Accounting updates

From 1 July, you will be able to charge destination VAT on sales to EU consumers (customers in the EU who are not VAT registered). 

To make things easier, we will automatically add VAT at the rate applicable to the EU country where your customer lives.  

New reports will show all sales where destination VAT has been charged. This will help you to complete your One Stop Shop VAT returns. 

Find out how to apply destination VAT in Sage Accounting
Visit our business legislation hub to see how this may affect your business

You can now easily access the settings needed to customise an invoice when creating a new sales invoice – ensuring your invoice reflects your brand.

Whether you want to change your logo and template, change labels and headings on the invoice itself or change the text in emails you send to customers, we've added handy links allowing you to quickly customise your invoice.

Select an option from the Customise menu at the bottom of the invoice to jump to the related settings.

Select Preview on the Templates and Logos page or the Document Preferences page to see the effects of your changes. This will open a full-screen preview of a sales invoice.

Once you are happy with your changes you can save them for future invoices.

Note: This customisation option has also been introduced for credit notes.

To make bank reconciliation a little easier, we've moved the Reconcile button, making it more readily accessible from a bank account. To access it, go to Banking and then select a bank account. It is now located to the left of the New Entry button.

Previously, you opened the Connect to Bank (or New Transactions, if you have a bank feed) menu and then selected Reconcile.

To make adding EU Goods and Services easier, we’ve changed the way you add them to sales invoices. The EU Goods and Services field now displays on the invoice page when needed, so you can easily add them to each line item.

Find the contact you're looking for with less information. To make life a little bit easier you can now enter a contact's address (or partial address), their main or mobile phone number, or just their primary name in the Search field on contact lists to find them quickly.

We've also updated the Search field on the Audit Trail report to search by transaction number so you can quickly track down the history of an entry. This comes in handy when you quickly need to find transactions that show on your VAT returns.

To neaten up your bank list you can mark unused or closed bank accounts as inactive to hide them. Choose your account view by selecting Active, Inactive, or All from the new banking tab.

Inactive accounts cannot be used for new transactions, but still show in reports and completed transactions for audit purposes.

From March 1st, all contractors and subcontractors registered under the CIS scheme need to charge VAT using the reverse charge mechanism.

To take the stress away from remembering to do this on your CIS transactions, we've automatically updated all VAT registered contacts to use reverse charge VAT, so you can be sure that new invoices created after 1st March will have reverse charge VAT applied.

Find out how to use VAT reverse charge in Sage Accounting

Read our blog to find out how this may affect your business

Get a quick preview sales invoices before you send them.

Select Print Preview and view the invoice in another tab in your browser.

Find out what actions you need to take before 1st January and the other changes made to Sage Accounting to support Brexit.

Legislation changes due to Brexit will affect the tax and transaction types you use in Sage Accounting, the following areas are affected:

•    Northern Ireland contacts
•    Customers and suppliers not registered for VAT
•    Recurring sales invoices
•    Other payments and receipts
•    Quick entries
•    Bank rules
•    EC Sales List Report

To find out more, visit our Brexit support pages.

Updates

Show more rows in grids and lists

Get a clearer view of your transactions and display up to 100 rows by default on list pages (such as Sales Invoices) throughout .

From Settings, choose Navigation and Data Grids, and then select 100 in the Tables of Data section.

Override this as needed by selecting a number in the footer of a list page.

Back button in Banking

Easily navigate back to the Banking page with the new Back to Banking button.

Shown in the top toolbar, this allows to get bank to your bank accounts.

We've moved statement setting to their own section on the Settings page. Look in Settings and Statement Settings.

Use the Statement Settings to decide how transactions are shown and add personalised messages such as your bank details.

Previously, statement settings were located in Record and Transaction settings.

Now it's easy to attach supporting information such as sales brochures, product images, price lists etc. to your sales invoices, credit notes, quotes and estimates.

• Add multiple attachments
• Make attachments visible to your customers or for internal use only
• Supports the following file types: PDF, GIF, JPG, JPEG, PNG
• File size up to 2.5MB

Read more about attachments.

