping → Entries, tick the entries it covers (the Who with box and the category filter narrow the list down quickly), press Attach a file to these and pick the file. It is stored once and appears as evidence on every ticked entry. Taking it off one entry later leaves it on the others.
Entries in a VAT return that has been filed or finalised have no tick box, because their evidence stays as it was; transfers have none either. If one of the ticked entries cannot take the file, it is named beside the count of the ones that did, and the rest still get it.
Buying something that lasts: tick the box on that line. When you pick a capital category - "Equipment and other capital purchases" - a tickbox appears on that line saying Put this one on the asset register, ticked already. Leave it ticked and the purchase starts an entry under Bookkeeping - Assets for you to finish off later. Untick it if the line is a deposit or a part payment towards something that is already on the register.
The tick is on the line, not on the entry, and each ticked line starts its own asset. A receipt with a desk and a chair on it is two things that wear out at their own pace, so it becomes two entries in the register, not one. The box of pens on the same receipt is not ticked and stays an ordinary cost.
This matters more than it looks. A capital purchase that never reaches the asset register claims no capital allowances, so your corporation tax bill is bigger than it needs to be by roughly the cost of the thing - and nothing anywhere else on the site would ever have mentioned it.
Categories are the choices in the "Category" box on every line of an entry, and twenty-odd of them arrive ready made, covering every box of the self-assessment pages. Most people never touch them.
Add one when a cost is big enough, or regular enough, that you would rather see it on its own line in the reports than lumped in with everything else. Hosting and domain names are the usual example: they land in "Phone, stationery and office costs" by default, alongside the phone bill and the printer paper, which is correct but tells you nothing.
Settings → Bookkeeping → Categories is where you do it. A new category needs three things, and has a fourth you can usually ignore:
- Name. What you want to see in the list when you record something.
- Money in or money out. Or either way, for the handful of things that go both directions.
- Where it belongs on the accounts. Which box of the tax return it counts towards, in HMRC's own wording. Pick the one it would have gone in if you had not given it a category of its own.
- Which account it posts to. Leave this on "Make one for it". An account is set up behind the scenes, filed exactly where you said above, and you need never think about it again. The one time to change it is when what you are recording is not a cost at all, which is covered in the next section.
Every category has an account behind it, and each row says which one under the category's name. That is the wiring rather than decoration: it is how a recorded entry becomes a debit and a credit on your books. Categories added on older versions of the module had none, and picked up an account the first time the site updated after this was fixed. If one of them landed somewhere daft, Change now lets you move it.
That last one is the one that matters. A category is a way of seeing your own figures, not a way of changing them: splitting hosting out of office costs shows you what the site costs to run, and still adds up to exactly the same box 24 total on the return. If you are not sure which to pick, pick the one the cost is sitting in today.
New categories arrive at the bottom of their list. The arrows move one up or down, and the order you put them in is the order they appear in on every entry form, so it is worth putting a new one next to the thing it was split out of.
Change renames a category, or moves one you made yourself to a different box if you filed it wrong to begin with. Renaming is safe at any time, on any category: entries already recorded follow the new name rather than keeping the old one.
The ready-made ones keep the box they came with, and the dropdown is not offered for them. If yours needs to count somewhere else, put the ready-made one away and add your own filed where you want it. That is the better answer anyway: it leaves everything you have already recorded pointing at a category that still says what it always said, which is rather the point of keeping records for six years.
Put away takes a category off the list without touching anything filed under it, which is what you want when a category has had its day. Show the put-away ones brings them back into view, with a button to put them back on the list. Remove only genuinely removes a category that nothing has ever been filed under and that did not arrive ready made. Anything else is put away instead, whatever the button says, because a return from six years ago can only explain itself if the categories it points at are still there.
Some suppliers want paying before they will sell you anything. You put twenty pounds on the account, they email a statement saying so, and then each month they bill you for what you actually used and take it off the balance. Phone and messaging services do it, so do postage accounts and some advertising.
The twenty pounds is not a cost. It is still your money, sitting with somebody else, and the statement they sent is not a VAT invoice and does not let you claim any VAT back. The cost, and the VAT with it, arrives later on each monthly invoice.
Set it up once:
- Settings → Bookkeeping → Bank accounts, add one. Name it after the supplier, something like "Acme prepaid balance", and set its type to Cash. It is an account of yours that happens to be held by somebody else.
- Settings → Bookkeeping → Categories, add one. Call it something like "Money on account with Acme", money out, filed wherever the supplier's bills normally go. Then set Which account it posts to to the balance you just made, rather than leaving it on "Make one for it".
Then, from now on:
- When you top the balance up, record it as an entry for the supplier on the date the money left the bank, paid from your current account, using the category you made. Put the VAT rate to Outside the scope of VAT, because nothing has been sold to you yet. Attach the statement they sent. It reconciles against the bank line like anything else, and it never reaches your VAT return or your profit and loss account.
- When the monthly invoice arrives, record it as an ordinary entry for the supplier, with the real VAT on it and the category the cost actually belongs to, and set Paid from to the prepaid balance. Attach the invoice. That is the entry that puts the cost in your accounts and the VAT in box 4.
The balance drains down as the invoices land, and the reports show what is left sitting with them under "Debtors and prepayments". If it ever goes below zero, either a top-up has not been recorded or an invoice has been billed to the wrong place.
Some suppliers do not charge you UK VAT at all. An overseas one selling you software or advertising, and a UK builder working under the construction rules, both print reverse charge on the invoice and leave the VAT off it. That does not mean there is no VAT on the purchase. It means you account for it, on both sides of your own return: it goes in box 1 as owed and in box 4 as reclaimed, so it costs you nothing and the two cancel out.
Pick the right one under VAT treatment on the entry - Services bought from overseas (reverse charge) or UK reverse charge - and three things follow on their own:
- The VAT box goes to nothing and stays there. Nothing is what your supplier charged you, so nothing is what the entry records. Your supplier is shown owed what they actually invoiced, and the entry matches the payment on your bank statement, which means it reconciles like any other.
- The total is what you paid. Not what you paid plus VAT that never changed hands.
