UK iPhone

The creators of VAT Mate have asked me to review their app, so I downloaded it from the App Store. Although they offered to give me a freebie, I decided to cough up the 59p myself, to make sure the review is completely unbiased

VAT Mate is billed as a UK VAT calculator, and it does do exactly what it says on the tin. On startup you are invited to choose the relevant VAT rate, either the 5% reduced rate, the 15% standard rate, or the 17,5% rate which will apply again in 2010 (the 15% rate is a temporary reduction).

After selecting the rate, you are presented with two blank fields, one for the VAT excluded amount, and one for the VAT included amount. You can enter amounts into either, and then press Calculate to find out the VAT amount. This allows both sellers to find out how much to add onto their selling price to account for the VAT, and buyers to find out how much VAT they are paying on the VAT-inclusive price.

The screen layout has been designed to allow all the fields and buttons to remain visible when the built-in keyboard comes up to allow entry, and the designers have ensured that the numeric keyboard is already selected. However, this keyboard also contains all of the punctuation marks, so only the top row of keys (the numeric keys) is really useful for the application: the other two rows are not relevant.

While I can understand that it was easier for the creators to just use the built-in keyboard when programming the application, it would have been much better to create a custom numeric keypad; this would also have allowed the keys to be put in the familiar numeric layout, which would speed entry.

It also might have been useful to include some guidance on when the 5% rate applies and exactly when the 17.5% rate comes back into effect.

Nevertheless this is a useful app for those who need to calculate VAT rates, and it does so much more easily than an ordinary calculator does. VAT Mate is available in the App Store.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 6th, 2009 at 10:37 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.