 

Other improvements and fixes

• If you are using the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS), the monthly return no longer gets stuck in Sending status.
• Active bank feeds will now download transactions properly after you successfully sign in for re-authentication.
• You can now record sales invoice refunds on VAT reconciled payments.

• You can now refund VAT reconciled customer receipts.
  

• Emailed and printed invoices using a new VAT rate no longer display the Standard VAT rate.
• The Learn More link on the Summary tab now directs to a help article.
• Copied recurring invoices that use new VAT rates now display the correct VAT percentages.
• Reverse charge transactions now display the correct VAT percentages.
• The VAT Detailed report now separates Standard Rate periods from periods where the VAT percentage was mixed.

Do you or your clients work in the construction industry and want to easily enter CIS transactions, whilst remaining legislatively compliant?

Now you can enable CIS for your accounts as a subcontractor, contractor, or both. Reduce wasted time checking details, set up contacts for faster processing. Automatically deduct CIS taxes correctly, report accurately and submit to HMRC securely.

• Simplified accounts with automatic CIS calculations and postings - The CIS withheld is calculated on invoices and the withheld tax correctly posted when processing payments.
• Accurate CIS reports - CIS transactions are posted to the accounts and your reports are automatically updated.
• Submit to HMRC - Report on CIS payments and withheld amounts and securely send your CIS 300 Monthly Return electronically to HMRC.
• Subcontractor statements - Produce ready to send payment and deduction statements for your subcontractors.
• Manage your own CIS ledger accounts - Report in more detail by creating your own CIS labour or materials ledger accounts with the option of setting these as defaults for your contacts or products and services.
• Subcontractor's CIS Suffered report - Produce this report to view the deductions that have been made on your behalf by your contractors.

We’ve made it even easier to add logos to your documents. Now when you upload a logo, it’s automatically checked to make sure the size of the file and the quality of the image are suitable. 

A new error or warning message will appear to tell you what needs changing if the image isn’t quite right.

• You can now do a bank transfer between two cash accounts.
• We’ve improved the trial balance report to show headers on each new page of the report.

Sales invoices

On a hosted invoice where online payments are not enabled or turned off, you'll now see the following message:

‘Please contact us if you are unsure how to make a payment’

Where online payments are enabled, the Make Payment button is displayed instead.

Zero value invoices

Invoices with a value of zero have been improved so they:

• Are no longer reported as Overdue.
• Do not display a status of Overdue.
• Do not appear on the Overdue and Outstanding tabs of the Invoicing screen. 

Activity grid 

The activity grid at the top of invoices has been improved. Where an invoice has been sent via email and has been successfully sent to some email addresses but not all the pill colour will be Amber to show that there were some issues.

Reporting improvements

We’ve improved the following reports to show headers on each new page:

• Aged Debtors
• Aged Creditors
• Aged Debtors Breakdown
• Aged Creditors Breakdown
• Trial Balance
• Customer statements

Other improvements and fixes

• We’ve changed some of the descriptions in the Trial Balance report to make them more descriptive, replacing ‘Brought forward values’ with ‘Opening & Closing Balance’.
• Recurring entries now pause when the Domestic Reverse Charge option is removed from the customer associated with the recurring transaction.
• The page title for CIS Monthly Returns has been corrected to read ‘CIS Monthly Returns List’.
• You can no longer save an MTD VAT Return without setting an obligation period.
• You can now do a bank transfer between two cash accounts.
• When exporting PDF reports, the colour of the text is now set to black.

Note: Only available in Accounting. See how to upgrade

Do you have customers who regularly order the same thing or are sending out the same repeat invoices every month? Do you have services or subscriptions where you send out the same bill each period? 

Save time and reduce errors by using Recurring Invoices. These are great for invoicing services that you deliver on a regular schedule and for products that you sell repeatedly. 

Find them from the Sales Invoices tab.

