Implementing Acumatica Cloud ERP in the United Kingdom

Several customers have implemented Acumatica in the UK. In this article we walk you through a few of the implementation requirements they encountered.

Today’s post is identifying the functionality that must be enabled to successfully implement Acumatica cloud ERP within the United Kingdom. It is assumed that the reader has a knowledge of the core functionality of Acumatica.

Requirements

Core functionality

To meet the statutory requirements for the United Kingdom, the following must be utilized in core Acumatica:

VAT

A value-added tax (VAT) is used in the European Union (EU), Canada, Australia, and Japan. A tax of this type is paid at each stage of production and distribution. When your organization is the vendor of the goods, it collects this tax from customers as part of the price; it pays to the tax agency only the difference between the collected amount and the amount paid to your organization’s vendors.

In Acumatica ERP, VAT Reporting is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form. You can configure VAT tax options to comply with HMRC requirements and automatically calculate them on bills and invoices and report them to a tax agency.

For more information on how to set up VAT, go to: Acumatica Open University and search for F335 Financials: Advanced|Value-Added Taxes and to Acumatica Partner University and search for F335 Financials: Advanced|Value-Added Taxes.

General Data Protection Regulation

Because Acumatica ERP holds the personal data of individuals, it includes tools to comply with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Acumatica’s cloud ERP software provides GDPR compliance tools that simplify the handling of personal data and gives you the ability to protect personal data and restrict its processing.

Acumatica’s privacy tools are available in the System Management workspace.  For more information see Compliance Tools for General Data Protection Regulation in Acumatica Help.

Consolidated Financial Reporting

In core Acumatica, if Company A and Company B have different base currencies, they must be set up in separate entities.

Acumatica provides consolidation tools so you can produce financial statements which span different companies and tenants. In the future, we will add the ability to automate inter-company transactions between companies with different base currencies.

For More information see Managing Companies and Branches in Acumatica Help.

Acumatica Add-On Solution

To meet statutory reporting requirements for the United Kingdom, customers must install the Making Tax Digital customization.

Making Tax Digital: Making Tax Digital (MTD) is a UK government initiative that requires most UK taxpayers to send HM Revenue and Customs (HRMC) summaries of their income and expenditure at least four times a year. As of April 2019, MTD only applies to VAT registered businesses whose turnover is above the £85,000 compulsory VAT registration threshold. Additional information is available from the HM Revenue and Customs website.

Acumatica provides a customization so that customers can create the digital file and submit it in the required format. This customization is provided free of charge on the Acumatica portal.

Configuration

To meet the statutory requirements for the United Kingdom, Acumatica ERP must be configured by adding the following:

Reports: If a company does not trade with other EU member states, the Intrastat Report and EC Sales List sections below may be ignored.

• Intrastat Report

Intrastat is the system for collecting statistics on the trade in goods between European Union (EU) member states. The supply of services is excluded from Intrastat.

Every VAT-registered business trading goods with other EU member states is obliged to declare certain information. The amount of information required depends on whether the value of Arrivals (purchases or imports) or Dispatches (sales or exports) exceeds the annual Intrastat exemption thresholds.

See this link for detailed information.

Customers can build the Intrastat Report using Acumatica reporting tools or get the report from Acumatica UK resellers who have implemented it for other clients.

• EC Sales List

An EC Sales List (ESL) is a report that has to be sent to HMRC by VAT-registered businesses who sell goods and services to other businesses in the wider EU.

The business must also include their customer’s local VAT number, if they know it, plus a designatory number to show whether goods or services were sold.

If you’re sending goods to the EU, you only have to report with an EC Sales List if the receiving businesses are VAT registered. All sales of services to other businesses in the EU however, whether the business is VAT registered or not, must be reported on an EC Sales List.

See the following link for detailed information.

Customers can build the EC Sales List Report using Acumatica reporting tools or get the report from Acumatica UK resellers who have implemented it for other clients.

Banking

• General Codes

IBAN (International Bank Account Number)

BIC (Bank Identifier Code)

See the following links for more information:

https://www.iban.com/country/united-kingdom

https://www.xe.com/ibancalculator/sample/?ibancountry=united%20kingdom

• Bank Connections – Statement Download Files (Downloading bank statement files)

Acumatica can import bank files in OFX format and import transactions from Excel files. Many UK banks provide information in CSV format. To import these files directly, you should procure a web application which will aide in downloading bank statement files and convert them to OFX files.

• Bank Connections – Payment Upload Files

Uploading payment instructions (BACS) – Typically this will need to be developed by a 3^rd party developer each time because every bank has different payment upload formats.

Bacs Payment Schemes Limited, previously known as Bankers’ Automated Clearing Services, is the organization with responsibility for the schemes behind the clearing and settlement of UK automated payment methods Direct Debit and Bacs Direct Credit, as well as the provision of managed services for third parties. Wikipedia contributors. (2019, September 27). BACS. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:53, January 2, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=BACS&oldid=918237191

Electronic system where you can make payments directly from one bank account to another.

https://www.bacs.co.uk/Pages/Home.aspx

Expenses

• Mileage on Expense Claims

Mileage on the Expense receipt/Claim uses a re-imbursement rate according to the type of vehicle (based on CO2 categories) and annual mileage limits. The latter is set by employee.

 For more information, go to:

 https://milecatcher.com/update-uk-business-mileage-rates-for-2019-2020/

• Mixed VAT on Expense Receipt 

In some cases, the VAT may need to be overridden from the calculated value.

 Example – Hotel receipt (100 pounds): Normally the VAT would be 20%. In this case the total VAT is 16.67 pounds due to some items that don’t require VAT on the receipt. When entering the expense receipt, the system will show what the VAT should be based on 20% and it will calculate it accordingly as 20 pounds. If you have these situations, you will need to configure the ability to manually put the VAT amount on the expense receipt rather than have it calculated. You will also need to allow users to manually key a total amount on the expense receipt.

UK Terminology/UK Spelling

In the United Kingdom, users are accustomed to British (UK) English. Therefore, certain words may be spelled differently or may be called something different than what is delivered by Acumatica.

Some examples below:

Acumatica localization tools allow you to gather all strings used within Acumatica so you can create a UK English language pack. Language packs can include on-screen labels as well as ‘unbound’ resources such as prompts and error messages.

Address Fields

In the United Kingdom, addresses are often larger than 50 Characters. A third address line already exists for Customers and Vendors, but it needs to be configured to appear on the screen in Acumatica.

Conclusion

Implementing Acumatica in the United Kingdom can be completed successfully by following the guidance outlined in this post. Compliance with localization is successful when enabled by a strong, secure information system like Acumatica. Acumatica’s core functionality, add-on solutions, and the ability to configure or extend the application using Acumatica’s fully extendable platform is the key to success in the United Kingdom.

Acumatica users have the benefit of a thoroughly integrated software system that includes operational (inventory, production); accounting; and quality systems along with the document management, workflow and security features. All information and documentation are managed within a single comprehensive database, subject to unified security and access controls, and easily brought together to provide the complete reporting and localization features that is required by the United Kingdom.

Acumatica users also have the benefit of Technical Tuesday procedural posts that, similar to today’s discussion, extends their knowledge of Acumatica’s cloud-based ERP solution (example topics include business events to automate processes and MICR check printing). And they know their cloud ERP rights, including an unchanging SaaS end-user license agreement, consumption-based licensing, deployment flexibility, access to their data anytime, and more, are guaranteed.

For any questions, contact our team today.

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