Small Businesses - How Much Are You Missing Out on in Unclaimed VAT?

Quite often a case of 'should have left it to the professionals' occurs where smaller businesses that think they can handle their own bookkeeping and VAT returns run into difficulties and consequently find that they have missed out on hundreds or even thousands of pounds in unclaimed VAT.

Office Assistants provides bookkeeping and office administration services to small and medium businesses in Essex and London. They recently found themselves called into a company to correct several inaccuracies which were a result of accounts related tasks being left to an untrained member of staff. In this case, the business had to pay out for Office Assistants to make a whole host of corrections where items had been put in the wrong accounts, dates had been entered incorrectly and paperwork was missing. However, there was light at the end of the tunnel because the bookkeeping professionals managed to find them 6,000 worth of VAT that had not been claimed previously, immediately improving the business' cash flow as a result.

Unfortunately issues like this are commonplace in smaller businesses where they try to get away with keeping staff and administration costs down by not using fully trained or qualified personnel. Literally thousands of pounds are being lost every year where things like VAT claims are not being executed correctly, and in this case the amount that had been overlooked made a colossal difference to the business.

Quite often the option that looks the most economical in the beginning can turn out to be far more expensive in the long run. Smaller businesses should seriously consider using a professional bookkeeping company to handle things like VAT from the outset so that they have accurate figures, prepared properly and on time and the ability to plan ahead financially.

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