• Set up a recurring invoice as a template.
• Decide when you want them to recur and when you want them stop. 
  • This could be every day, every other day, weekly, monthly, quarterly etc, or you can keep creating them perpetually.
• We'll create the invoices automatically on the day they are scheduled, so you don't have to remember.
• If you choose to send them straight away, we'll email them to your customers at the same time. 

Read more about recurring invoices

Other improvements and fixes

• The Cashflow tab no longer overlaps with the Summary page making ot easier to view. 
• The part recoverable tax amounts on a ledger account are now included in the Chart of Accounts reports, so you export the amounts and import to a new business if required. 
• The part recoverable amounts are now visible on the Chart of Accounts list, so you can make sure your ledger accounts are set up correctly.

You can now integrate Sage Accounting with AutoEntry.

AutoEntry is an intelligent, cloud-based solution which eliminates data entry, so you never have to spend time manually entering invoices or receipts again.

Create transactions directly in your Accounting software from scanned and photographed paper documents.

To find out more, visit the AutoEntry help center.

If you’ve linked your bank account to Sage Accounting, we now regularly check with your bank for new transactions. When we find some, we download them automatically and show them on the Incoming Bank Transactions page.

All the banks send us transactions at different times, usually about once a day. So there may be times when transactions show on your bank statement but have not yet been imported in Sage. As a rule, you should always be able to see transactions from the previous working day.

We'll tell you the last time your bank was checked for transactions at the top of the page.

• Fixed: We've fixed an issue that was preventing some customers from creating new Google Drive Activations.
  

• Fixed: You can now email a sales quote or sales estimate with no expiry date.
• Fixed: When converting a quote or estimate to a full invoice, EU sales descriptions are now retained.
• Fixed: In Accounting Start, you can now create a new Money In or Money Out transaction and amend the date without specifying a Contact.
• Fixed: Changing the date your monthly statements recur no longer stops the report generating.
• Fixed: You can now create a customer from within an invoice, without affecting the credit terms set on the invoice
• Fixed: You can now always view your VAT Return when it includes transactions dated before the VAT Return period. 

• Fixed: Tax amounts are now updated correctly when you save an edited Other Payment, Other Purchase or Other Receipt.
• Fixed: You can now change main contacts and edit their details without having to create a new invoice address.
• Fixed: When switching from a customer that has a tax rate of 0%, to a customer that has a different tax rate, VAT amounts are now calculated correctly.
• Fixed: Stripe accounts are now automatically disconnected from Accounting when you reset or restore your data. Stripe accounts can also be manually disconnected.

We all know that mistakes can - and do - happen. Perhaps you’ve assigned a transaction to the wrong ledger code or department. We’ve now made it easy to make corrections to get things back as they should be.

Powerful search takes the hard work out of tracking down what’s wrong - whether sales invoices, bank transactions or journals.

Whether your mistake affects one or hundreds of transactions, you can soon get things corrected. Select what needs to be changed and set Sage Business Cloud Accounting to work.

Find out more about correcting transactions.

Export a Chart of Accounts from Sage Business Cloud Accounting for use elsewhere. This feature will save you time recreating a Chart of Accounts from scratch.

To create this export, click Export Accounts in the New Ledger Account drop down and you can download a CSV file of the output.

When importing a custom chart of Accounts via CSV, you can also now define which ledger accounts within the app the nominal ledger codes will be visible within. This alleviates any need for manually assigning and this can be done once when importing the Chart of Accounts and does not need to be done again!

We've now enabled you to edit bank transactions that are not bank reconciled in order to change where the payment is paid to. Ideal if you've made a mistake!

To assist users who trade goods with customers within the EU, we’ve created overseas purchase and overseas sale of goods reports, helping you to reconcile effectively. They’ve now been updated to include the ability to export to PDF.

To help new users (who have signed up from the 7th May), we’ve improved our getting started wizard. Now, we’ll help guide you through the key steps so that you can get the most out of Accounting. Existing users will still be able to access the older Getting Started tab and hide it forever with one click. They can now also retrieve it from the Settings area.

