Years of paper receipts to digital, then apply for UK VAT back?

cormie

Hey folks,
I'm looking to digitise a few years of receipts and do away with keeping paper receipts in future too, I've started using Google Photos and find it excellent, you can just snap a photo on your phone and it's on your gmail account. Unlimited storage for high quality photos for free.

The photos are high enough quality that you can make out even small font from an A4 page so should suit fine for accounting purposes.

I'm just wondering has anyone done this before and have you any advice for snapping hundreds of receipts at a time? I'd like to sequence the filenames, but as I've already many receipts in digital form, there's no sequence to the paper ones, so will probably have to be manual. Luckily I've each paper receipt marked with a number so I'll just have to rename as I go through them I guess?



Anyway, once that's done and sorted into their relevant years and folders, I think I can just get shredding all the old receipts?

I've never done it before, but I'd like to get the VAT back from all the UK purchases over the years so want to do both together so I can pick out any UK ones as I'm going through them.

My fuel card company offer a service where they can get the VAT back for you and they just charge 10% of the total reclaimed amount, seems like a fair deal?

If anyone has any tips or warnings on either of the above, please share

capefear

I stand to be corrected but I think you can only claim back the UK within 9 months of the preceding year.

So if you have uk vat 2016 you have until sept 2017 to claim it back or you lose it.

cormie

capefear wrote: »

I stand to be corrected but I think you can only claim back the UK within 9 months of the preceding year.

So if you have uk vat 2016 you have until sept 2017 to claim it back or you lose it.

Oh no I hope that's not true but thanks for the heads up!!

PARlance

Worth checking out https://www.waveapps.com/

They've a free Receipts App as well. You take your photo via the app and it reads the receipt for you and enters the details. It can be hit and miss in terms of getting all the correct details (you'll have to manually correct them) the receipt but it saves a lot of time none the less.
https://www.waveapps.com/receipts

Copper_pipe

Camscanner is useful.

cormie

Thanks for the suggestions. I heard of waveapps before and it sounds good alright, but for this I'd rather just snap photos and be done with it, not having to sign up to any new accounts, edit any of them or anything like that. I might just set the phone up so it's supported in a good position and then be able to quickly swap a page and snap, I think it should work ok.

The UK VAT reclaim thing is going to be very unfortunate if you can only claim the previous year and that's it.

capefear

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news Cormie


http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/vat/refunds/unregistered-persons-vat-reclaims-faqs.html#section5

What is the time limit for submitting an application?
From 1st January 2010, applications must be submitted by 30th September in the calendar year directly following the calendar year in which the expenditure was incurred. The 30th September deadline has been extended until 31st March 2011 for the year 2009 only.

jimmii

I use wave it's really handy especially when you're out and about you can just take a picture of the recipt as soon as you have bought something and it's ready for you online when you're doing accounts. It's impressive how much data it's able to pull down automatically too.

cormie

capefear wrote: »

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news Cormie


http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/vat/refunds/unregistered-persons-vat-reclaims-faqs.html#section5

What is the time limit for submitting an application?
From 1st January 2010, applications must be submitted by 30th September in the calendar year directly following the calendar year in which the expenditure was incurred. The 30th September deadline has been extended until 31st March 2011 for the year 2009 only.

****e, that's definitely not just for businesses outside of Ireland claiming Irish VAT back??

thegolfer

That's correct, claim for a year no later than the following 30 September. You submit an evr to revenue, European VAT refund, and they apply to the other jurisdiction.

cormie

Noooo!!! :mad:

Spent hardly anything in 2016 from the UK but the previous years would have seen me be able to claim back quite a bit ;(

Jonny303

Do you not have to keep receipts in their original form?

IE: Sent to you in a pdf, grand to store electronically, hardcopy receipt from a shop needs to be kept

cormie

I wouldn't think so? Hopefully not in this day and age. Never heard anything like it when looking into waveapps etc anyway?