VAT 201 Wizard: FAQ and Troubleshooting Guide

Q: I’ve reset a VAT 201 Submission Status that was previously electronically submitted to SARS. When I now try to redo my “Electronic Submission” I get an error ”Your VAT201 Return has already been submitted for this period”?

A: The South African Revenue Service(SARS) currently only allows a user to electronically submit their VAT 201 report once through an accounting software product. When re-generating your VAT 201 you will thus have to select to generate a Manual VAT 201 Report (Pdf) to download, after which you’ll need to make use of SARS E-filings’ online functionality to resubmit.

Q: Can I reopen any VAT Period and submit it to SARS using the VAT 201 Wizard?

A: No. You will only be allowed to submit VAT Periods with a VAT Start Date after 2018/12/31. In addition to this SARS will not allow you to resubmit any VAT 201 report that has already been submitted to them (whether by hand or E-filing).

Q: How do I include changes made in Sage Accounting in a partially run VAT 201 report?

A: All data for the VAT 201 Wizard is uploaded when you first initiate the VAT 201 Wizard. The VAT 201 Wizard will therefore always continue where you previously exited the report generation. If you exited the wizard to make changes in Sage Accounting to data that is contained in the report (example contact details), and want these changes to be included in the report, click on Restart to re-initiate the data upload.

For transactional changes you’ll need to reopen the VAT Period, process amendments to transactions, close the VAT Period again and re-initiate the VAT 201 Wizard.

Q: When initiating the VAT 201 Wizard, I’m get a message that another user is generating this VAT Periods’ VAT Report, but the user is not currently in the system?

This will happen when a user tries to complete a partially ran VAT 201 Wizard that was previously initiated by another system user, but never completed. This can be verified on the VAT Returns and Reports screens’ Report Last Access By column.

If you are comfortable to reset any work previously done by the other user, click on Yes. This will restart the VAT 201 Wizard.

Q: What happens if I reopen a VAT Period for which a Manual / Electronic SARS submission has already been generated?

The Period Status will change to “Open”, and any Submission Status will be reset to allow for recreation. Any VAT 201 PDF file that was previously available on this VAT Period will be deleted and recreated when you close and rerun the VAT 201 Wizard.

If the user resets and restarts all VAT Periods, this will happen with every historic VAT Period.

The South African Revenue Service currently only allows a user to electronically submit their VAT 201 report once through an accounting software product. When re-generating your VAT 201 you will thus have to select to generate a Manual VAT 201 Report (Pdf) to download, after which you’ll need to make use of SARS E-filings’ online functionality to resubmit.

Q: Can I still run the old in-system VAT 201 report?

Yes. Sage Accounting will remove the old in-system VAT 201 report after thorough customer satisfaction with the VAT 201 Wizard has been confirmed, but have in the meantime made both reports available to users. The reports will provide identical values in each field, but currently drill-down is only available in the old in-system VAT 201 report.

Q: I tried to continue with a partially generated VAT 201 report, but it restarted the wizard?

Your data is uploaded from Sage Accounting to Sage Compliance Cloud when the wizard is initialized for the first time. Sage Compliance Cloud only retains this data for 30 days, before it will clear the data and allow for re-upload to finalize the VAT 201 generation.

Q: When initiating the VAT 201 Wizard, I’m prompted to Allocate VAT Types?

This will happen when the user created a new VAT Type on the VAT Settings screen, and processed an Input tax or Output tax transaction using this new VAT Type. The user needs to update Sage Accounting to indicate on which of the SARS VAT 201 Fields this VAT Type need to be accumulated. The VAT 201 Wizard cannot be initiated without allocating the VAT Type.

• Click on Yes.
• Add the new VAT Type to the preferred Output VAT or Input VAT field by adding a checkmark to the VAT Type:

• Click on View VAT 201 Wizard to continue generating your VAT 201 Report.

Q: When initiating the VAT 201 Wizard, I’m prompted to complete/correct my VAT Number?

This will happen when the user has a missing or invalid VAT Registration Number on the VAT Settings screen

• Click on Yes.
• Update or complete the VAT Number in the VAT Details section.

          A valid VAT Number will contain 10 numeric characters – no alphanumeric, spaces or special characters.

• Click on Save.

Q: While running the VAT 201 Wizard, I get a Late Transactions message?

This message only appears if Out of Period values exists in Sage Accounting on the selected VAT Period.

In order to ensure that transactions included in the VAT 201 Wizard, correlates to the system totals, these options will always be disabled, and amendments will need to be processed via Sage Accounting.

If in doubt about late transactions that is included, click on Cancel. In Sage Accounting, on the VAT Returns and Reports screen, click on the Out of Period value and reconcile the transactions included. Make any corrections needed before re-initiating the VAT 201 Wizard.

Provided that the late transactions should be included in the selected VAT Period, click on Continue. This will allow Sage to include these late transactions in the VAT Period as displayed on the VAT Returns and Reports screen.

Go Back to VAT 201 Wizard: Overview