Sage and Making Tax Digital integration
Making Tax Digital is not a form to fill in, it is a rule about how the figures reach the return. VAT records have to be kept digitally and moved between systems by digital links, which rules out reading a total off one screen and typing it into another. The integration builds those links between whatever holds the numbers and Sage, which files.
Why companies connect Sage to Making Tax Digital
Most businesses do not keep every VAT-relevant figure inside their accounting software. Partial exemption calculations, margin scheme workings, adjustments agreed with an accountant and totals from a separate billing system live in spreadsheets, and the last step is usually a person reading a number off one screen and keying it into another. That step is exactly what the digital links requirement forbids, and it stays invisible until someone asks how the figure got there.
How we do it
The source records - billing system, spreadsheet workings, agreed adjustments - are read where they are and written into Sage through its API, as transactions or as journals, each carrying a reference back to what produced it. Nothing is retyped and nothing is summarised on the way, so the trail runs from the return back to the record behind every figure. Sage files the return; the integration makes sure the numbers reaching it got there digitally.
What you get
Digital links from the source record to the VAT return, with no keyed-in totals in between
Adjustments and scheme calculations carried with their working, not only their result
Every posting keeps a reference back to its source, so a question about a figure has an answer
Sage stays the filing software - the integration feeds it rather than standing in for recognised software
The quarterly ritual of rebuilding a spreadsheet disappears, and the errors it produced with it
Use cases
A business whose VAT-relevant figures live partly in a billing system Sage has never seen
A partially exempt business whose recovery calculation is a spreadsheet worked once a quarter
A trader on a margin scheme whose workings are kept outside the accounts entirely
A group whose return is assembled from several companies' records by hand
Frequently asked questions
Does the integration submit the VAT return to HMRC?
No. Sage submits it, as recognised software. The integration is concerned with the step before that - getting the figures into Sage digitally, which is the part the digital links rule is actually about.
What counts as a digital link?
Any transfer that does not involve a person typing or copying: an API call, an import of a file the source system produced, a formula linking cells in the same workbook. Copy and paste between spreadsheets does not count, and neither does reading a figure off a screen.
We already file through Sage. Is there anything left to do?
If every figure on the return originates inside Sage, no. The work exists where figures originate elsewhere, and in practice that means most businesses with a separate billing system, a scheme calculation or an adjustment agreed once a quarter.
Tell us what you want built
A few sentences about what it should do and who for is plenty. You get scope, a date and a price back within 24 hours.
Free consultation