Product Release: 1903

The March 2019 release of Aqilla (1903) sees a whole new range of features bringing forth new Making Tax Digital (MTD) functionality for automatically submitting VAT information to HMRC; an option to filter on additional system attributes when using the Automatic Transaction Matching function; new Expense and Expense / Timesheet only user types; a whole range of enhancements to the user interface including coloured background themes, date entry shortcuts etc. and significant upgrade to the Microsoft Excel Add-In (which requires a mandatory upgrade to the Add-In) which now enables users to post to multiple companies, ledger dimensions and period within a single worksheet.

HMRC – MTD (Making Tax Digital)
The interface for submitting VAT returns through the HMRC MTD is now available. Full details as to the background of the MTD changes can be found in the relevant Making Tax Digital Aqilla Help article.

In summary:

• The feature is turned on by going to Company Edit – VAT Reporting under the Configuration tab. When enabling HMRC VAT MTD ensure that your VAT Registration is correctly entered, without any spaces.
• Once enabled you have an additional Report option – HMRC VAT MTD.
• When the report is first invoked, you will be taken into the HMRC authentication procedure.
• Once you are authenticated, you can check VAT Returns and Obligations and create a new return in Aqilla for submission to HMRC. This return can be viewed and drilled into the details via the VAT Detail Enquiry. Prior to submission, the report can be deleted and recreated as many times as required.
• Once a VAT Return has been submitted, you can check your Liabilities and Payments.

Although MTD is a technical change to the way VAT returns are submitted to HMRC and the calculation of VAT is unchanged, there are a number of issues that have been identified due to the removal of any ability to make manual adjustments to the VAT figures outside Aqilla. The following issues and resolutions are currently being addressed within the Aqilla software:

• Making adjustments to VAT. This mainly occurs when a partial VAT recovery scheme is in place and will be handled with a new VAT Adjustment document in Aqilla and an associated option in the Excel add-in. This is mainly geared towards handling partial VAT recovery but has the flexibility to handle other types of adjustment.
• Group VAT. This is where a number of companies submit a single VAT return. In this scenario, one of the companies will be designated as the submitter of the Group VAT return through MTD. The other companies will continue to run the existing VAT 100 report, and these will have the option to submit their individual returns to the MTD submitter company for inclusion into the group return.
• Companies that do not use GBP as their base currency. The VAT return will be configurable to convert the non-GBP currency values to GBP using a defined Currency Rate Type.

If anyone would like to discuss anything about the HMRC MTD process please contact our support at support@aqilla.com and we will be happy to help.

Transaction Matching by Attribute

A new option has been added to Transaction Matching to enable matching by a user-specified attribute within the selected account. When this has been selected, there is an additional selection in Automatic Match – “Match & Split”. In this mode all the transactions with the same value of the additional attribute will be matched together and any remaining difference will be split against the most recent transaction.

In the example above, Project Code has been used as the additional attribute. The first project (P001) fully matches but project (P002) has an outstanding balance.

If Automatic Match = “Yes”, Transaction Matching will still only match if the transactions have the same additional attribute and the same values.

If Automatic Match = “No”, Transaction Matching will not automatically match any transactions and the user may manually match transactions even if the values in the additional attribute differ. In the manual mode the user may also sort by any of the columns.

If filtering by the additional attribute is not relevant to a particular matching task, the option “Not Applicable” can be selected.

Personnel – managing people and Aqilla users made easier

• A User Type filter has been added to simplify the viewing of the different personnel in Aqilla. The selection “Active” includes all personnel except if they are Disabled or have no user information.
• A new “User Details” button on the Personnel summary view enables direct access to the user information without going through the Person Edit view.
• The user roles have been moved from the Person Edit view to the User Details view.

New User Types for just Expense and Expense & Timesheet users

Two new, reduced licence cost user types have been added, to provide additional flexibility to Aqilla’s licencing. The new types are:

• Expense
• Expense & Timesheet

Users of these types are limited to only being able to enter their own expense or timesheet documents.

Date Field Entry shortcuts

When entering dates into Aqilla, it is now only necessary to enter part of the date and the remainder will be deduced and displayed in the entry field. For instance, if today’s date is 6th March 2019 and “12” is entered into a date field the following is displayed:

If this is correct, the user may tab out of the field and the indicated date will be displayed.

The specification of the month, as a number, and year requires entering a date separator (either “/” or “.”). For example:

• Entering 12/2 results in 12 Feb 2019
• Entering 12/2/17 results in 12 Feb 2017

You may also part type date formats with the short month names. For example:

• Entering 12 Feb results in 12 Feb 2019
• Entering 12 Feb 18 results in 12 Feb 2018

Entry of today’s date can be achieved by a number of shortcuts:

• Right-click in an empty field
• Entering “.” or “0”

Relative dates are also now supported. For example:

• Relative days: +/- n. For example, -10 means 10 days prior to today
• Relative weeks: +/- nw. For example, +2w means 2 weeks ahead of today
• Relative months: +/- nm. For example, -1m means 1 month prior to today
• Relative years: +/- ny. For example, +1y means 1 year ahead of today

Excel Add-in – Posting to multiple companies, ledgers & periods in a single worksheet

Three optional parameters have been included into the document upload functions to provided additional control over what company and ledger a document is to be uploaded to within a single Aqilla instance. In addition, if the “Add and Post” option is used, you may specify what period the document is to be posted to.

These optional parameters are specified in the blank column between header and details.

In the example above, the worksheet contains four Miscellaneous documents that are to be added to four separate companies and posted to period Feb-19. These four documents may be selected as a single upload and posted in one go.

Note that the parameter names and associated values are case sensitive. The parameter values may be surrounded by double quotes, particularly if the values contain separators such as “,” or “:”. The posting period is specified by the name of the period, which must be open for posting.

This enhancement requires a mandatory update to the Aqilla add-in. Please contact support@aqilla.com if you require help installing the update.

Company Colour Themes

When working simultaneously on different companies, it is now possible to select a background colour from a selection of themes to highlight each particular one. this helps differentiate between multiple companies in the same instance. This is defined in the bottom left-hand section in Company Edit found under the Configuration tab.

The default is a light grey background, but users can switch back to the original white or a number of alternate solid or graduated hues.

We understand that this is down to personal preference however the default will set to grey.