Lesson 5 — Reading the VAT 201
Open Accounting → Reporting → UAE VAT Report.
The header tells you three things at a glance: the company, the TRN the return will be filed under, and the period. Below it sit the period controls — This Month, This Quarter, This FY, or Custom with two date fields — plus two toggles, Include draft and Compare to prior.
Four KPI tiles run across the top. On the demo, for Q3 2026:
| KPI | Value | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Net VAT payable | AED 626.00 | What you owe the FTA for the period |
| Output VAT | AED 938.50 | VAT you charged |
| Input VAT | AED 312.50 | VAT you paid and can recover |
| Output effective rate | 2.97% | Output VAT over total outputs |
That effective rate is worth a moment. It is not 5%, and it should not be — it is 938.50 over total outputs of 31,550.00. It reads below 5% because a large slice of the period's supplies were zero-rated. A sudden move in this number is the fastest signal that something has been classified differently from last quarter. It is the single most useful number on the screen for catching a mistake before you file.
Under the tiles, a bar chart plots output against input VAT by month, then the box table itself.
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