MTD VAT and ITSA Bridging Software for Excel Spreadsheets

MTD VAT and ITSA Bridging Software for Excel Spreadsheets

What is MTD VAT and ITSA bridging software?

As part of the Making Tax Digital (MTD) initiative from HMRC, businesses and individuals moving to MTD must keep digital records and submit information through compatible software instead of manual portal entry.

Many businesses still rely on Excel spreadsheets for VAT workings, and many sole traders and landlords also use spreadsheets for income and expense records. Moving to MTD should not force you to rebuild your bookkeeping process from scratch.

This is where our MTD bridging software helps. It creates a digital bridge between your spreadsheets and HMRC so you can continue using your existing records for MTD VAT submissions and MTD ITSA-compatible submissions, while remaining compliant with HMRC requirements.

What spreadsheet templates does the bridging software work with?

The bridging software is designed to work with your current spreadsheet records for both VAT and ITSA workflows, so you do not need to replace your existing spreadsheets.

The software supports multiple sheets in a workbook. For VAT, we currently support mapping the final VAT boxes 1 to 9 from a single calculation sheet. This means you can keep separate sheets for sales, purchases, and calculations, and map from the final VAT workings sheet.

If your final VAT boxes are split across multiple sheets (for example VAT box 5 in sheet 1 and VAT box 6 in sheet 2), the mapping will not work. In this case, add a summary sheet containing all required VAT box calculations in one place.

For ITSA, your source records can remain in your spreadsheet structure as long as the required totals are available for mapping and submission through the bridge.

You can contact AccountsDesk if you have a special spreadsheet requirement and we can provide a custom bridging solution.

Do I need to install any software?

The MTD VAT and ITSA bridging solution from AccountsDesk is web-based, so you do not need to install new software on your machine or make changes to Excel. The bridge is tested to work with current versions of modern browsers including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Microsoft Edge.

Does your bridging software meet HMRC's MTD VAT and ITSA guidelines?

HMRC only provides production access to software that meets its MTD requirements. Our bridging software is built to align with HMRC's MTD VAT requirements and our expanded MTD ITSA bridging capability follows the same digital record keeping and submission principles required for compliant filing.