I am entering 18 months of data from scratch, so creating rules is a vital time-saver. How can I best manage rules for purchases before and after VAT registration?

Hi usertom5,

Thanks for joining us here on the Community. 

The easiest option would be to split the file in two and upload the pre-VAT transactions first - if you have already enabled VAT (by entering details within the 'Taxes' tab) you can create a bank rule to automatically assign all purchase transactions to 0% by selecting the 'Apply this to transactions that are' 'Money out' 'and include the following' 'All' 'Amount' 'Is greater than' '0.01' and select the appropriate tax code on the drop-down below.

If you haven't yet setup VAT, leave this turned off and turn on after uploading the pre-VAT transactions.

After uploading these, delete the first rule (Banking > Rules > Select the drop-down in the action column > Delete) and then create a new rule with the same details above, instead selecting the 20% S tax code on the drop-down. You can then import the post-VAT registration transactions after this. 🙂

Thank you - a perfect answer but unfortunately I have already downloaded all transactions... 

Assuming I set the rule as to include VAT, Is there a way to bulk edit all purchase transactions prior to Feb 1st? 

Ah! Thanks for getting back to me usertom5, if the transactions are in the for-review tab you can batch tick the pre-VAT transactions by ticking the check-box to the left of each and then select Update > Select the applicable VAT field on the drop-down of the pop-up box. 🙂

^Just to make things easier, you can also select the drop-down beside 'All dates' in the top-left of the For-Review screen to enter a custom date period, and then select the top check-box beside the date column-top batch-select all. 😉

Thank you.  I'll give this a try over the next few days.