Akanni Transports in Porto-Novo is billed and bills with VAT. Each month Afiavi Hounkpatin has to know how much VAT the company collected, how much it paid on its purchases, and what is due or can be carried forward. She wants to look at the result before anything is posted. The same steps apply to any business whose books are kept in Exowpee and which declares VAT by period.

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Who works where

Afiavi works in the organization space of her firm, on the book of her client account. A client account can also do the same work on its own book from the client space. The permissions and rules are identical.

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Look before you declare

When a month has ended, Afiavi runs a preview for that period. It computes the VAT position and shows the accounting lines a declaration would post, but records nothing. It applies the same checks as the declaration itself, so a preview that works shows that a declaration made at that moment would pass those checks.

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Declare the period

When the figures are right, she records the declaration with Declare VAT for a period. Exowpee totals the output VAT and the input VAT of the period from the accounts for VAT collected (443) and VAT deductible (445). When the period has VAT movements, it posts a journal entry dated at the end of the period that clears these two accounts. The net amount due goes to the VAT payable account (4441 in the default chart of accounts). A net credit goes to the VAT credit carry-forward account (4449 by default), and a credit carried over from earlier periods is used first. A month with no VAT movement is still declared, but no entry is posted and an earlier credit stays where it is. Afiavi reads one declaration, with output VAT, input VAT and the amount due or the credit, using View a VAT declaration. She lists the declarations of the book, filtered by period, with List VAT declarations.

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Cancel the latest declaration

She notices that an invoice was missing from March, after declaring April. Only the latest declaration can be cancelled, so she cancels April first with Cancel latest VAT declaration, then March. She fixes March in the books, then declares March and April again, in that order.

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The rules

  • Previewing and declaring both need the permission to create declarations. Listing, viewing and cancelling need the permissions to list, retrieve and delete.
  • The accounting module must be enabled for the organization. In the organization space the caller needs an access grant on the book; in the client space the book is the client account’s own.
  • The book must have accounting set up (it has at least one journal).
  • The period is required and must be a fiscal period of the book. Its fiscal year must be open and the period must have ended.
  • A period is declared only once. A book holds at most one declaration per period.
  • Periods are declared oldest first. A preview or a declaration is refused when an earlier period of the book is still undeclared, or when a later period is already declared. The check counts from the first declared period of the book, or from the start of the period’s own year if that is earlier.
  • Only the most recent declaration of the book, by period start date, can be cancelled, and only while the fiscal year of its period is open.
  • Cancelling posts a reversing entry when the declaration had one, and deletes the declaration. The declaration is deleted for good and cannot be restored, so the period can be declared again, which creates a new declaration.
  • The preview answers a plain JSON object and records nothing.

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All the actions of this topic