VAT Report
What the VAT report shows, how the boxes are calculated, what the evidence tabs contain, and what is excluded.
The VAT report is the place to go when the overview totals are no longer enough and you need to see how Work Planner is turning completed sales and expense activity into VAT box figures. It stays read-only, so you can review and export from here without changing any live finance data.
Filters at the Top
- Date range: This controls which completed ledger rows are included. If you change the dates, the box totals, evidence tabs, exclusions, and export all update to match.
- Period: Choose Monthly or Quarterly. The report defaults to quarterly because that suits most VAT reviews, but monthly is useful when you are checking a shorter trading window or investigating a single month.
- Business: The VAT report works on one business at a time. Pick the correct business before reading the totals, especially if your login can move between more than one trading entity.
- Clear filters: This returns the report to its default quarterly view and clears the business override.
Details Tab
The VAT Periods table gives you one row per month or quarter. It is designed to show the path from raw sales and purchases to the VAT position for that period.
- Sales net: Net sales from completed charge rows in the selected period.
- Sales VAT: Output VAT from those same completed charge rows.
- Purchases net: Net purchases from completed expense rows in the selected period.
- Purchases VAT: Input VAT from those expense rows.
- Box 5: The net VAT position after output VAT and input VAT are compared. Work Planner also labels it as payable, reclaimable, or balanced so you do not have to infer the direction yourself.
VAT Summary
- Box 1: Total output VAT on sales.
- Box 4: Total input VAT on purchases.
- Box 5: The overall net VAT position for the report window.
- Excluded rows: A quick count of refund, write-off, tip, adjustment, missed charge, and opening balance rows that are deliberately left out of the VAT boxes shown here.
- Net sales and Net purchases: These line up with Box 6 and Box 7 so you can see the supporting net values as well as the tax amounts.
- Sales gross and Purchases gross: These help you sense-check the VAT totals against the wider gross values they came from.
Boxes 2, 8, and 9 stay at 0.00 in this report because those transaction types are not yet supported in the Work Planner VAT view. That is expected behaviour rather than missing data entry.
Known Exclusions
The report keeps a visible count of excluded rows so you can tell when the VAT position is being shaped by activity outside the supported VAT logic. Refund rows, write-off rows, tip rows, adjustment rows, missed charges, and opening balances are all excluded from the boxes on this screen. Opening balances are left out of the VAT returns and Income Tax updates sent to HMRC too, as they bring over debt or credit from before you used Work Planner.
Sales Evidence and Purchase Evidence
- Sales Evidence: Shows the completed charge rows behind the sales side of the VAT report, including date, source, reference, description, net amount, and VAT amount.
- Purchase Evidence: Shows the completed expense rows behind the purchase side of the report in the same format.
- Search: Each evidence tab has its own search box so you can narrow the list by date, description, reference, or amount without affecting the other tab.
Export Tab
The Export tab downloads the current VAT period data as CSV. It respects the selected date range, period, and business filter, so it is worth checking the top controls before exporting.
What This Report Does Not Do
- It does not post anything: This screen is for review and export only.
- It does not submit to HMRC: There is no filing workflow here.
- It does not recalculate historical rows outside the selected window: If a transaction was entered with the wrong date or amount, you need to correct the underlying finance record and then review the report again.
Related articles
- Reporting Overview: Start there when you want the wider picture before narrowing down to VAT.
- Ledger Report: Useful when you want to inspect broader finance movement around the same period.
- Accounts Overview: Step back here when you want the wider finance summary around the same business.
- Transactions List: Use this when the issue is with the finance rows themselves rather than the report output.