Our iFinance Product Expert, Chris Pomfret, was recently invited to appear on an ISBA Bursarcast episode discussing VAT and how it might impact the future of Independent education.
Chris discussed the impact of any VAT changes from an iSAMS perspective, and how our systems can support schools if circumstances change for schools in the future. To learn more, you can listen to the full episode or read in the form of a short Q&A below.
Q: What is the current landscape from iSAMS’ perspective?
A: We are in the same boat as schools. We don’t yet know the full implications or state of any upcoming changes to VAT obligations. However, we are fully aware that there may be a need for change and preparation is important.
Currently, we are fully equipped to handle VAT, Making Tax Digital, partial exemption – and anything else that might be thrown at us.
If we had to enable VAT tomorrow for a school, we are able to do that quite simply. From our perspective, we are ready to go.
Q: VAT can be a complex thing to manage, will there be the ability to craft a system around a school’s needs?
A: That may be a consideration from schools to start off with, as we navigate any new legislation. However, from iSAMS’ and iFinance’s perspective, everything is behind software configuration. It sounds simple, but you turn on VAT in your system and input your tax codes. That’s all iSAMS really needs.
We do need to relay that back into the fees too, so this may require some extra steps according to the individual school and situation.
When VAT changes come into force, and if there are special VAT circumstances for various pupils or for special educational needs for example, then schools will need to consider how they’d like to approach that. This is what might present the most complexities.
A second consideration for schools will be around the VAT invoice and making sure that’s a legally vatable document.
However, for our schools, it’s fundamentally as simple as ticking a box within the Fee Billing module that says ‘Show VAT’. There may be some schools that have bespoke invoice templates where they don’t show VAT altogether, which may also require some additional thought.
Until we all know more about how, what, and when, it’s relatively up in the air about how it’s going to work on an individual basis for schools. We’re just keen to reassure schools that we are here to support you. You can always contact us. We can enable VAT capabilities and show you how it’s enabled, go through set up, and ensure you’re ready to go.
We can’t give schools VAT advice, but we can walk you through the process with your software and show you how to connect to the Government Gateway if you need to.
However challenging it gets, we are well equipped to deal with changes as it currently stands. We have schools already using our partial VAT and VAT elements. It simply comes down to how it looks in real life based on any additional legislation that comes in.
Q: There has been discussion around changes being more likely to come into force in September 2025. What impact does this have?
A: As much as we can’t know exactly what’s going to happen, we’d like to reassure schools that our development team are on standby. We have around 600 schools that will be affected by any incoming legislation, so our team are ready to go if we need to make any changes within our software to facilitate VAT.
Overall, discussions have centred around VAT for Independent schools coming into force around September 2024. This means there is time to get facilities and functionality in place to support this within your school, including any updates to software.
The September 2025 timeline gives us some flexibility and we have plenty of resources for development. We’d like to reassure schools and reduce the panic where we can. We are well equipped, staying on top of news and updates as they come, and here to help.
The iSAMS suite of finance solutions were created with the needs of Independent schools in mind.
iFinance offers a modern, secure, and cloud-based financial system for your school. Bringing together administrative and fee billing elements, it can help your team to better manage its time and reduce mistakes. Features like invoice automation, multi-currency support, and in-built reporting, iFinance enables you to take complete control over your school finances.
Fee Billing Manager is an excellent addition to the iSAMS modular system. The solution gives your school everything you need for control over bills and invoices. Generate bills, add charges, and keep track of every aspect of each bill. Click here to find out more: https://www.isams.com/platform/modules/feebilling/
If you’d like to see iFinance in action, access a full demo below: