Accounts Archives - SQLWorks

SQLWorks to Make Tax Digital

**NEW Update**

We’re Officially Recognised by HMRC for Making Tax Digital!

SQLWorks Accounting was approved for five key functionalities following demonstration of a sandbox environment to HMRCs review team. Learn more about Making Tax Digital with SQLWorks here.

recognised

 


We’ve updated our SQLWorks software to support Making Tax Digital – with Lineal staff officially demonstrating their work to HMRC’s Review Team during January 2019.

SQLWorks Accounts Prefs can be linked directly with a company’s HMRC VAT Account, granting permission to submit quarterly VAT returns for 18-months before re-authentication is required.

making tax digital authorisation

Making Tax Digital will be available for all SQLWorks Accounts Admin users via the existing VAT Ledger, and allows the accounts administrator to report their VAT return (shown in boxes 1-9) directly to HMRC’s system at the press of a button.

SQLWorks can also report up-to-date VAT account status information (such as obligation, payment and liability entries) from a company’s HMRC account, and access logs recording the full audit trail of communication between HMRC and our software. Once submitted, the company’s VAT return quarter is locked down to ensure security of reporting.

 


Lineal Software Solutions have been officially registered as a provider developing software suitable for HMRC’s new ‘Making Tax Digital’ initiative.

The new tax regulation, which will require UK businesses to undertake tax reporting (initially VAT) via digital links from April 2019, will need approved accounting software to report directly and digitally to a company’s HMRC digital tax account via web API.

Only software which passes a reporting test set by HMRC using example data will be approved for Making Tax Digital (Phase 2 standard.)

Mike Matthews explained: “Currently only around 130 software providers in the UK are registered as developing for direct Making Tax Digital accounts reporting. SQLWorks has had the ability to calculate your VAT return for many years, but very soon, you’ll be able to process your submission direct to HMRC digitally too.”

making tax digital software

HMRC says a quick Hello to SQLWorks during testing…

“HMRC’s main aim is to remove any re-keying or manual re-processing of data – which will make SQLWorks the perfect integrated solution for processing business all the way from quotation to sale, to direct VAT reporting.”

“The government have recently altered some of the software rules being put into place for making tax digital, but we’re hard at work to make sure all SQLWorks customers can begin reporting VAT digitally from next year.”

Recent figures collected by The Institute for Chartered Accountants have suggested awareness of Making Tax Digital is still very limited, with less than half of businesses stating they were unaware of changes that are about to come into force.

This Page will be updated periodically with the latest SQLWorks Making Tax Digital news – please check back for updates! 30.10.18

For an effective, integrated software solution – contact our team today.

Introduction to Audit & Real Time ‘Live’ Reporting

Using SQLWorks Audit, accounting managers can generate key financial reports either ‘Live’ using real-time data, or from an enforced point in time.

This feature is available using the ‘Audit’ tool. When this tool runs, SQLWorks collates the most up-to-date financial data available from the accounts, to use for financial reports. Auditing can be performed immediately before the creation of a new report, by ticking the ‘Audit Matrix’ checkbox in the report options, to ensure the report shows ‘live’ data.

If the checkbox is left unticked, SQLWorks will report using figures from the last time the accounts were audited.

audit matrix

 

Auditing can also be run independently from the ‘Audit By Year’ option in the main SQLWorks Navbar, by right clicking on the financial year in the main list and clicking ‘Audit Year’. The adjacent column displays the date of the last successful audit. This can be used to manually designate an official Audited point in time, from which reports are run, until you are ready to re-audit.

‘Live’ data reporting is normally the preferred option, as it permits accounting managers to get an instant snapshot of the exact state of the business accounts at that moment in time.

audit live reporting

Reporting from the last audited point in time may be more useful in certain situations however. On systems with large numbers of transactions being entered, some businesses prefer to draw a line in the sand, and report consistently from this point in time, until ready to perform the next official reporting audit.

audit reporting

To learn more about SQLWorks financial reporting, contact our team today.

Did you know? Importing Journals

SQLWorks Accounting includes the option to enter Journals both manually, but also offers the chance to save time by importing journals from a spreadsheet of data directly to your Nominal Ledger.

When in the Nominal Ledger click ‘Journal’ in the top toolbar, and the add Journals window opens. To begin importing your journals, click the ‘Import Journal Option, and browse for the file you wish to import.

Imports must be imported using a fixed format from a template file: a copy of which can be found within your SQLWorks installation ‘Misc’ Folder as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet – or downloaded here. You will need to enter your data and save the file as a tab-delimited text (.txt) file before importing.

SQLWorks will warn you if the data you are seeking to import is old, and may block you from entering nominal journals into locked accounting periods.

Once importing journals has run successfully, your nominal journal data will appear in the list of journals to be added, and users can commit them to the Nominal Ledger by clicking ‘Save and Close’.

 

For accounting advice and support, contact the SQLWorks team today.

Fact Sheet: Purchase Ledger

SQLWorks Purchase Ledger is your main accounting ledger for your ordered items and purchase transactions with other companies.

Purchase Ledger can be found under the ‘Accounts’ heading in the main NavBar (1) and helps manage each stage of the buying process. Any chosen company from your Companies List can be given a purchase Ledger account, and appears in the list panel (2).

In the main window the top panel displays purchasing information relating to that company, including contact details, outstanding invoices and default settings for your purchases from that company, such as a credit limits and nominal codes.

