Dedicated to Professor Jozef T. Devreese on the occasion of his 65th birthday PACS 73.21.La A theoretical description is presented for a single-electron transport through a vertical gated quantum dot. Using the configuration interaction method we study the correlation effects in the gated quantum dots. We have found that the electron-electron correlation only slightly changes the single-electron tunnelling conditions in the absence of an external magnetic field, but has a pronounced influence on the magnetic-field induced phase transitions in few-electron systems confined in quantum dots.