• Fixed: If you are registered for MTD and then reset your business data, you were unable to re-authenticate with MTD.
• Improved: We now warn you if you raise another payment or receipt against a contact who has an outstanding balance.

You've given us feedback that it would be beneficial to be able to use your own custom chart of accounts in Sage Business Cloud Accounting. Well, we're delighted to announce that now, you can. Create (and save) custom chart of accounts templates for different types of clients. Import a custom chart of accounts into Sage Business Cloud Accounting Start or Accounting with ease. Customising enables you to save time by removing repetition of amending ledger accounts individually for those clients who need it. More info and a how-to guide can be found here.

No business likes to chase its customers, or to have awkward conversations that they feel risks their relationship. To help avoid these awkward conversations we’re improving our emailed invoicing to minimise confusion and avoid uncomfortable questions. 

We’re pleased to announce Accounting will give you visibility of your sales invoices, sales credit notes, estimates and quotes. Created, sent, viewed or paid – you’ll know where it’s up to and helping you to get paid. 

Find out more.

• Fixed: Re-calculation of MTD draft return did not bring in new transactions within the period.
• Fixed: Sometimes unable to unallocate a bank reconciled invoice.
• Fixed: We now validate the maximum length of the reference and description on Bank Transfers.
• Fixed: Sometimes the customer receipt contact did not match the sales invoice contact.
• Fixed: Prevent VAT scheme change when you have unreconciled transactions.
• Fixed: Improve validation error messages on CSV imports.

When using Bank Rules to match you bank transactions, you can now create all the matched transactions in one click, instead of clicking each item individually. We hope this saves you some time!

Working with journals is now easier than ever. Our latest update completes a series of improvements, adding and improving journal functionality.

Viewing journals brings the ability to print and save a PDF file, plus ability to delete a journal.

When creating journals you can copy, delete and insert entries, plus drag & drop to reorder entries and also add attachments. Editing journals also gives you copy, delete, insert and reorder entries plus attachment functionality.

It all adds up to a better experience as we continue to improve Sage Business Cloud Accounting & Start.

• Improved: We now warn you when deleting customers if they have pending quotes.
• Improved: We have made it easier now to respond to subject access requests (SAR) for GDPR purposes. You can request a report of all data we hold for that contact.
• Improved: We have improved the GDPR options in Financial Settings. You will now be able to set your retention period with a period up to 99 years.
• Improved: Bank Rules - We now warn you for more cases when we cannot fully apply a bank rule.
• Fixed: We have removed VAT rates from an invoice VAT analysis that were showing in error.
• Fixed: We've improved the validation when uploading invoice company and association logos.

• Improved: In Journals grid column headers and the PDF report have been arranged in a consistent way.
• Fixed: VAT return stuck with status "HMRC Processing VAT Return - please check back later.".
• Fixed: Sales revenue report stuck loading when filtering by category.
• Fixed: Nominal activity report continuously spinning but never generated in some circumstances.
• Fixed: When changing from Standard VAT to Not Registered, historical invoices no longer showed VAT information.
• Fixed: Sometimes when printing your VAT summary you received an error.
• Fixed: Updated prices for Services are not being pulled through when an Invoice is created.
• Fixed: Quote and Estimates PDFs incorrectly showed a Pay Now button.
• Fixed: Delivery notes had an incorrect layout when using the Graphite Service template.
• Fixed: When changing from Standard VAT to Not Registered, historical invoices no longer showed VAT.
• Fixed: Deleting a Stock Category was causing a issue with the Stock Movement Report filter.

New reports have been created for GDPR reporting. Get a list of contacts that meet all requirements of data retention, show all contacts that have been already removed, plus ability to bulk operate over pending contacts. You can also see a history of events for contacts and settings.