- The rate still matters. Set it to the rate the purchase would have been at in the UK, which is nearly always the standard rate. Your return is worked out from that, so a wrong rate here is a wrong figure in boxes 1 and 4.
A receipt dropped on the Receipts tab is read for this too: an invoice carrying the words "reverse charge", the EU wording, or the construction wording is spotted and comes back with the treatment already set and the rate set to standard. As with everything else it reads, you can change it before it becomes an entry.
Click the file's name and it opens in a new tab: PDFs and photographs are shown in the browser rather than saved to your computer first, which is rather the point of attaching them. There is a Download link beside each one when you do want the file itself.
Anything that is not a PDF or an ordinary photograph is still sent as a download whichever link you click. That is deliberate and is not going to change: some file types can carry instructions of their own, and a file the browser is willing to run has no business being opened inside the admin.
Everything the books keep goes into your own media library, in folders you could work through by hand - because one day somebody will have to.
Bookkeeping / 2026 / 08 / Customer Invoices / INV-1042.pdf
Bookkeeping / 2026 / 08 / Customer Credit Notes / CN-0007.pdf
Bookkeeping / 2026 / 08 / Purchase Receipts / Screwfix-8817342.pdf
Bookkeeping / 2026 / 08 / Bank Statements / Tide Current Account.pdf
The year and month come from the date on the document, not the day you got round to uploading it, so August's invoice is in August whenever you deal with it. A sales invoice or credit note is named after its own number, because that is what identifies it. A purchase receipt is named supplier first and their number second, because a receipts folder is read supplier by supplier - and a till receipt with no number on it is just filed under the supplier. A statement is named after the account it belongs to, not whatever serial number your bank's export happened to use.
A document nobody has worked out yet stays in the month's folder. A photograph has no text in it to read, so nothing knows whether it is money in or money out, and putting it in a drawer confidently would be worse than leaving it in the tray. The moment you correct what was read off it, or file it against an entry, it moves to the right folder and gets the right name.
Tidy the folders on the Receipts screen walks everything you have already uploaded and moves it to match. Run it as often as you like: a file already in the right place is left alone. It only ever moves files this module put there - anything that came from elsewhere on your site is left where its owner put it.
Moving one of these by hand in the media library is fine, incidentally. The books follow the file wherever it goes.
Paperwork does not arrive in the order the books want it. The invoice comes by email on the day, the bank statement turns up three weeks later, and the entry gets typed at the weekend. So you do not have to have an entry before you can keep a receipt.
Bookkeeping → Receipts is a pile of everything you have uploaded and not yet filed against anything. Drop invoices and receipts on it the moment they land - one at a time or forty at once - and forget about them.
What it makes of a PDF. As each one arrives it is read: who it is from, their invoice number, the invoice date, the total, whether there was VAT on it and how much, and - where the invoice says so - whether it is one of the ones where your supplier charges nothing and you account for the VAT yourself. Everything it works out is shown on the card, and everything is a guess you can change. Fix details opens the lot for editing.
Putting a name right is worth the ten seconds. It is not a chore because the
software failed - it is how it learns. Your bank prints SQ *THE COFFEE SHOP 1234 and the invoice says "The Coffee Shop Limited", and nothing on earth
connects those two except somebody saying so once. Say it once, and every later
invoice from them, and every later statement line, knows.
Photographs are kept but not read. A photo of a till receipt has no text in it, only a picture of some, and reading that needs a different kind of machinery altogether - somebody else's service, an account, and a bill for every receipt. So a photo uploads, files and counts as evidence exactly like a PDF; it simply arrives with nothing filled in, and says so. Type the supplier in once and it is remembered.
Two ways to use the pile.
- From the receipt. Press Record an entry on any card and the entry form opens with the supplier, the date, the invoice number and the amounts already in it. Check them, say what it was for, save. The receipt is attached on the way through.
- From the entry. Recording an entry the ordinary way shows a Receipts already uploaded panel above the form. Pick one and it fills the form in the same way. The same panel is on an entry you have already saved, where it attaches straight away.
Nothing in the pile is nagging you. A receipt can sit there for as long as you like, and it is still safely stored and still in your media library the whole time.
Read again re-reads a PDF. Worth it once you have dealt with a supplier a few times: a name it could not place on their first invoice is one it knows by their third. It leaves anything you have corrected by hand alone unless you ask it twice.
Throw away removes the receipt from the pile, and asks one more question before it does: whether to delete the file itself as well.
Left unticked - which is how it starts - only the receipt leaves the list, and the file stays in your media library exactly where it was. Tick it and the file goes from the library and from storage for good, which is not something that can be undone, so the box says so.
Two things will stop it even when you have ticked the box, and it tells you which: the same file being evidence on another entry as well, and anything else on your site still pointing at it. In both cases the receipt still leaves the list and only the file is spared. Deleting from the media library also needs permission to do that - if you have not got it, you are told before anything is removed rather than afterwards.
When you record money coming in by hand - a failed delivery charge, a cash sale,
a bank transfer nobody raised paperwork for - Bookkeeping makes the invoice for
you. It is a PDF built from the entry's own lines, so the invoice and the books
cannot disagree, with the next number in a run (INV-000001, INV-000002...).
It is filed as the entry's evidence under Bookkeeping / year / month / Customer
Invoices, exactly as an uploaded invoice would be.
- What gets one: money in, recorded by a person, posted. Sales handed over by your shop already have the shop's own invoice and are left alone, as are corrections and drafts.
- When you attach your own: pick a receipt from the inbox, or tick "no receipt is coming", and no invoice is made - one document per payment.
- Settings: under Settings, "Invoices for payments you record by hand" holds the on/off switch, the letters the number starts with and your address as it should appear. Your business name and VAT number come from "Your business" above it. Fill in the address, or the invoice has none.
- If it could not be made (no file storage, no browser to print with), the payment is still saved and says so. The entry has a "Make the invoice" button that tries again under the same number, so a failure never leaves a gap in the run. It is also how you make one for a payment recorded before this existed.
