I’ve been told I need to provide customers with a VAT invoice when requested, why can’t Treatwell do this for me?
Treatwell operates as a booking platform, connecting customers to our partners and facilitating the booking process. For processing the transactions between the two parties, we charge our partners a fee. Unfortunately, because Treatwell doesn’t charge any fees/VAT to the customer, we’re not able to generate an invoice for the customer.
We can only generate an invoice for the costs applied to you as a partner, which we do twice a month in our regular invoicing cycle.
How is the commission and VAT amount calculated?
We’ve always charged our commissions on the total booking amount, and charge the national standard rate of VAT.
The VAT for a booking is calculated as a percentage of the commissions that you are charged. So, if you are being charged 20p commission on a booking, we will apply VAT at a rate of 20% (of the 20p), which is 4p. You would therefore be charged 24p in total.
For other costs such as for photoshoots or monthly fees, the VAT is calculated from the total amount.
Why do Treatwell charge VAT based on the total booking amount?
It is standard industry practice to charge commission on the total amount that the customer pays, and we’ve always made that clear in our partner terms.
Why do you charge VAT to a salon that isn't VAT registered?
Because we as a company are VAT registered, we are obliged by law to charge VAT on all of our service charges.
My business is also VAT registered; do I still have to pay this VAT amount?
As mentioned above, we have to charge VAT on all costs.
If you’re a VAT registered business yourself, you can claim back the VAT we charge you in your standard quarterly VAT declaration to HMRC.
If you’re not VAT registered, unfortunately, you won’t be able to make a claim.