Improvements

• Improved: In Journals grid column headers and the PDF report have been arranged in a consistent way.
• Fixed: VAT return stuck with status "HMRC Processing VAT Return - please check back later.".
• Fixed: Sales revenue report stuck loading when filtering by category.
• Fixed: Nominal activity report continuously spinning but never generated in some circumstances.
• Fixed: When changing from Standard VAT to Not Registered, historical invoices no longer showed VAT information.
• Fixed: Sometimes when printing your VAT summary you received an error.
• Fixed: Updated prices for Services are not being pulled through when an Invoice is created.
• Fixed: Quote and Estimates PDFs incorrectly showed a Pay Now button.
• Fixed: Delivery notes had an incorrect layout when using the Graphite Service template.
• Fixed: When changing from Standard VAT to Not Registered, historical invoices no longer showed VAT.
• Fixed: Deleting a Stock Category was causing a issue with the Stock Movement Report filter.

• Fixed: Reports: The Detailed Nominal Activity report was showing deleted entries - seeing deleted things once you’ve deleted them was more than a little confusing so now deleted things, stay that way.
• Fixed: When saving an invoice using Save & Print it wasn’t marked as Issued - now it will be.

We’ve extended the Attachments capability that we have in Purchase Invoices and Credit Notes so that you can now attach documents and images to all Bank Receipts, Payments and Refund transactions.

Quotes and Invoices are now sent in the same way as the Sage Accounting web application, so no matter where you send Invoices from - in your office, or on the go - your customers will receive the same experience. This enhancement also means that users who have integrated with Stripe will be able to get paid more easily, as emails will now include the View Invoice link.

We now support HMRCs Making Tax Digital (MTD)for VAT Beta programme. The MTD service delivers a fully digital on-boarding and VAT Return submission service for Customers and Agents, creating a much better experience for Tax Payers and Accountants. HMRC and Sage will be working with customers who’ve been selected as eligible to join the Beta programme.

Refunds: Other Payments & Receipts

It’s now possible to create refunds for Other Receipt & Payment transactions. Previously it was necessary to create a Dummy Credit Note and Refund in order to keep your accounts in order - now it’s just a case of raising the refund - simples!

Sometimes Stripe Payouts contained details of payments and refunds that were not created by Sage Accounting. This caused some mild confusion for our Payments logic - we’ve now worked out how to deal with this, so those payouts can be processed automatically.

Improvements

• Fixed: When Saving & Printing or viewing a PDF the Invoice wasn’t being marked as issued - now it is.
• Fixed: We noticed that sometimes telephone and mobile numbers changes were not updated when saved.
• Fixed: Broken GDPR "Help me choose" links on some countries and locales.

We've improved the Journal View to bring it in-line with the changes we shipped earlier this year around Quotes, Estimates and Invoices. The addition of the Action Panel makes it easier to manage your journals, by providing instant access to key tasks such as Reverse and Copy. We've also added the ability to Print a Journal.

• Improved: GDPR You can now view Quick Entries that have been anonymised as part of GDPR.
• Fixed: It shouldn’t be possible to create “Other Payment/Other Receipt” transactions for Overseas contacts via Bank Feeds - now you can’t.
• Fixed: If you raise a purchase invoice to an overhead code and save the invoice you receive an error 'Line items is purchase for resale invalid for this ledger account’.
• Fixed: In some rare cases, transactions were missing from Tax Returns - now we’ve scooped them all up.
• Fixed: Certain countries are not available for selection when creating a customer or supplier address, now they are - so if you trade with customers or suppliers in Vanuatu, French Polynesia or Curaçao then Sage Accounting is now ready for you.
• Fixed: If you tried to change the customer on an unpaid Sales Invoice, then you got an error - now you don’t.
• Fixed: Sometimes the "Money Out" tab in banking wasn’t accessible, we had a word and now it promises to be available whenever you need it.
• Fixed: The buttons didn’t look very good on smaller screens, now they’re fine and dandy whatever size screen you have.

• Improved: We used to let you connect a Stripe account to two businesses at the same time, perhaps not surprisingly this caused problems. 
• Improved: We've improved the performance of Data Imports.
• Fixed: Exporting the Detailed Nominal Activity report was showing deleted transactions.
• Fixed: In some circumstances the Nominal Activity Report didn't always show running totals correctly.
• Fixed: Some times the Invoice Address didn't show properly on Invoices.

