The MTD for VAT insight gives you a practice-wide view of VAT obligations for every client under your connected HMRC Agent Accounts. The overview shows one row per client, and you can open any client to see their VAT periods, payments and liabilities.
To access it, select Insights in the left navigation, then select MTD for VAT. This article covers the VAT tab, the first of the tabs at the top of the page.
Important: The MTD for VAT insight is only available for UK practices and requires an HMRC Agent Account to be connected to Dext. You can connect more than one. To set this up, go to How to connect Dext to HMRC for VAT (UK only)
Who can use this insight
The MTD for VAT insight is available on the Practice Advanced plan. No Data Health & Insights add-on is required.
Practice Admins and Client Admins can access this insight by default. Standard users need the Access Practice Insights permission enabled in their colleague privileges. For how to do that, go to Roles and permissions in Dext
Admin users see all clients. Standard users see only clients they've been granted access to.
What the overview shows
The overview is the first screen of the MTD for VAT insight, with one row for each of your clients.
Each row shows the client's status, when their next return is due and who's assigned to them. It also shows their tax number, company number, the total amount outstanding and, if the client has Data Health, their Data Health Score
The People column shows each client's assignee and reviewer as initials. Hover over the initials to see the full name and role. These are the colleagues set as Account assignee and Account reviewer for the client in the Account manager column of the Clients list.
Above the table, the Overdue button filters the overview to clients with an overdue return and shows how many there are. Select Reset to return the table to its default view.
Clients that are unauthorised or don't have a VAT number aren't shown in the overview. A message above the table tells you how many of each there are.
What the statuses mean
The info icon above the table opens a legend that explains each client status. Each client has 1 of these statuses:
Status | What it means |
Good Standing | All returns are filed and there are no outstanding payments. |
Return Due | A VAT return is due but not yet overdue. |
Payment Due | A payment is due but not yet overdue. |
Overdue Return | A VAT return is past its due date. |
Overdue Payment | A payment is past its due date. |
Dissolved | The company is dissolved, according to Companies House. |
In Liquidation | The company is in liquidation, according to Companies House. |
In Administration | The company is in administration, according to Companies House. |
Inactive Registration | The client has no current VAT obligations because their VAT registration appears to have ended. Unfiled historic periods don't affect this status, but they still show as overdue on the client's VAT periods tab. |
No HMRC Data | Dext hasn't retrieved any data from HMRC for the client. |
Opening a client's VAT detail
To see the detail behind a client's status, select the client's name in the overview.
The client page opens with 4 summary cards: Returns due, Total outstanding, VAT scheme and Total payments. Underneath them, 3 tabs hold the detail:
VAT periods: one row per return period, with its status (Up to date or Return overdue), submission and payment due dates, days overdue, and amounts due and outstanding
Payments: the payment records Dext holds for that client
Liabilities: the liability records Dext holds for that client
Select Back to return to the overview.
Adjusting the table
Both the overview and the client pages have grid settings, so you can set up each table to show what you need.
Select the gear icon above a table to open Grid settings. On the overview, you can search by client name and use the Due and Status filters. You can also switch Grid view between Simple and Advanced.
Advanced grid view adds more spreadsheet-style controls:
Columns: select Columns on the right of the table to show or hide columns.
Filters: select Filters on the right of the table to filter by a column's values.
Row groups: drag a column heading into the bar above the table to group rows by that value.
In either view, each column heading also has its own sort and filter controls.