How Many Invoices? - VAT reclaim

[Barney12]

Evening all, I spent a few hours today bringing my latest pile of VAT invoices up to date. I’m recording them in a spreadsheet, each with a unique reference number. 

 

Anyway today I clocked up my 400th invoice which is quite some pile of paper. I’ve not finished my build yet! 

 

It got got me wondering if that was above or below average for those of you that have submitted their claims? 

[newhome]

I had just over 400 in total. I guess it depends how you source the materials for your house to a degree. We bought a timber frame kit with everything from roof trusses to wardrobe doors included and we only had 3 invoices from the timber frame company in total but they made up a large portion of the claim. 

 

 

[ToughButterCup]

9 hours ago, Barney12 said:

Evening all, I spent a few hours today bringing my latest pile of VAT invoices up to date.

[...]

 

Arrrggggghhhhhhhhh you as well as SWMBO !

 

I'm praying for nasty weather so I'm forced to do it. To Bowdlerise a well-known campaign slogan;

 

  I know it makes sense

[lizzie]

I have not counted......yet! I have a huge box full of everything vat and non vat and its all on one big running spreadsheet.

 

It is a big job ahead!

[newhome]

18 minutes ago, lizzie said:

I have not counted......yet! I have a huge box full of everything vat and non vat and its all on one big running spreadsheet.

 

It is a big job ahead!

 

It’s not too bad if everything is logged. I had been checking everything as I went along so it was all pretty much ok. I just rechecked everything and then faffed around reformatting it to match the HMRC form, plus I had 3 different vat rates to faff with in the sheets where vat is not shown separately as the build had taken so long . Still waiting to hear whether I get anything back however, and how much. It’s been about 7 weeks now. 

 

I didn’t photocopy anything, just sent next day delivery before noon, but if there are any that are important that you may want to refer to for the 8 weeks plus they won’t be with you, copy those. Probably wise to copy the big ticket items too, just in case, although I didn’t TBH. 

 

 

 

 

 

[lizzie]

@newhome good luck and thanks for the tips. Hope they deal with yours soon thats a long time to be waiting to hear.

[newhome]

1 minute ago, lizzie said:

@newhome good luck and thanks for the tips. Hope they deal with yours soon thats a long time to be waiting to hear.

 

Thanks! They have sent me a letter asking a question about the PP and I imagine they won’t even bother to look at any invoices until they are satisfied with the answer. I haven’t heard anything more so hopefully they are busy checking that everything is in order. 

[lizzie]

Fingers crossed for you @newhome

[HerbJ]

We had 395 Invoices in total and 104 were submitted for the VAT Refund. 

 

My OH was the Build  Accountant and rigorously maintained a detailed spreadsheet, cross referencing all the Invoices and costs, including potential VAT refund invoices for review on completion. We only had a four  invoices rejected outright by HMRC -  of these, we successfully reclaimed the wrongly charged VAT off  two invoices (as they had labour content), another  was for a safe and its installation ( which HMRC argued the safe was not allowable for zero VAT) and the other because it was design element of the stairs contract (which we foolishly allowed to be invoiced separately and so was not allowable as services). So, out of a total claim of £16368, we manged to successfully be refunded £15575 - the main difference being the design element, which we could have avoided if we been smarter and arranged for the invoice to be submitted differently.

 

 

[newhome]

2 hours ago, HerbJ said:

We had 395 Invoices in total and 104 were submitted for the VAT Refund. 

 

My OH was the Build  Accountant and rigorously maintained a detailed spreadsheet, cross referencing all the Invoices and costs, including potential VAT refund invoices for review on completion. We only had a four  invoices rejected outright by HMRC -  of these, we successfully reclaimed the wrongly charged VAT off  two invoices (as they had labour content), another  was for a safe and its installation ( which HMRC argued the safe was not allowable for zero VAT) and the other because it was design element of the stairs contract (which we foolishly allowed to be invoiced separately and so was not allowable as services). So, out of a total claim of £16368, we manged to successfully be refunded £15575 - the main difference being the design element, which we could have avoided if we been smarter and arranged for the invoice to be submitted differently.