• Fixed: If you tried to edit the main address, after deleting a contact you used to get an error.
• Fixed: When converting a quote to an invoice, sometimes the discount percentage was set to zero incorrectly - now it's correct.
• Fixed: Some users couldn't access Record & Transaction settings, this seems unfair, so now everyone can.
• Fixed: Adding a contact and delivery address to an existing contact used to cause an error.
• Fixed: Duplicate line items with same details were not showing on RTD report (Ireland Only)

Sage Business Cloud Accounting & Accounting Start now supports the GDPR right to be forgotten for all the contacts that our users have in the system. This functionality allows our customers to obfuscate all the contacts' personal data they have in the system and ensure that they can no longer be identified.

We’ve partnered with Stripe to enable you to take credit and debit cards from within Sage Accounting, or allow users to make payments themselves through the Online Invoices feature we released last week. Simply sign-up for Stripe (or connect your existing account), and start taking card payments in minutes. Payments are automatically processed by Sage Accounting, updating the Invoice status, allocating the payment, dealing with fees.

We’ve redesigned the way in which Invoices, Quotes & Estimates are displayed, making it easier to perform key actions.

When emailing invoices, quotes and estimates, your email now contains a link to the document stored in the Sage Business Cloud. This means customers can view their document on any device, with any screen size, and can easily print or download it, as well as see the latest status of the Invoice.

• Fixed: Changing the Nominal Code for a Bank Account used to result in a new account being created, now the Account is renumbered.

• Improved: We've added a county drop-down menu to address fields to help you quickly enter addresses accurately.
• Fixed: Sometimes you got an error when editing a purchase invoice after changing vat schemes.
• Fixed: Sometimes you got an error when saving a sales invoice with a date prior to the lock down date.
• Fixed: You couldn't save a contact for Belgium if you entered a tax number, even though the tax number was valid.
• Fixed: Profit and Loss and Trial Balance reports had problems running for the period 'Last Financial Year' if your year end date was set to a leap year e.g. 29/02/17.
• Fixed: The confirmation tick was a bit too big when creating new products and services.
• Fixed: The Statement Settings screen wasn't always remembering your choices.
• Fixed: If you try to post an other receipt or other payment to an invalid nominal code, clicking ok to the error message wasn't clearing the invalid code.
• Fixed: The product or service cost price wasn't picked up in the profit analysis report for invoices created on the mobile app.
• Fixed: A small number of customers couldn't view more than one page of the nominal activity report when it ran to multiple pages.
• Fixed: A small number of customers were getting duplicated transactions on the nominal activity report.
• Fixed: Sometimes when running a nominal activity report for a custom date range and drilling down into a nominal code, the custom date range is lost.

When matching bank feed transactions, you can now split an incoming transaction into multiple parts. You can also create new transactions there and then without leaving the page. We hope this makes matching your bank feeds quicker and easier!

• Fixed: Sometimes you got an error when trying to print a remittance for a supplier payment cheque.
• Fixed: The Sales Revenue report had some misaligned controls in Internet Explorer 11.
• Fixed: Some customers were unable to access the Bank Reconciliation screen.
• Fixed: Sometimes refunding a payment via the Sales Invoice screen caused an error.
• Fixed: The Aged Report was not picking up some allocation amounts for specific customers.
• Fixed: Sometimes the Aged Report was not picking up reversed transactions correctly.
• Fixed: If you upgraded from Cashbook or Accounts, the default price was not being populated on your invoices.

The global navigation bar has been updated to a new clean layout. You will still find all the links you had before in the new dropdown menus.

 

The new Sales Revenue Detailed report shows the individual sales transactions for your Products and Services and includes the quantities sold, sales revenue, cost and profit for each sale. The report can be exported for either one or all of your items to either PDF or CSV.

You can now specify all your search criteria before pressing 'Enter' or clicking the new 'Search' button to start your search. This saves time when setting multiple search criteria. When the search is complete you can change your search criteria and search again.