bookkeeping / vat

I appreciate you posting your concern here in the Community, @ian_b. 

I'll outline a couple of handy details to help you with this query about managing your bank transactions to automatically calculate VAT.

A feature to automatically calculate VAT for expenses is unavailable in QuickBooks Desktop. You can manually assign and calculate those taxes in your expense transactions to track them. I’ll show you how:

1. Go to the Company menu, and click Chart of Accounts.
2. From the Chart of Accounts window, right-click anywhere and click New.
3. In the Choose Account Type window, select Expense then click Continue.
4. Enter the Account Name and other details, then click Save & Close.
5. When creating a transaction (like a bill) in which you will be tracking sales tax, enter the bill as usual but go to the Expenses tab instead and select the expense account created.
6. Then, enter the amount of sales tax in the Amount column (this will need to be calculated manually).
7. Ensure that any detail in this transaction adds up to the correct total after clicking Recalculate.

From there, you’ll now be able to keep an accurate record and easily monitor these taxes. 

Furthermore, you can see this article for the detailed step-by-step guide about this process: Track sales tax on purchases from suppliers.

If you encounter issues while working on your sales tax, I’ve added this handy resource here: How to resolve common sales tax issues.

Know that you can post anytime if you have more questions about managing sales tax in QuickBooks Desktop. Please know the Community has your back. Take care!