If this site also runs the Shop module and you have switched invoicing on there, every invoice the shop raises arrives here on its own, as income, itemised. Nobody types a sale in twice, and the figures are the ones the shop actually charged rather than ones worked out again afterwards.
Itemised means itemised. The entry lists what was on the invoice - each product with its quantity and stock code, and delivery as a line of its own - each one with its own "what it was for" and its own VAT rate, exactly as if you had typed it. An entry always comes to the penny what the invoice came to; where the shop cannot break something down that far, that part is filed by VAT rate instead. Older shops that do not send the detail yet are filed by VAT rate throughout, which is what everything did before, and nothing is lost by it.
Settings → Bookkeeping → Sales from elsewhere on this site is where you say what happens to them:
- Take sales handed over automatically. On to start with. Switch it off if you also bring the same money in from a bank statement, because counting a sale twice makes a wrong return rather than an untidy one.
- File them under. Sales and turnover unless you say otherwise. Any income category you have made will do.
- Record them as. Records straight away, or drafts for somebody to look at before they count towards a return.
Each sale is recorded once and once only, against its invoice number, so the shop can hand the same invoice over twice without it landing twice.
The invoice comes with it. The shop's own PDF is filed against the entry as evidence, in Media under Bookkeeping with the rest of your receipts, so the document behind a sale is a click away when somebody asks. If it could not be printed at the time, the shop's order screen says so and its "send to the books again" button files it later.
A voided invoice takes its sale back out. When the shop withdraws an invoice, the entry here goes with it - removed outright if the VAT return it belongs to is still open, since it was never a sale. If that return has already been filed, or the money has been matched to a bank line, the entry stays where it is and a reversing entry is recorded in the open period instead: that is a credit note, and it is the only way a filed return is ever put right. Nothing is quietly rewritten either way, and both are in the audit trail.
A refund credits part of it back. When the shop refunds something it raises a credit note, and that arrives here too. It is not treated as a void: the sale stood, most of it still stands, and nothing about it was wrong - what has changed is that some of the money has gone back, so that part is no longer turnover and the VAT inside it is no longer owed. The original entry stays exactly where it is and the credit is recorded against it, dated the day the money went back rather than the day of the sale, so a return you have already filed is never reopened. The rates are the ones the shop charged on the lines that were refunded, which on a mixed basket is not a proportion of anything - handing back the zero-rated half of an order and the standard-rated half are the same money and completely different VAT.
A credit note is itemised the same way the sale is: the entry names the things that were handed back, each as a negative line, rather than one lump per rate.
The credit note's own PDF is filed against it as evidence, and each one is recorded once and once only against its credit note number.
The one thing this refuses is crediting an invoice that was never handed over - if the sale is not here, there is nothing to correct, and filing the credit on its own would push turnover below what was actually sold. The shop's order screen says so and points you at its own "send to the books again" button for the invoice first.
Two things worth knowing. A sale dated inside a VAT period you have already filed cannot be posted - it would sit in a return nobody recomputes - so it is saved as a draft instead and left for you to put right as a correction in the open period. And a zero-rated sale is filed as zero-rated rather than exempt or outside the scope of VAT: all three carry no VAT, but only the shop's own tax table knows which it meant, and it only records the rate. If you sell something genuinely outside the scope, record that one by hand.
The same arrangement in the other direction. If this site also runs the Purchase Orders module, approving a supplier's invoice there files it here as an expense on its own - one line per line on their invoice, each under the category and VAT treatment somebody chose while checking it against the delivery. Nobody keys a purchase in twice.
There is nothing to switch on and nothing to set up. It appears when both modules are installed and does nothing at all when they are not, and the switch that governs it - Put approved bills straight into the books - lives with the rest of the purchasing settings, since that is where the person doing the buying looks.
The invoice comes with it, as a link to the file already in your media library rather than a second copy of it. One document, in one place, and the purchasing module's own housekeeping knows it is spoken for.
The VAT is the VAT on their invoice. A supplier who rounds line by line where the software rounds once lands a penny or two out on a long invoice, and the figure in your accounts has to be the one on the document anybody would be shown. Where an invoice says reverse charge applies, no VAT goes on the line at all: the rate is carried across and the return works the notional figure out from it, which is what puts the same amount in box 1 and box 4.
Withdrawing a bill takes the purchase back out. Exactly as a voided sale does: removed outright while the return it belongs to is still open, and reversed in the open period once that return has been filed or the money has been matched to a bank line.
A supplier credit reduces what you spent. When goods go back and the credit arrives, the expense and the input VAT come off, dated the day the credit arrived. Unlike a sales credit note, this does not insist the purchase is already here - goods often go back long before the invoice turns up, and the credit is real either way. Where the purchasing module can point at exactly one posted invoice for that order, the entry corrects it; otherwise it stands on its own.
Each bill and each credit is recorded once and once only, and anything refused here comes back in plain words on the bill itself, with a button to try again.
First, tell it where your money sits. Settings → Bookkeeping → Bank accounts is where you add your current account, your card, or petty cash. A statement is imported against an account, so there has to be one before anything can come in.
Then Bookkeeping → Bank statements, and press Import a statement in the top right. Drop a statement anywhere on the card, or choose it.
A PDF works as well as a CSV. Download the statement from your online banking as either and it will be read: the table is found by looking at where the columns sit on the page, the same way you would, so a bank we have never seen still works. What will not work is a photograph or a scan of a paper statement - there is no text in one of those to read, and it will say so rather than guessing. Password-protected PDFs are refused too; save an unprotected copy and import that.
Where the statement prints its own totals, they are checked against what was read and shown back to you before anything is written: if the statement says £261.95 went out and we only found £185.46, a line was missed and you will see that on the screen rather than at the year end. The running balance down the right-hand side is checked line by line for the same reason.
Then you look at what was read and bring it in. You are not asked what any of it was for at this point. Saying that about two hundred lines, in one sitting, before a single one of them is saved, is the job nobody finishes - and an import abandoned halfway has kept nothing at all. So importing keeps the bank's lines, exactly as the bank wrote them, and hands over to Reconcile, where they can be explained a few at a time, in any order, and in bulk where they are alike.
