As you may be aware, attributing the VAT Status of Reverse Charge to an item dated post-Brexit via the API involves setting the ec_status to “EC Services”. Due to some recent API work, this will be changing in the near future.
What’s changing?
Rather than using an ec_status of “EC Services” or “1” when assigning Reverse Charge status to items, API clients will be expected to use “Reverse Charge” or “4”. Behind the scenes, we will be migrating all items stored in FreeAgent to this new status where appropriate (dated on or after 01/01/2021, on a UK company excluding Northern Ireland and currently tagged as EC Services) so this new status will also be returned from the API.
This change will apply to the following APIs:
- Bank Transaction Explanations
- Bills
- Credit Notes
- Estimates
- Expenses
- Invoices
When is the changeover happening?
We will be beginning the migration process on Thursday 10th November 2022.
The migration will happen one company at a time, switching their data to be compatible with the new Reverse Charge status and turning on the API feature, along with the new validation. We expect this process to be complete within 2-3 days.
How will I know what to send?
Once the feature has been turned on for a company, attempting to set a status of EC Services on items dated post-Brexit will result in a 422 unprocessable entity response with an appropriate error message.
{
"errors": [
{
"message": "ec_status must be blank, \"UK/Non-EC\" or \"Reverse Charge\""
}
]
}
Note, the error message above may also mention VAT MOSS as an appropriate status if applicable.
EC Services will still be a valid status for items dated pre 01/01/2021 or attributed to a company from Northern Ireland.
During the migration period, you may need to retry requests with “EC Services” if “Reverse Charge” hasn’t been activated for the relevant company. Once all companies have been migrated, we will update this thread.
Companies based in Northern Ireland
Once the feature has been switched on for companies based in Northern Ireland, they will be able to use all existing VAT options (UK/Non-EC, EC Services, EC Goods, MOSS) as well as Reverse Charge. The main difference is that items dated 01/01/2021 or later will not be automatically switched to Reverse Charge for these companies.