VT Transaction+

If you are VAT registered, you need to submit one VAT return to cover all of your self-employment businesses. Therefore, it is more practical to have all your self-employment businesses in the same VT Transaction+ file.

For income tax, you should only submit quarterly updates for one of the businesses from the file. For the other business(es), export the trial balance to VT Report and submit quarterly updates from there. Instructions are as follows:  

Business A

Submit the quarterly update for Business A in the normal way, shown in Submit a quarterly update.

Business B

1.Create a separate income ledger and a separate expenses ledger for Business B (Set Up > Ledgers > New*)

2.If the file already contains income and expenses accounts for Business B, move them to the new ledgers (Set Up > Accounts > All > [Select the existing account] > Move > [Select the new ledger]). Otherwise, create new accounts for Business B in the new ledgers.

3.Assign the accounts from step 2. to the 'Excluded income' and 'Excluded expenses' tax categories so that they will be excluded from Business A's quarterly updates.

4.When entering income and expenses transactions for Business B, select the ledgers and accounts for Business B from steps 1. and 2.

Export a trial balance to VT Report and submit the quarterly update from there

1.At each quarter-end, export a trial balance to a CSV file (Edit > Export Trial Balance).

2.Import the CSV file to the Bridge from Excel or CSV file template in VT Report as shown in these instructions: VT Report: Import quarterly totals to a blank sheet.

3.The balances for Business B will be at the bottom of the imported trial balance data. Map these balances to the tax categories as shown in the instructions in the link above. The balances for Business A can be ignored. You can then submit the quarterly update as shown in the instructions in the link above.

*When creating the new ledgers, make the following selections:

•Type: Profit and loss

•Style of dialog used for account properties: Simple

Leave other settings unchanged.

Alternatively, you could have a separate VT Transaction+ file for each business, in order to submit a quarterly update for each business directly from each file.

However, you would not be able to submit a VAT return that covers all the businesses directly from VT Transaction+. Instead, use the same method for submitting a combined/group VAT return in VT Report, as shown in VT Report: Import a VAT return from VT Transaction+.