Anything already brought in from an earlier statement is recognised and left alone, so importing an overlapping range does not create January twice. The screen says how many that is before you commit to anything.
The statement itself is kept. Not just the lines read out of it: the file
goes into your media library under the month it covers, named after the account -
Bookkeeping / 2026 / 08 / Bank Statements / Tide Current Account.pdf. "Show me
the statement that line came off" is the first thing anybody asks when a figure
looks odd, and HMRC expect the records kept for six years. If your site has no
file storage set up yet the lines still come in; it simply tells you no copy was
kept.
Importing the same period again brings that statement up to date. Banks reissue statements, corrections turn up, and an export taken too early is missing the last few days. So when a file covers a period you already have, the screen says which statement it is, when it came in, and how many lines it holds, and offers to update it - which is what it does unless you untick the box:
- Anything new in the file is added.
- Anything the old version had that the new one does not is dropped.
- Except a line you have already explained or deliberately set aside. That stays exactly where it is, and the screen tells you how many did.
- The new file becomes the copy that is kept.
Untick the box only if it genuinely is a different statement for the same dates. Two statements claiming the same month is how a set of books ends up with two answers to one question.
Bookkeeping → Bank statements is the list of every statement you have brought in, newest period first. It answers the question the books could not answer before: which months you actually hold, for which account.
That matters more than it sounds. A month nobody ever imported looks exactly like a month with nothing in it - right up until the year end, when it turns out six weeks of takings were never in the books at all. Reading down the periods column and finding a gap takes a moment.
Each row shows the period it covers, the account, what went in and out, the closing balance the statement declared, how many lines it holds and how many of them you have yet to explain (a link straight to Reconcile), and the file itself. Click the filename to open it; there is a Download link beside it.
Statements imported before this feature existed have no file, and there is nothing to fetch one back from - the bytes were never kept. Those rows say No copy kept, and there is a tick box at the top to show only those, so you can work through them. To fix one, import the same file again: the period matches, so it offers to bring that statement up to date, every line is already there so nothing is recorded twice, and the file is kept this time.
If you have more than one bank account there is a filter at the top to show one at a time.
Bookkeeping → Reconcile is the question "does what the bank says match what the books say", and it is worth asking every month rather than every year.
The statement lines are kept exactly as the bank wrote them - that is the point, because once the bank's version has been thrown away the question cannot be answered. Each one is either ticked off against the entries that explain it, or still open. A line is only ticked off when the entries matched to it account for all of it, to the penny; a line that is half explained stays open and says so, because "£2 of this is unexplained" has a habit of turning out to be a £2,000 typo.
Each line can go three ways, and every one of the three works on one line or on a whole selection at once:
-
Tick it off against an entry you already have. Most lines on most statements are things already recorded - a supplier invoice, a sale - and entering them again is the commonest way a set of books goes wrong. Where something in your books matches on amount to the penny, and on date and name closely enough to be sure, it is offered with the reason it was offered, so you can disagree. Where two entries are equally plausible, nothing is offered at all: a wrong match looks explained, so nobody ever looks at it again.
-
Say which invoice it was. If the receipt is already sitting in Receipts, it is offered here with a paperclip beside it, and why it was offered. Press That is the invoice and the entry is written for you: the amount and the date paid from the bank, and the supplier, the invoice number, the invoice date and the VAT from the invoice itself. The VAT is taken exactly as your supplier printed it rather than worked out again from a rate - their rounding is the record, and they have already told us. The receipt ends up attached to the entry it paid for. You still say what it was for, because that is the one thing neither the bank nor the invoice knows. If the right receipt is in the pile but was not offered - a part payment, a photograph, an invoice dated months from the payment - Pick a receipt shows you the whole pile to choose from.
-
Record it as a new entry. The date, the name, the reference and the amount come straight off the bank's own line, so the only thing to supply is what it was for. The category comes pre-picked from what you filed that name under last time. Entries are recorded properly unless you tick Leave them for review, in which case they go in as drafts and reach no VAT return until you post them.
-
Tick it off against a transfer. Where the line is one half of a movement between two accounts you own, and you have recorded that transfer, it is offered here with an arrow beside it and which end it is - the money leaving, or the money arriving. One transfer accounts for exactly two statement lines, one on each account, so once an end has been ticked off it is not offered against anything else.
-
Set it aside. For the lines that genuinely need no entry - one the bank itself printed twice and then corrected - with a note saying why, because "why is this one ignored" is the question somebody will ask in a year.
Setting a transfer aside is not the same as recording it. It clears the line off the list and moves nothing, so both account balances stay wrong by the amount. If the line is money moving between your own accounts, record the transfer (Money in or out → Internal transfer) and tick both lines off against it instead.
An invoice is only offered where it means something. Its total has to be this payment to the penny, or the name has to be an unmistakable match, and never neither - the same rule as for entries, and for the same reason. A suggestion that is wrong and plausible is worse than none at all, because it looks explained and nobody looks again. A photograph nothing could be read off is therefore not offered against anything until you have told it who it is from.
Ticking a line off fills in two things on the entries behind it. The date it was paid, and which account it was paid from - both taken from the bank's own line, and both only where the entry does not already say. A date you typed yourself is never overwritten. This matters because an entry with no paid date still shows as owed to the supplier however green the statement line looks, and on cash accounting its VAT stays out of your return until it says it was paid.
Deleting an entry puts its statement line back on the pile. The line goes back to unexplained rather than staying ticked off against something that no longer exists. If you need to undo a match without deleting anything, open the line and use Not that one beside the entry.
Some suppliers you pay in advance only ever show you a balance on a web page. There is no statement to import, so there is nothing to tick off. The check is smaller: type in the balance they show and see whether the books say the same.
Open Reconcile and pick the account. Any account of the cash kind gets a Balance check panel above the statement lines. It shows:
- According to the books - what the account holds on the date you choose (today, unless you change it). Its opening balance, plus the top-ups moved in, less the bills paid from it.
- According to the supplier - the box you type their figure into.
