Importing Data to VAT Filer from Microsoft Excel

VAT Filer continues to support importing Excel files with an extension of .xlsx and now supports xlsm, but files with an extension of .xls can no longer be imported directly.

Users who have Excel 2007 or later can re-save the spreadsheet with an xlsx extension. Users with a pre-2007 version of Excel will need to convert the .xls file to .csv format to allow importing into VAT Filer.

Please note: For cloud users the size of the source data file is 1MB and for non-cloud users it is 5MB. Any files bigger than the specified size may take longer to import.

Converting your Spreadsheet to CSV Format

Please note: CSV files do not allow multiple ‘worksheets’ so users need to ensure that all of the data fields that are required to be imported into MTD VAT are on the same worksheet.

1. Open the spreadsheet.

2. Go to File > Save as.

3. Choose a location for the file to be saved.

4. Select the file format as .csv (comma separated value).

5. You may be asked to confirm that you will lose some features in your workbook, click Yes to save the file.

Important: The values should be in a number format, not currency format. Currency symbols should not be present in the cells.

Using a TaxCalc CSV File

If you don’t have a spreadsheet, or are having problems getting all of the information into one sheet, then you can download the CSV file below and complete it. It can then be imported via the MTD VAT wizard.

Download CSV file