At present, the posting date and tax point (VAT) date are the same field. It would make more sense for the tax point date to be the same as the document date or better still having its own field enabling the VAT Return to be submitted to include late posted invoices. Tax points are set by the law of the land and subject to various rules whereas the posting date is relatively arbitrary and has little or no correlation to the document or services giving rise to the tax.

Example : If Company A closed (disallowed posting to) its management BC accounts period for June 2020 (also its quarter end for VAT) , and then the Purchase Ledger team later advise that a purchase invoice (no order) had just been received for £250k + vat dated 15th June. At present, that invoice and tax point can only be dated after June. The Input VAT on that invoice cannot be reclaimed until the next VAT quarter unless a manual adjustment is made or the period is reopened (which the Group FD would not allow). With one large invoice , it stands out, but with multiple small ones, it is not as simple.

Basically the company will end up filing an incorrect return. Sure, it may happen all the time, but by having the posting date and tax point date the same, this creates the issue and could be overcome by separating the fields.

My support partner simply said - That's the way it is in BC !!!