Detailed VAT report not functioning.

Sage and AutoEntry (owned by sage). AutoEntry allow the use non Alpha numeric characters if your suppliers invoices use them. This then breaks the VAT Detailed report once reconciled.  HMRC were not impressed but MORE HELPFUL than sage.

I had to track down the issue, I had to force for help. Sage customer service is at such a low level. I have spent over 30 hours backwards and forwards with sage help etc. 

Can anyone answer why sage and auto entry (owned by sage) are doing their best to look away from the Issue? Also how can a system like this be advertised all over the sage website? Has anyone else come up against this before? Any long term solutions?

Extract from an e-mail with sage and web chat help with auto entry

Hi Andrew, Your integration is set up to place the AutoEntry Invoice number into the Reference field in Sage 50: Some of your invoice numbers contain either a dash or a backslash character. We will allow '-', '/', '#' and '&' to post to the Sage 50 Reference field. Could you please confirm with Sage if any of those characters will cause the problem you are experiencing? 
A:
Ah ok - thanks Andrew, that could be what's causing the issue then. I know with those types of characters they can cause this exact issue on your VAT return - the work around would normally be the saving the file as the UTF-8 (after reconciliation) but it wouldn't prevent it from happening to returns being reconciled if they contain the characters.