This is not GST Worksheet issue, it’s a general issue how Manager decides whether something is a sale or purchase. For invoices, that is easy but for receipts, payments and journal entries - this is unresolved problem.
There is much bigger topic discussing the same issue here:
Other accounting systems are simply addressing this issue by using separate tax codes for sales and separate ones for purchases. E.g. GST 10% on Sales & GST 10% on Purchases. I didn’t want to go down this route because it results in duplication of tax codes and it most cases - Manager can figure out whether GST is charged on sale or purchase on its own so it has just one GST 10% tax code.
The issue is that on journal entries, receipts and payments, Manager can get it wrong. I still think I made the right call to have single tax code to cater for both sales and purchases because it doesn’t really matter whether merchant fees are reducing GST sales or increasing GST purchases. The net tax liability is the same. As far as I know, no tax authority (including ATO) considers movements in tax sales and tax purchases an error if the net tax liability is unchanged.
As per Correcting GST errors | Australian Taxation Office
A GST error is a mistake you made in working out your GST net amount on your activity statement that would, if it was the only mistake that you made, result in you reporting or paying too much GST (credit error) or reporting or paying too little GST (debit error).
So as you can see, from ATO point of view, if your BAS worksheet figures change, it’s non-issue as long as your net GST is the same.
So your refund figure remains the same. It’s non-issue for ATO.
I don’t consider this to be a bug because Manager currently works the way I have intended for it to work.
- Sales invoices are sales
- Credit notes are negative sales
- Purchase invoices are purchases
- Debit notes are negative purchases
- Receipts are sales
- Payments are purchases
- Expense claims are purchases
- Journal entries are either sales or purchases based on the amount being credit or debit on line item
This model works well for most cases. It obviously breaks down when receiving refund from supplier which would be a receipt. You would expect this receipt to be negative purchase but Manager will classify it as a sale.
It also breaks down when adding purchases (e.g. service fees) to sale transaction such as receipt. Every line item will be a sale.