VAT is the tax most likely to bite an otherwise well-run business. The rules are not new, but they shift at the edges every year — and the consequences of getting them wrong are immediate. This is the working checklist we run before any quarterly return leaves the practice.
Before you start
Confirm three things up front: your VAT registration is live, your quarterly accounting period is correctly set, and your scheme (standard, flat-rate, cash, or annual) is still the right fit. Scheme efficiency rarely makes the news, but it's the easiest place to find money.
During the period
- Tag every transaction with the right VAT code at the point of posting — not at quarter-end.
- Review supplier invoices for valid VAT numbers and proper rates.
- Flag any sales subject to reverse charge (construction, certain digital services).
- Reconcile bank, credit-card, and merchant accounts at least weekly.
- Keep digital copies of every receipt — Hubdoc and Dext both make this trivial.
Pre-submission review
A pre-submission review is non-negotiable. We expect to find one or two adjustments on every return — not because anyone has been careless, but because category errors compound silently across hundreds of transactions.
- Run a VAT Audit Report and scan for outliers.
- Reconcile output VAT to the sales ledger and input VAT to purchases.
- Confirm partial-exemption calculations if you have any exempt income.
- Check the carry-forward of any prior-period adjustments.
- Review reverse-charge entries against the corresponding sales / purchases.
Submission and beyond
Submit through your MTD-compatible bridging or direct filing. Save the HMRC acknowledgement, the working papers, and the supporting reports together — six years of retention is the minimum, and a well-organised audit trail saves enormous time if HMRC ever does come calling.
If anything in this checklist is unfamiliar, the safest thing is a quick call before you file. We routinely review returns prepared by clients in-house and have never not found at least something worth correcting.
