Configuring Tradebox Finance Manager to accurately calculate VAT after the Brexit Transition Ends

The following recommended changes to the Tradebox software only need to be made by Tradebox users based in England, Wales or Scotland.

Tradebox users based in Northern Ireland DO NOT need to implement any changes to Tradebox. More advice for business based in Northern Ireland can be found at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/trading-and-moving-goods-in-and-out-of-northern-ireland-from-1-january-2021#paying-vat.

The UK officially left the EU on 31 January 2020 and most of 2020 has been spent in the transition period. This ends on 31st December 2020, meaning new VAT rules will be implemented for UK based sellers exporting goods into EU countries. From 1st January 2021 all sales exported into the European Union should be treated in the same way sales exports are for non EU countries; zero VAT rated.

This article provides guidance on how to configure Tradebox Finance Manager to ensure that the VAT on all EU sales is correctly calculated for these two periods that have different VAT rules.

For more in-depth guidance on VAT for both sales and purchases we would recommend the following Sage article; https://www.sage.com/en-gb/blog/customs-and-vat-after-brexit/#vat-anchor-link.

Tradebox Finance Manager Changes

In the sales channel details section of each sales channel, there is an option to 'Treat All Sales as Pending'.

Selecting this will trap all sales in Tradebox for the time being, so that you can ensure that orders prior to 1st of January 2021 are posted to Sage under existing VAT rules, then update your settings before posting any transactions from 1st January 2021 onwards. Once you've ticked the option, click Save & Close.

Once you are confident all sales up to and including 31st December 2021 have been downloaded, select Orders from the options on the left hand side of the main Tradebox screen, under the Information heading. This will bring up a criteria box:

Set the Type drop down to Pending, and then enter 31/12/2020 into the Date To box, and select OK. This will bring up all orders that you have downloaded up to the end of 2020. Select the orders you want to send through, then click the Mark OK button at the bottom of the page. 

Once the orders have been marked as OK, click Post to Sage under the operations menu on the left hand side of Tradebox to send those orders to Sage.

Now that the 2020 orders have been successfully posted through to Sage under the existing VAT rules, you will need to update your settings to reflect the new VAT rules for 2021. 

To do this, select the Settings option under Configuration on the left hand side of Tradebox, and go to the Countries tab. 

Go through the list of countries and untick the EU column for every country. When completed, no country should have a tick in the EU column. This will cause all EU countries to be treated as Rest of World, unless you have a specific country tax code applied for them. Once you're done, click OK.

When those changes to your settings have been made, repeat the process of marking the orders as OK as described above, for all orders from January 2021 onwards. Go back into the sales channel details page of each channel, and untick the 'Treat All Sales as Pending' box. All orders going forward will be downloaded and posted into Sage using the new tax treatment.