 

 

 

I was build accountant too initially and in charge of keeping the build on budget. I did much of the ordering too, apart from stuff from the builders merchant. Worked pretty well as my OH would never have been organised enough to deal with the paperwork. Unfortunately I later became responsible for the later stages of the build too. A role I would never have chosen. 

 

Waiting to see what I get rejected by HMRC. There are 4 invoices that I don’t think they will allow; 2 because they don’t have my address on them (but they show my name), and 2 where I don’t think the items are allowable. So I will most likely be 4 down, and whatever else they decide they won’t pay out on. There were no invoices for any services so hopefully not too much will be deducted. My claim was for just over 25k. If I get just under that back I’ll be happy. 

 

So you had almost 300 invoices that weren’t for the VAT refund @HerbJ? That’s a huge number! I have less than 100 of those. 

 

 

[MikeSharp01]

5 hours ago, recoveringacademic said:

I know it makes sense

Because your worth it!

[lizzie]

Just checked my spread sheet  - I have to date 429 items on there.  Have not counted how many for the vat reclaim - guess maybe 30- 40% of them so 150  or so.  Not finished yet!

[Barney12]

6 hours ago, recoveringacademic said:

 

Arrrggggghhhhhhhhh you as well as SWMBO !

 

I'm praying for nasty weather so I'm forced to do it. To Bowdlerise a well-known campaign slogan;

 

  I know it makes sense

 

I hate the job so I force myself to do it. My spreadsheet does include claimable and non-claimable invoices (I have a column to record that) but I'll extract those which I cant claim for at the time of submission. I even categorise the invoice by type i.e. "plumbing", "lighting" so I can keep track of spend against budget. Not that it controls the spending I just know that I've overspent Cant beat a good pivot table!

 

What my spreadsheet doesn't do is provide "item detail". How fussy are the HMRC about that bit? What have people done where the invoice contains multiple items? As an example I have Screwfix invoices with a mix of "plumbing" and "electrical". At the moment I just classify a single invoice by the majority cost, that's a bit inaccurate but fine for my needs.

 

[newhome]

8 minutes ago, Barney12 said:

 

I hate the job so I force myself to do it. My spreadsheet does include claimable and non-claimable invoices (I have a column to record that) but I'll extract those which I cant claim for at the time of submission. I even categorise the invoice by type i.e. "plumbing", "lighting" so I can keep track of spend against budget. Not that it controls the spending I just know that I've overspent Cant beat a good pivot table!

 

What my spreadsheet doesn't do is provide "item detail". How fussy are the HMRC about that bit? What have people done where the invoice contains multiple items? As an example I have Screwfix invoices with a mix of "plumbing" and "electrical". At the moment I just classify a single invoice by the majority cost, that's a bit inaccurate but fine for my needs.

 

 

Mine does that too but I have separate sheets for vat shown separately, vat combined, and non claimable, then a nice pivot table at the end to show totals by category and how close to budget each category was. 

 

In terms of 'item detail' they will require this but the advice on the form is to provide the main description if the invoice covers multiple items. So 'plumbing supplies' should be ok I guess. I wasn't quite as generic as your categories however, in that I did say 'boiler' or whatever if that's what the invoice related to. 

 

 

[Jeremy Harris]

The spreadsheet I knocked up was pretty simple and HMRC accepted the printouts from it without question.  It's here if anyone wants to use it: http://www.mayfly.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/VAT Claim Form 431 - Blank.xls

 

I made the mistake of just keeping a box full of receipts in the end; we started off well, marking up and entering on the spreadsheet all the receipts for that week on a Friday, but that discipline went out of the window after a few months.  I ended up spending three whole days sorting out receipts, checking them, putting them in some sensible sort of order and entering them on the spreadsheet.  I had piles of them all over the living room floor................