This guide is for operators in the United Kingdom and Ireland. If you are in New Zealand or Australia, nothing here applies to you and nothing in your account has changed.
Your responsibility
Glovebox sets up your country's standard VAT rates and treatments and produces the documents your customers and your accountant need. It is not your accountant or your lawyer. The rates, the treatment of each kind of charge, your registration status and your rental agreement are yours to confirm with your own advisers. Settings → Localisation and taxes asks you to acknowledge this once; you can change any line there at any time.
Start with the declaration
Settings → Localisation and taxes. Glovebox will not assume you charge VAT. Answer the question about whether you are VAT registered and, if you are, enter your VAT number. Until you answer, no tax is added to a price and no document carries VAT wording.
Below that is the table of VAT treatments: one line per kind of charge (hire, extras, fuel, fines passed on, tolls, damage, and so on) with the rate each one carries. Your country's defaults are filled in when you sign up. Change a line only on your accountant's advice. It affects new bookings and charges, not documents already issued.
What a customer receives
A booking confirmation is issued when a booking is made. It is deliberately not a VAT invoice, and says so at the top. In the UK and Ireland the tax point for a hire is each payment, not the booking, so a document issued before any money moved cannot be the invoice.
A VAT invoice is issued for each payment a business customer makes: one for the deposit, one for the balance. Each is numbered in your invoice sequence, dated to the payment, and shows the VAT at each rate in the share that payment covers. Private customers do not receive one; their payment receipts carry the same VAT detail without the invoice wording.
A customer books as a business by ticking "This booking is for a business" at checkout, or later on their booking page, and giving the business name and VAT number. The invoice then names the business. Glovebox never guesses this; a customer has to say so.
Refunds become credit notes
When you refund part or all of a payment that had a VAT invoice, Glovebox issues a credit note against that invoice. It is numbered in the same sequence as your invoices, dated to the refund, names the invoice it credits, and credits the VAT at each rate in proportion to what was refunded. The customer sees it on their booking page beside their invoices.
Refunds to private customers are recorded with their VAT share, so your return can be adjusted, but no document is produced.
Your copy of the documents
Open the booking and use Download VAT invoice or credit note. Pick the document from the list. The button only appears on bookings where a business customer has an invoice or credit note.
The figures for your VAT return
Revenue → Reports → VAT export. Choose the period, and the tab shows your VAT by rate for every document issued in that window: payments, credit notes (as negatives), paid post-hire charges and retained cancellation fees. Export CSV gives one row per item with the customer, their country, and the flags below, for your accountant.
Every figure is read from the document as it was issued. Changing a setting today does not alter what an old document shows.
Two columns on the export are for your adviser and do not change what the customer was charged:
- Long-term hire to overseas consumer. A hire over 30 days to a private customer who belongs in another country. The place of supply moves to that country, which your adviser needs to know about.
- Days outside country. On the booking you can record how many hire days the vehicle was used in another country. Record it when it happens; it is exported for apportionment.
If you bill in a different currency
A UK VAT invoice must show its VAT in sterling and an Irish one in euro. If your prices are in another currency, Localisation and taxes asks for the exchange rate you use. Every VAT document then prints the VAT total in the tax currency and the rate it was converted at. Use the published period rate and update it when it changes. If you bill in sterling or euro already, you will not see this field.
The UK Flat Rate Scheme
If HMRC has accepted you onto the scheme, tick I am on the VAT Flat Rate Scheme in Localisation and taxes and enter your flat rate. Your invoices do not change. The VAT export then shows what you owe (your flat rate on your VAT-inclusive takings) beside the VAT on your documents, so the two are never confused.
Card surcharges
Surcharging consumer card payments is prohibited in the UK and Ireland, so Glovebox never adds a card fee for operators there, whatever the Card surcharge module says. Price the cost of card acceptance into your rates.
Insurance fees
If you sell third-party insurance and add an arrangement fee of your own, that fee carries Insurance Premium Tax and you must be registered for it. The fee is off until you confirm both in Localisation and taxes. Most operators should build their margin into the hire price instead.