From a spreadsheet
VAT Returns, without the spreadsheet.
A sheet is a brilliant way to start and a poor way to keep going. VAT computed from your own invoices and bills, box by box, with the figures you can check. Filing to HMRC waits on your filing credentials — until those are supplied it stays honestly at pending rather than pretending to have filed.
Where you are now
Both sides of it, honestly
What a sheet actually costs you
- One person understands the formulas, and the business waits when they are away.
- Two people open it at once and the newer edit quietly wins.
- Nothing is recorded about who changed a figure, or when, or why.
- It cannot chase anyone, remind anyone or tell you something has slipped.
- The numbers in it never reach anywhere else without somebody retyping them.
What VAT Returns does instead
- The quarter worked out from real documents
- Every box explained
- Never claims to have filed when it has not
- Writes straight through to Invoices and General Ledger, so the figure is entered once.
- Every change is attributed and dated, and old versions stay readable.
Why it holds up
Three things that only work because it is one system
Your columns, kept
The Builder reads how you describe the work and lays the fields out the way your sheet already does. You are not made to adopt somebody else’s column headings.
Permissions, at last
A sheet is all-or-nothing. Here, people see the records their role covers, and the ones they should not see are simply not there.
It can act
A sheet waits to be looked at. This chases, reminds and escalates on its own, because the rules live next to the data.
A day it changes
Quarter end: you open VAT, check box 6 against your sales, and know the figure before the deadline.
The reach
What it is joined to
Not integrated. The same database.
There is no connector between VAT Returns and the modules below, because there is nothing to connect. They read and write the same records, so a change is not copied anywhere — it is simply already there.
Questions
The ones worth asking
Can we import what is already in the sheet?+
Yes. Upload the file and map the columns onto the fields; the import shows you exactly what it will create before anything is written.
Do we lose the flexibility of a spreadsheet?+
No. Fields, stages and views stay editable after the Builder creates them, so the shape keeps changing as the work changes. What you lose is the fragility, not the freedom.
What if we still want a spreadsheet for something?+
Export any view to a sheet whenever you want one. The difference is that the sheet becomes a snapshot for a meeting rather than the place the business is actually run from.
Move vat returns off the sheet.
Describe how your business works in plain English. The Builder produces a working Hub in minutes, and everything it makes stays yours to change.