Business Tax Workflow

Once you have your users set up and their access rights established, you are ready to start using the Business Tax application. Here is an outline of the steps you should follow when using Business Tax to process your clients' annual tax details:

  1. Create your client. You can create your client either in Business Tax itself or in Control Centre, the central module of the Sage Taxation suite intended to handle and maintain your client data. When you create your client, ensure you tick the Business Tax tickbox when you are asked which applications you wish to set the client up for (note that when you do this partnerships will automatically be set up for Partnership Tax as well, as all Business Tax users get Partnership Tax as well).
  2. Set up your client's accounting period. In the initial set up of a client, you can set an accounting period of up to 23 months long (assuming this may be a first set of accounts for a new business). If you are completing a new year's return for an existing client, you will have to roll forward to a new period from within Business Tax. By default this period is a year long, but the end date can be altered subsequently (in case a business changes its accounting date that year).
  3. Now you have to enter your client's tax data on the data entry forms accessed via the Navigator Tree. Remember that there are two views with separate forms covering different time periods. Not only do you have to enter the accounts information on the Accounting Period View, you may also have to enter details about overlap days or adjustment income on the Assessment Year View (although most details will be auto-calculated from the accounts information, you will have to enter details such as the overlap profits brought forward in the first year you complete the accounts of a business in Business Tax and adjustment income for the relevant tax years). You can save a lot of data entry time by importing accounts data from your accounts production software using the Accounts Link.
  4. Finally, once you have entered all the client's details, you need to export the data to the relevant Sage Taxation application in order for it to appear on the appropriate tax return form. Sole trades have their details transferred to Personal Tax, partnerships have their details transferred to Partnership Tax. Note that there is not a facility to transfer your individual partners' details into Personal Tax from Business Tax. You can however, transfer these details from Partnership Tax to Personal Tax, so the information is transferred, albeit indirectly to Personal Tax.
  5. At this point, if you wish you can also use your completed data to generate plain paper reports for your clients.

This is the end of the workflow for a client's accounting period in Business Tax. The process of actually putting the data of the business (and the data of the owner/partner) onto HM Revenue & Customs forms is all handled by other applications in Sage Taxation.