- Difference - Agrees in green, or the amount you are out by, with a line saying which way to look. If the supplier shows less than the books, something recorded never reached them. If it shows more, a top-up has not been recorded.
Save this check keeps a note of what was compared, on which date and by whom, with an optional note of your own. The last one is shown beneath the panel. It moves no money and reaches no report; it is a record that someone looked.
This is how bills paid from the account get reconciled. A bill taken out of a prepaid balance has no statement line to tick off. When you save a check that agrees, every entry paid from that account, paid on or before the check's date, is covered by it, and stops being counted as an entry with no statement line behind it. A check that is out by anything covers nothing, because the gap could be any of them. The panel tells you how many entries are still waiting for a check.
A bill paid from one account is also no longer offered against another account's statement lines, including under It paid several invoices. A fold-out under it lists the latest movements in the account, which is usually enough to find the one that is missing.
A cash account that does have statements (an advertising account that emails one each month) shows the same panel above its statement lines, as a cross-check. Bank and card accounts do not get it; their statement balance is the check.
A card processor does not pay you what you invoiced. GoCardless and Square batch a day's takings into one payout, take their cut out of the middle of it, and net off any refunds as well. So a single line of £201.85 is two invoices worth £215.00, less a £10.00 refund, less £3.15 of fees - and it matches nothing, to the penny, because there is nothing to match.
Nothing is offered for a line like that, on purpose. Press It paid several invoices on the line and pick the ones it covers. A running total sits underneath: what you have picked, what actually arrived, and the difference between them. Say what the difference was - Bank and card charges, already chosen for you - and settle it.
What that does is record the fee as the expense it actually is: on the right category, deductible, and visible in your accounts, rather than quietly lost by matching an invoice at the wrong amount. Merchant fees are exempt from VAT rather than zero rated, so that is what is filled in.
Refunds netted off a payout come out as a minus in the list, because that is how the bank saw it. Tick one and it pulls the total down.
One invoice, paid in two goes. A customer who pays half now and half on delivery, or splits the bill across two cards, leaves you one invoice and two payouts. Press It paid several invoices on the first payout, tick the invoice, and change the amount beside it to what that payout covered - the whole unpaid amount is filled in to start with, so the ordinary case needs nothing typed. The rest stays unpaid on the invoice, and the second payout offers exactly that much of it and no more. A fee on either payout is the difference, as usual. An amount of nothing, or more than is still unpaid, is refused before anything is written.
The invoice counts as paid on the date of the first payout. The books keep one payment date per entry, and the earlier one is the safe side for VAT on cash accounting: it is never declared late, only early. If the two payouts land either side of the end of a VAT quarter, that is worth a word with your accountant.
Nothing is guessed about which invoices make up a payout. Working that out from the total is the kind of arithmetic a machine is confidently wrong at, and a confidently wrong reconciliation is worse than none. If the picked entries and the difference do not add up to the line exactly, nothing at all is written - you get told, and the line is left as it was.
Doing a lot of them at once. This is the point of the Find box. Type part of what the bank prints on your director's loan payments, tick the ones that come back (or tick the box in the table header to take the lot), choose the category once, and record them all in one go. The same works for a year of the same subscription, or a run of internal transfers to set aside together.
If one line in a selection will not take what you chose - it is money in and the category is for money out, or its date falls inside a VAT return you have already filed - it comes back named, with the reason, beside the count of the ones that went through. One awkward line never strands the other thirty-nine, and it is never quietly skipped either.
The top of the screen shows where you stand: what the bank last said the account held, how many lines nobody has explained, and how much they come to. It also tells you the other way round: entries in your books with no statement line behind them at all, which usually means the statement they belong to has not been imported yet.
Bookkeeping → Journals is for the entries that are not money moving.
The one exception listed here is a transfer between two accounts you own, which is money moving and is a journal all the same - two sides that cancel out, no category, no VAT. It is recorded on the entry form rather than here (see Recording entries above), and here it is marked "between your own accounts" with Open the transfer rather than the ordinary editing buttons: its two sides have to keep pointing at the two accounts named on it, and the general journal editor has no way of knowing that. Depreciation. A cost that belongs in this year but will not be billed until next. A bill paid in advance, part of which belongs to next year. Something posted against the wrong thing. Money a director put in or took out other than through the bank.
A journal has two sides and they have to add up - the database refuses a posted one that does not, and says how many pounds apart the two sides are. There are starting points for the handful most small companies actually need, which fill in the wording and the two accounts and leave the amounts and the date to you.
A journal never touches a VAT return. Nothing posted here reaches any of the nine boxes, under either scheme. Anything with VAT on it is a purchase or a sale and belongs under Entries, where the VAT return can see it. That is not a gap to be filled in later: "you never type a VAT box figure" is the promise the whole thing rests on, and a journal that could reach box 1 would be exactly such a figure.
Once posted, a journal is put right by reversing it rather than by editing it - the same lines the other way round, on a date you choose. Both stay on the record, which is what an accountant expects to see.
Bookkeeping → Director's loan keeps track of money you have put into the company and money you have taken out that is not wages and not a dividend.
Two things move it, and both show on the one statement: transfers between you and the company on a bank statement, coded to the director's loan category, and journals posted to the loan account.
It is stated in words rather than in plus and minus signs, because which way round it is matters rather a lot:
- The company owes you. The harmless direction. It can pay you back whenever it has the money, and there is no tax on doing so.
- You owe the company. The direction worth watching. If you still owe it at the company's year end and have not repaid it within nine months and a day, the company pays tax on it under section 455 and only gets that back once the loan is repaid. Owing more than £10,000 at any point in the year can also be a benefit in kind.
The screen shows where the account stood at your last year end and what the dates mean, so it is a question you get asked in good time rather than one your accountant raises when it is too late to do anything. It is a summary of your position and not tax advice - check it with your accountant, whose job that is.
Set your year end under Settings → Bookkeeping, since that is what the year-end position is worked out against.
Bookkeeping → Reports has six tabs sharing one set of dates at the top, so you can move between them without losing your place.
