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Historic Vatbook

If for some reason you require to determine previous months' figures from the system this option can be used (found on the 'Reports' sub- menu).

You will be asked which month and year you would like the report for. Enter 05.1992 for May 1992, for example. You will then be asked if you would like a printout of all the transactions records that will make up the figures. This is useful for determining if there are any 'strange' transactions. The system will then search for all records for that date, record the totals and display them.

Note: As this option has to read all transactions on the system it may take some time depending on the number of transactions available. We suggest this should be run overnight.

VAT book versus Historic VAT book
These programs work in different ways:

VAT Book
The standard VAT book accumulates all the work entered or changes made during the current VAT book period and includes:
  1. New work entered
  2. Over the counter sales
  3. Changes made to clinical records outwith the current period
  4. Payments made
  5. Work done broken down by analysis codes
  6. Discounts taken and surcharges entered

Figures are accumulated from the above and summarised. When the period is reset the month concerned is updated, thus allowing another option (Monthly/Yearly figures) to print out a summary for each month over the year. There can be a problem of timing at the end of the month. For example if the VAT book is reset after morning surgery, the work entered during morning surgery will be taken as work done for the prior month.

Historic VAT book
The historic VAT book scans all clinical records entered during the month of the year required and determines the total fees and drugs breaking them down by veterinary surgeon, work done per surgery and VAT.

Differences between VAT books
When a printout of the month's work is compared with a historic VAT book printout for the same month there may well be a discrepancy. This can be caused by:

  1. The timing problem mentioned above.
  2. Over the counter sales (old format) - as these are not recorded as a clinical entry, the historic VAT book will not pick them up.
  3. Corrections - corrections can be made to clinical records entered previously on the system. The standard VAT book will record a total for corrections carried out and the month in which the VAT book is being reset will be updated accordingly, independently of the month in which the correction was made. As the correction is made to the clinical record concerned, the historic VAT book will read the changed amount, but the monthly printout covering the clinical date will have been updated with the wrong amount.
  4. Operator error - if when the work is being entered, an incorrect date is used (month or year), this work is processed by the standard VAT book as being in the current month. However, the historic VAT book will use the actual transaction date.

In our opinion, reconciling the historic VAT book to the summary figures might be impossible because of the above factors.

The historic VAT book should not form part of the normal operating procedures. It is only for use in emergencies where the printout for a past month has been lost and it can only give an approximate figure. The only reasons we have come across where there are genuine discrepancies in figures is where one of the following operator or other errors has taken place:

  1. VAT book was reset at the wrong time
  2. Undocumented corrections have been made to past periods
  3. Transactions have been included for periods which are closed
  4. The file locking mechanisms have been by-passed
  5. A hardware problem occurred whilst a transaction was being entered

In the last case, there should be a record of that having happened. Only that transaction would be affected. Cases (a) to (d) are much more common.

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