CIS deductions in WorkflowMAX (UK only)

Under the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS), contractors deduct money from a subcontractor’s payments and pass it to HM Revenue and Customs.

WorkflowMax itself does not handle CIS deductions like Xero can, but you can connect your WorkflowMax account to your Xero organisation and have your invoices and bills sync through to Xero.

Reconciling aged receivables in both Xero and WorkflowMax

If you are a subcontractor dealing with CIS deductions on your sales invoices, you can reconcile the aged receivables in both Xero and WorkflowMax as follows:

1. Create the invoice in WorkflowMax without including the CIS deductions.
2. Approve the invoice. If you are using the integration, the invoice is automatically sent to Xero.
3. If you are using the CIS function in Xero, you must change the account code of each line to match your CIS account codes. Xero will calculate the CIS amount and deduct this from your invoice total.
4. Send the invoice to your client from Xero. Due to the CIS deduction, the invoice total in Xero will be less than the invoice total in WorkflowMax.

Recording payments

When the invoice is paid in Xero, the payment shows in WorkflowMax as Part Paid, due to the CIS deduction.

To correct this in WorkflowMax, you need to record the difference manually as a ‘payment’ for the amount of the CIS deduction:

1. Go to Business > Invoices and open the Awaiting Payment tab.
2. Locate the invoice.
3. In the invoice, open the Payments tab.
4. Add the date the payment was received
5. The amount paid will default to the outstanding amount, which is the CIS deduction amount.
6. In the reference field type ‘CIS’.
7. Select Add Payment. This generates a payment for the unpaid invoice amount. The invoice will then be removed from the Awaiting Payments tab and is shown as paid in full.

Recording CIS deductions in bulk

If you wish to record the CIS deductions in bulk, you can run the WorkflowMax sample report called PAYMENTS - Part Paid Invoice Report The report lists all part paid invoices recorded in WorkflowMax, letting you spot those with CIS deductions. To run this report:

1. Go to Reports > Report Builder.
2. In the Samples tab, scroll down and click the title PAYMENTS - Part Paid Invoice Report.
3. In section 1, rename the report so that you can easily identify it. For example: PAYMENTS - Part Paid Invoice Report - CIS deductions.
4. In section 4, make sure that your own name is shown, otherwise you will not see the report in your My Reports screen.
5. Save and Preview the report. The report is saved under your My Reports tab for you to use in future.
6. In the on-screen report output, open each invoice in turn by right-clicking the hyperlinked invoice number and selecting Open link in new tab.
7. To record the payment of each invoice, follow the steps shown under Recording payments above (starting at Step 3).

Please note, recording invoice payments in this way can affect your reporting. If you're not sure how this will affect your business reporting, we recommend discussing it with your accountant.