Keeping digital records

Making Tax Digital requires the figures in your VAT return to come from digital records through a digital link, not from someone retyping totals. In VATflow that means the nine boxes are always calculated from records you entered or imported. There is no screen where you type the box totals by hand.

HMRC explains what to keep and for how long in its guidance: keep digital records for Making Tax Digital for VAT (opens GOV.UK) and VAT Notice 700/22 (opens GOV.UK). Records must be kept for at least 6 years.

• Enter transactions in VATflow. Open the period, choose Enter transactions in VATflow, and add each sale or purchase with its date, description, net amount and VAT. The boxes update as you go.
• Import the record-keeping spreadsheet. Download the Excel template, list sales and purchases on their own tabs, and upload it. VATflow derives the nine boxes from the lines.
• Import a CSV from your own software. Export transactions from your bookkeeping or till software and map its columns to VATflow’s once. VATflow remembers the mapping for the next period.

Each line needs a date inside the VAT period, whether it is a sale or a purchase, the net amount and the VAT amount. Amounts are in pounds and pence. VATflow keeps a history of every change and deletion, so a line you remove is still recorded as removed.

A period with figures already uploaded as a 9-box file cannot also have individual lines. Clear the import first if you want to switch method.

Download it from the dashboard (Download Excel Template) or from the prepare page. It has these tabs:

• Sales and Purchases: one transaction per row.
• VAT_Return: the nine boxes, calculated from the other tabs. Do not type into it.
• Instructions: what each column means and the rules for Flat Rate Scheme businesses.

Keep every amount in its own cell and leave the column headings as they are. That is what lets VATflow read the file without asking you to map anything.

Upload the CSV on the prepare page. The first time, VATflow asks you to say which of your columns holds each of these:

• Transaction date, and the date format your software uses (for example DD/MM/YYYY).
• Direction: sale or purchase.
• Net amount and VAT amount.
• Optional: description, treatment (domestic or EU), and the Flat Rate Scheme flags for relevant goods and capital assets.

Dates must fall inside the period you are preparing. Amounts can have at most two decimal places and cannot be negative; record a credit note as a purchase or sale in the other direction instead.

Every import can be downloaded again as a CSV in VATflow’s standard layout, the obligations list exports to CSV, and a submitted return can be saved as a PDF. See Preparing and submitting a return.