#22 How do I change the VAT% for my items/services?

On 1st December 2008 the British Government cut VAT from 17.5% to 15%. (Please note: this article is only applicable if you charge your patients VAT, otherwise you don’t need to do anything!)

This article explains how to change the VAT of your products. Please note that this will NOT change any historic invoices which you have already entered – it will only affect future invoices from this point onward.

[1] Changing the default VAT%

– In ClinicOffice 2005, go to the File menu
– Click Settings…
– In the ClinicOffice 2005 Settings , make sure that you are on the Global Settings
– Located under Financial Options, change the Tax Percent to 15%
– Click OK to finish

[2] Changing the VAT% for existing Products

There are two ways to accomplish this. You can either manually adjust each item (which is fine if you don’t have too many), or they can all be done in one database operation.

If you only have a few items, we recommend manually adjusting your items. Here’s how :-

– Go to your Items & Services grid
– Double click on one of the items
– Inside the Item Editor change the Tax Percent to 15

The second method is to perform a database operation to update all your items in one go.

– Please take a BACKUP of your database
– After the backup is finished, go to the Tools menu
– Click Advanced DB Operation
– Select the code below and COPY it to the clipboard (CTRL-C or right-click | Copy)

update item set taxpercent=15 where taxpercent=17.5

– Paste the code into the Advanced Database Operation window (in ClinicOffice)
– Click the Execute button

A message will appear once the database operation has finished. Click OK to dismiss this message and then click Close to finish.

Now refresh the Items & Services screen and you should see that all the VAT percentages have been changed from 17.5% to 15%.