The first ‘All Outstanding’ tab in the lower panel shows a useful summary of your unreconciled payments, customer quotes, outstanding purchase orders and halted items. From left to right tabs headed ‘Orders’, ‘Transactions’ and ‘Unreconciled Items’ (3) allow you to enter each stage of purchasing by clicking on it – keeping a close track on orders placed and received, and money owed.

Unlike your Sales Ledger, items must follow a dual progression to account for both order and invoicing – by logging ‘receive orders’, SQLWorks can support staged deliveries, or other orders that are delivered and invoiced separately by your suppliers.

Users with SQLWorks advanced stock module can track incoming stock items as ‘In Transit’ whilst awaiting delivery, while all users can take account of part orders, expected time of arrival (ETA), and even batch multiple orders as a single ‘delivery.’ ‘Pending Stock’ under your ownership can be allocated, but other SQLWorks functions are restricted to prevent the mis-selling of items not yet physically available for onward dispatch.

Once you have been invoiced, SQLWorks Purchase Ledger allows your business to reconcile multiple orders against a single invoice, flexibly matching your suppliers’ invoicing format. Saved default settings allow SQLWorks to remember other payment conditions for each supplier, such as price rounding and VAT rules, and (with CRM document storage) archive files such as digital copies of supplier invoices.

Payments can be grouped together or processed via BACS, an authorisation system allows larger organisations to set customised purchasing limits for staff, and force users to clear orders past an administrator before being placed. Spending limits can be set by order, outstanding amount, over a chosen time period, or a combination of these for maximum security.

Every reconciled invoice is linked directly by a nominal code to your nominal code category, so SQLWorks always gives an accurate, real-time reflection of your current purchasing finances in your Nominal Ledger.

 

Fact Sheet: Sales Ledger

fact sheet sales ledger

SQLWorks Sales Ledger is your main accounting ledger for your quotes, orders, refunds and sales transactions with other companies.

Sales Ledger can be opened under the ‘Accounts’ heading in the main NavBar (1) and includes a full suite of accounting tools. Any company from your Companies List can be given a Sales Ledger account – appearing in the Sales Ledger List (2) for further use.

From here you can prepare quotes, log orders and more, before sending out any invoices and receiving payments from a given company. As you complete sales, your sales move from left to right – starting as disbursements, leads or quotes, becoming orders, and then transactions. The Sales Ledger information for a company is displayed in the Main Window, with ‘Quotes’, ‘Orders’, ‘Transactions’ and more available by clicking the Tabs on the lower right panel (3).

SQLWorks allows you to keep a close track of money owed, customer debts and credit: you can set a Credit Limit for each business along with precise payment terms, deadlines, known company directors, and instruct SQLWorks to email or print invoices as needed. Any custom settings for a given company also allows you to customise SQLWorks reports to reflect this.

Track aged debt with payment terms, turnover, profit, balance history, debt days, stock items bought and other enquiries, all from the account activity section of any given company in your Sales Ledger. If you need to transfer data, electronic data interchange (EDI), allows a user to export orders, or import invoices from other digital sources.

The SQLWorks team can also configure your Sales Ledger to more closely match your sales – adding automatic adjustments for discovered stock, setting up cash account sales or more uncommon types of invoices if needed.

Every financial entry (invoice, receipt or credit note) is linked directly by a nominal code category to your nominal code category, so SQLWorks always gives an accurate, real-time reflection of your current sales finances in your Nominal Ledger.

 

Contact us today about accounting with SQLWorks: 01271 375999 or www.sqlworks.co.uk/contact-us

Did you Know? Global Search

Sometimes you just need to be able to search all of SQLWorks at once – so SQLWorks’ Global Search function has been built to allow users to easily search anywhere (or everywhere) for that elusive file, record or entry.

Pressing the keyboard shortcut ‘Ctrl G’ (or ‘Cmd G’ on Apple devices) opens the Global Search window (1), from which users can select sections of SQLWorks they want to search through using the checkboxes in the top left (2) (e.g.: ’CRM’, ‘Stock’ etc, or simply ‘All’).

Type the intended search term in the text field, and specify the terms of the search: ‘Begins With’ the search term or ‘Contains’ the search term, using the radio buttons, and click the magnifying glass or press return to begin the global search (3).

Global Search will list any and all results in the List Menu below, including where those entries were located. As always, right clicking a list option and click ‘Get Info’ to see more information about that entry.

Double clicking a list item opens that entry from the relevant part of SQLWorks, wherever it has been found.

 

For more information, contact our team today: 01271 375999

SQLWorks Windows 10 and Mac OS X compliant

cross platform

SQLWorks version 6 has been confirmed as both Microsoft Windows 10 and Apple Mac OS X El Capitan compliant.

First developed in 1988, Lineal’s cross platform flagship business management software for Accounting, CRM, Stock Control (and more) has been updated many times over the last three decades to add a wealth of new features and stay at the cutting edge of business requirements.

In order to be declared compliant for both Microsoft and Apple’s rival operating systems, the software must match the functionality of both, and has undergone three months of live testing at Lineal on both systems.

“Here at Lineal we’re delighted that SQLWorks has been declared to be Windows 10 and OS X El Capitan compliant.” Software Development Manager, Will Adkin explained: “SQLWorks undergoes constant development to match our clients’ needs, and we will be expanding to new platforms in the near future.”

“We’re currently developing the free upgrade to the next version for all customers, which will now be 64-bit compliant for stronger performance, and introduce new features.”

 

Explore SQLWorks today: call 01271 375999 or send us a message for a free demonstration.