- Profit and loss. What you took, what it cost, and what was left, in the order a set of company accounts puts them: turnover less cost of sales gives gross profit, less the overheads gives operating profit, then the bits that are not trading, then the tax. The same period a year earlier sits in the column beside it, because "is that good?" is a question about last year.
- Balance sheet. What the business owns, what it owes, and what is left over as at the end of your dates. If it ever does not balance it says so, in red, and tells you by how much - both sides come from the same entries, so that can only happen if something has been changed in the database directly.
- Trial balance. Every account with anything in it, debits one side, credits the other, and the two totals that should agree. Mostly of interest to your accountant, and the first thing they will ask for.
- Account history. Every single thing that went to one account, oldest first, with a running balance. You can get here by clicking any figure on the profit and loss account, the balance sheet or the trial balance, which is usually how the question "why is that number that?" gets answered.
- Who owes what. Customers who have not paid you and suppliers you have not paid, in age brackets, oldest at the top. Anything with no paid date against it counts as outstanding.
- Take a copy. Spreadsheet files of everything, one per kind of record.
All of it is worked out from your entries and journals together, so a depreciation charge or a year-end adjustment shows up in exactly the same place a receipt does.
Bookkeeping → Assets is for anything the business bought that it will still have next year: a van, computers, machinery, furniture. Two entirely separate things follow from owning one, and this screen handles both from a single entry.
For your accounts, the cost gets spread over the years you use the thing for, which is called depreciation. You choose whether that is the same amount every year or a percentage of what is left, and at what rate - a quarter a year over four years is the usual sort of answer for equipment. Then run the depreciation for a period and it posts the lot as one journal. It only charges for the days you actually owned the thing, so a van bought in the last week of the year gets a week's worth rather than a year's, and it will not charge the same period twice.
For your tax, the taxman ignores depreciation completely and gives capital allowances instead, on his own rules - which in the first year are usually a good deal more generous. What you have to tell it is which sort of allowance the thing qualifies for. The six choices are spelled out on the screen with the case for picking each one, rather than hidden in a dropdown of phrases you would have to already understand: pick one, and only one. If you are not sure, the annual investment allowance is the right answer for most things most of the time. Cars are the big exception: they always go in the special rate pool, whatever they cost.
Purchases waiting to be finished off. Anything you ticked as an asset when you recorded it appears in a panel at the top of this screen, with what it cost and who you bought it from already filled in from the receipt. All that is left is how to spread the cost and which allowances it qualifies for. Until you do that it sits there doing nothing at all: it is not depreciated and it claims nothing, because both of those are your judgement to make and the site will not make one up on your behalf. The count also shows on the overview page under "Waiting on you", which is the bit people actually look at. If you ticked something by mistake, "Not an asset after all" removes it and leaves the entry itself untouched.
When you sell something, say so on this screen. That takes it out of the allowances pool, which is what the tax computation needs to know. The money coming in is an ordinary entry and should be recorded as one as well.
Bookkeeping → Year end is where you tell it what your financial years are. A financial year is not the same thing as a VAT quarter and does not have to line up with one: the VAT quarter decides what goes on a return, the financial year decides what goes on a set of accounts and on your company tax return.
Add a year and it fills the dates in for you from the year end in your settings and the last year on the books. Pick one and you get the profit it made, the balance sheet at the end of it, and exactly what closing it would post, before you close anything.
Closing a year does two things. It moves every income and cost balance into retained profit, so the new year starts from zero and last year's profit shows on the balance sheet where it belongs. And it freezes the year: nothing dated inside it can be added, changed or removed.
That freeze is not the same as the one on a filed VAT return. A filed return is something you have told HMRC and its entries are locked permanently. A closed year is a decision you made and can unmake - your accountant finding something in March that belongs to the year to December is completely ordinary, and the answer is to reopen the year, post it, and close it again. Reopening takes the closing journal back out with it.
Years close oldest first, for the sensible reason that the profit carried forward into a later year depends on the earlier one being right.
Bookkeeping → Corporation tax works out what your company owes and gives you every figure the company tax return asks for, with the box number beside it.
Start a computation for a financial year and it works down the page the way an accountant would:
- The profit in your accounts, before tax.
- Things added back. Depreciation comes back on in full, because capital allowances replace it. So does client entertaining, because it is simply not allowed. Both of those happen on their own from what your accounts already say. Anything else - a fine, a bit of a bill that was really personal - you add as a named adjustment with a reason, and it appears on the computation under that name.
- Things taken out of the trade. Bank interest and rent are taxed under their own headings rather than as part of your trade, so they come out here and go back in further down.
- Capital allowances, worked out from your asset register: the annual investment allowance, full expensing, and what is written down off each pool.
- Losses brought forward from earlier years, used against this year's profit.
- The rates. Under £50,000 of profit you pay 19%. Over £250,000 you pay 25%. Between the two you pay 25% less marginal relief, which works out somewhere in between. If your financial year straddles the 1st of April the two halves are worked out separately at their own rates, and both are shown.
The one thing worth being careful about is associated companies. If the same people control another company - even a dormant one that has never traded - those two thresholds are shared between you, so £50,000 becomes £25,000 and tax starts biting a good deal sooner. The module cannot know about the other company, so it asks. Getting it wrong is the single most common way a small company's corporation tax comes out wrong.
A period of account longer than twelve months is two tax periods, not one, and the module splits it for you. That happens to most companies in their first year and to anyone who has moved their year end. It means two returns, and missing the second one is how a penalty turns up for a return nobody knew about.
Expand the boxes to copy onto the return at the bottom for the list, box number by box number. Mark the computation finished when you are happy with it and the workings freeze, so a computation you printed in June still reads the same in November.
It does not file it, and it says so on the screen. The last step is yours or your accountant's.
Some things are deliberately left out rather than half done: research and development relief, patent box, group relief, ring fence trades, Northern Ireland rates, loans to participators, structures and buildings allowance. Each of those is a specialism with its own extra pages, and a half-answer would look like an answer. You can still put any of them on the computation as a named adjustment, which records the figure with your reason beside it and leaves the working out to whoever knows it. As with everything else here, this is a computation and not tax advice - check it with your accountant, whose job that is.
Short and honest: Cactus is open source and you host it yourself, so we cannot ship a shared key. HMRC issues credentials to the business that runs the software, and that is you rather than us.
It is about ten minutes of forms, then a wait. Do it well before a return is due.
Register at HMRC's developer portal. You will get a confirmation email; click the link in it, set a password, and you land on an applications list which is empty.
Create an application and name it after your site. Subscribe it to VAT (MTD), version 1.0, and to Test Fraud Prevention Headers - the first is the API this module files through, the second is what lets the settings tab ask HMRC to check the details we send before you apply for production access.
You will be given a Client ID and a Client Secret. The secret is shown once. Copy it somewhere safe before you leave the page; if you lose it you can issue a new one, but you cannot see the old one again.
HMRC needs to know exactly where to send people back to after they sign in. Register this, exactly:
https://<your-domain>/api/m/uk-bookkeeping/hmrc/callback
The settings tab prints the correct one for your site with a copy button next to
it. Use that rather than typing it: a trailing slash, or www. where you have
none, is enough for HMRC to refuse the connection with a message that will not
tell you why.
It does not contain your admin address, on purpose. Rename that whenever you like and this keeps working.
Paste the client ID and client secret into Settings → Bookkeeping, in the
HMRC card - the same numbered steps are printed there, with links to the
Developer Hub pages they happen on. Saving stores them with the site's other
credentials (they are environment variables, HMRC_CLIENT_ID and
HMRC_CLIENT_SECRET, managed exactly like the rest); they take hold on the
next deployment, which the site will prompt you for. Storing them needs a site
administrator - the form saves through the same door as every other credential.
Running locally, environment variables come from .env.local instead: set the
two names above and restart the dev server.
Never paste them into a page, an email or a support ticket. They are not stored in your site's database and they are never shown back to you anywhere in the admin. If a secret leaks, revoke it on the Developer Hub and issue a new one.
HMRC runs a practice service - a complete copy of the real thing that files nothing. Create a test user on the Developer Hub and it hands you a fake Government Gateway login and a fake VAT number.
Leave the environment set to the practice service in Settings, connect, fetch your obligations, and file a test return. An amber banner sits across every bookkeeping page while you are in practice mode, and it will not go away until you switch. That is deliberate: the one genuinely dangerous thing this software could let you do is believe you have filed when you have filed against a test service.
Once you are happy, apply for production credentials on the Developer Hub. They will ask what your software does, want a demonstration, and want evidence that you send fraud prevention headers correctly - which this module does on every single call, and keeps a record of.
HMRC take up to ten working days, and they do come back with questions. Do not leave this to the week your return is due.
Before you apply, use Have HMRC check the details we send in Settings → Bookkeeping. HMRC run a checker for exactly this, and it answers in seconds rather than in ten working days. It only works against the practice service, which is where you should be at this point anyway. A clean result is worth screenshotting for the application.
Their checker asks for the network port your browser opened its connection from. On the sort of hosting a Cactus site runs on, that connection is answered at an edge close to you and only your network address is passed on to the site itself; the port stops there and never arrives. The module sends it on hosting that does pass it through, and leaves it out rather than making one up on hosting that does not.
HMRC allow for this and ask to be told why. Say this in your application:
Our software runs as a web application behind a hosted edge network. The end user's TCP connection is terminated at the edge and only the client's public IP address is forwarded to our application; the client's source port is not available to us at any point. We therefore cannot populate Gov-Client-Public-Port. Every other header for the WEB_APP_VIA_SERVER connection method is sent.
Everything else on their list, including the licence identifier they ask software to declare, is sent on every call. Your licence identifier is generated once for your site and never leaves your own database - only a one-way scramble of it goes to HMRC, which is what they ask for.
Once your sandbox credentials are in and you have a test user, work through this in order. Each step proves the one after it is worth attempting.
- Connect. Settings → Bookkeeping → Connect to HMRC. Sign in as your test user. You should land back on the settings page with the connection showing as live and the test user's VAT number beside it.
- Check the details we send. The button described above. Aim for no errors; warnings about values a website cannot see are expected and fine.
- Fetch your obligations. Bookkeeping → VAT returns → Refresh from HMRC. Periods should appear with real due dates. If nothing arrives, the VAT number is the first thing to check.
- Record something in the earliest open period, with a receipt attached.
- Finalise it and look at the nine boxes. Expand a couple and check the entries listed are the ones you expect.
- File it. You should get a reference number back and an email receipt.
- Try to edit the entry you just filed. It should refuse, and offer you a correction instead. If it lets you, stop and report it - that is the one thing this software must never do.
- Post that correction and confirm it lands on the next period rather than the one you just filed.
Steps 1, 3, 6 and 7 are the ones worth repeating after any update.
Room for more than one go. In the practice service, refreshing from HMRC asks for HMRC's test quarters from 2017 and 2018 rather than their usual single one, and says next to "Last checked" how many periods HMRC listed and how many were new. The practice service remembers nothing, but this module locks a period once it is filed - so with a single quarter, one test filing would have used it up for good. Each fresh round of testing (HMRC's approvals team only look at the last 30 days) files the next quarter along.
What you owe and what you have paid (the button on the VAT returns page) shows an empty list in the practice service. That is HMRC's practice answer of "nothing on record", and it is a perfectly good test that the calls work.
Add the production Client ID and Secret to your hosting environment variables and redeploy. Switch the environment setting to the real service, then reconnect - production credentials mean a fresh sign-in, the practice connection does not carry over.
Check the amber banner has gone, and that the VAT number and the obligations you can see are your real ones.
Open Bookkeeping → VAT returns and pick a period. You will see all nine boxes, and you can expand any of them to see exactly which entries made that number and click through to each one.
- Finalise. This freezes the figures and takes a copy of the workings. You can still reopen it.
- Send it to HMRC. You will be shown HMRC's declaration - that the information is true and complete - and asked to agree before anything moves. Then the figures are worked out again and compared with what you froze. Any difference at all stops the submission and tells you which figures moved - so what goes to HMRC is provably what you approved.
- Keep the receipt. HMRC give you a reference number, which is stored on the period, and we email you a copy.
The VAT returns page can also show Money with HMRC: what HMRC says is owed and the payments it has received over the last year. Their figures, shown beside yours for comparison - never merged with them.
That email is worth keeping. As well as the figures, it carries a records fingerprint - a short code worked out from every entry behind the return. It only stays the same for as long as those entries do. Sitting in your inbox, where this software cannot reach it, it is what would catch anyone quietly rewriting your history later.
Filed it somewhere else? Use "I filed this somewhere else" instead. It records the fact and locks the entries exactly as if it had gone from here, which keeps your books honest even if production access never arrives.
Once a return is filed, everything on it locks and stays locked. There is no undo, by design, and it is enforced deep enough that no amount of clicking will get round it.
Corrections are new entries in your current period. Open the locked entry, press Post a correction, and record what should have happened; it lands on the current return and is linked back to the original.
HMRC let you put a mistake right on your next return when the net value of your errors is £10,000 or less, or is between £10,000 and £50,000 and no more than 1% of your box 6 sales figure. Above that they want telling separately, through their online error correction service. The VAT returns page keeps a running total of your corrections and tells you which side of the line you are on. Those thresholds are settings rather than fixed numbers, so if HMRC change them it is a quick edit rather than waiting for an update.
HMRC expect six years. Two things follow.
Your receipts are never tidied away. The media clean-up that offers to remove unused files knows these are in use and leaves them alone. It also does not matter if somebody deletes one from the media library by hand - the download still works.
Take copies. Under Reports there are spreadsheet exports of everything: entries, their lines, the evidence list, your journals and their lines, the ledger accounts, the bank statement lines as the bank wrote them, what each one was matched to, VAT periods, the frozen figures and workings of every filed return, the log of every call made to HMRC, and the full history log. Worth doing at year end, and the thing to do before you ever remove this module from your site - removing it takes its tables with it.
Reports also show a month-by-month view of the range - money in, money out, profit and the VAT position for each month - alongside the profit and loss.
"Your HMRC connection has expired." Connections last around eighteen months and then need renewing. Go to Settings → Bookkeeping and press Reconnect. Everything except filing carries on working meanwhile. You will also see this straight after restoring a backup onto a different site, which is expected - reconnect and carry on.
No obligations come back. Either HMRC genuinely has nothing outstanding for that VAT number, or the VAT number is wrong, or the Government Gateway account you connected is not the one authorised for it. Check the number first.
HMRC refused the return. Their own message is shown, along with a reference number they will ask for if you ring them. The period stays finalised and nothing has been filed, so nothing is lost - fix what they are complaining about and try again.
"HMRC says this period has already been filed." Usually an earlier attempt reached them and the answer never got back to us. Press Check with HMRC: it asks what they are holding, and if it matches your figures exactly it tidies the record up here without sending anything again. If it does not match, it says so and changes nothing - that one needs a phone call rather than another button.
"Your records are not being protected." A red banner meaning the safeguards that stop a filed return being edited are missing or switched off in your database. Redeploying your site puts them back. Until then, treat anything filed as unprotected, and if you did not switch them off yourself, find out who did.
"There is no readable text in that PDF." The statement is a scan or a photograph of a paper one rather than a file downloaded from your online banking. There is nothing in it to read, so it is refused rather than guessed at. Download the statement itself from your bank, as a PDF or a CSV, and import that.
"That PDF is password protected." Some banks send statements locked. Open it, save an unprotected copy, and import the copy.
"We could not find a table of transactions in that PDF." Usually the file is a summary, a certificate of balance, or an annual statement of interest rather than the statement itself. If it genuinely is a statement, import the CSV version instead and say so - an unusual layout is worth knowing about.
The statement totals do not agree with what was read. The import says so before writing anything. Check the lines on the screen against the PDF: it means a line was missed or a column was read wrongly. Importing the CSV from the same bank is the quick way past it.
"3 lines were left alone" after coding a batch. Every line that would not take what you chose is named underneath, with the reason. Usually one of three things: it is money in and the category is for money out (or the other way round), its date falls inside a VAT return you have already filed, or it was already explained. Deal with those few by hand; the rest went through.
A card payout matches nothing at all. Expected: it is several invoices less the processor's cut, so it equals none of them. Use It paid several invoices on the line - see the section above.
"Those entries and that difference do not add up to this line." The picked entries plus the difference did not come to what arrived, so nothing was written. Usually one of the entries is already partly matched to something else. Open it and look at what is already tied to it.
"Nothing in the books is a sure enough match for this one." Either there is genuinely nothing recorded for that amount, or there are two entries that fit equally well and guessing between them would do damage. Pick the right one yourself from the list on the line, or record a new entry from it.
"This journal does not balance." The two sides have to add up to the same figure, and the message says how far apart they are. Save it as a draft if it is half typed - a draft can sit unbalanced for as long as you like.
A journal will not let you edit it. Once posted it is put right by reversing it, not by editing it, so both what was posted and what took it back stay on the record. The Reverse button does the whole thing for you.
A receipt will not upload. PDFs, JPEGs, PNGs and WebP up to 15 MB. iPhone
photos in HEIC format are refused with instructions - share the photo as a JPEG,
or set Camera to Most Compatible. Files are checked against their actual contents
rather than their name, so something renamed to .pdf is turned away.
"That date falls in a VAT period already filed." Exactly what it says. Record it in the current period as a correction instead; the button to do that is right there. On cash accounting the same applies to the date the money moved, not just the invoice date - a payment cannot land inside a return that has already gone.
"The scheme cannot simply be flipped." Changing between standard and cash accounting is refused while an open VAT period already holds entries, because the changeover affects which return those entries land on. File the open period first, then change the scheme; periods that are still empty follow the new setting on their own.
The connection drops mid-filing. If the line goes down while HMRC is being called, the page says so plainly and offers Check with HMRC - which asks what they are holding without sending anything again. Use that rather than pressing submit twice.