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Sales tax settings for export to QB

Started by bobbininc, July 15, 2013, 10:03:39 AM

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bobbininc

We apparently have made a muddle of the sales taxes in QB, likely because we misinterpreted the store settings. My "Sales Tax Liabilty"  report is a bit of a jumble, with several new categories having popped up. So, before I screw it up (again), can you please verify:

"Tax item" is for any sales item that is NOT taxable in any taxing jurisdiction; i.e. I use a sales tax item of "Out of State" for items that are not in a taxable state, so this item would be ideal for this category.

"Tax Reference item" can be set to "order_tax_rate" if the accounting software is doing the tax calculations; in my case, the sales tax is just being passed through from Yahoo. So, is this the appropriate setting?

I have three Yahoo stores, and have attached a Microsoft Word document showing my current settings.

Steve

David Johns

Steve,

That's correct

"Taxable Sales Account/Item" is used for sales that are NOT taxable.

"Tax Reference Item" can be either be:

  • Set to order_tax_rate if you want SuperManager to simply  the tax reference.  In this case, QuickBooks will calculate the taxes.  As long as your tax rates are set up the same between Yahoo and QuickBooks this should turn out ok and will likely be the same as you would create transactions in QuickBooks if you did it manually.
  • A unique sales tax item name that has a 0% tax rate.  In this case, SuperManager will create a line item for sales taxes and set the amount to the exact amount  by Yahoo.  The name of the item used for the line item will match the tax rate name that applies to this order.

The screenshots look acceptable.  However, unless you have some reason not to, I would set them up identical to one another so that the same items are being used in both stores.

Thanks,
David
SuperManager Support
info@thesupermanager.com

bobbininc

#2
This still does not appear to be working as I expect. We used our test files to run a small experiment, using only two orders. One, for $45.66, was from Massachusetts, and had $2.36 in tax, and $5.50 in non-taxable shipping charges. The other, for $106.25, was from Alabama, and therefore not taxable.

As I understand it, the Alabama order should have appeared under "Out of State" (see attached settings screen capture), because that was the setting for "Tax Item". "Tax Reference Item", as I understand it, should contain only the taxes levied under "SM Tax Ref Item". (From the documentation online: "SuperManager will export the dollar amount of the taxes as a line item ")

However, the entire amount for both orders shows up under "SM Tax Ref Item" (see attached QB Sales Tax Liability report). Nothing shows up under "Out of State", even though one of the sales was to Alabama. Further, the line item "MA Sales Tax (SM)", which contains the actual sales tax levied by Yahoo Store, shows $5.50 for Total Sales, the same for Non-Taxable Sales, and then $2.36 for Tax Collected.

What am I doing wrong?

Steve

bobbininc

We also tried the setting "order_tax_rate" for Tax Reference Item (see attached screen capture). That resulted in an error during the export to Quickbooks (see attached screen capture). This happened only if one of the orders was in Massachusetts (and therefore taxable), but all orders exported subsequent to that order were also affected.

Can you let us know what this error means? Did we incorrectly specify the parameter?

Thanks for your help!

Steve

David Johns

Steve,

Sorry - I told you wrong.  Unless you have the tax reference item set to "order_tax_rate" it always uses the same tax reference item.  As you can see, however, it does split things up into taxable and non-taxable so you know what your taxable sales is.  It only uses the "Tax item" when SuperManager can't match an order to a tax rate defined in your store settings and in that case it uses this tax item for the line item, but not for the reference.

As for the second issue, where you have used the "order_tax_rate", I need to see how your tax rates are set up in your store settings.  Do you want to attach a screenshot of that for me?

Thanks,
David
SuperManager Support
info@thesupermanager.com

David Johns

Steve,

I got the screenshots you sent.  I noticed one other potential problem that could be causing this.  On the store settings you have the "Do not export this Pay Method in this account" setting checked.  This will make SuperManager skip at least any orders with "Visa" as the pay method.  If you have this setting checked for other pay methods it would skip them as well.  Is this intentional?

Thanks,
David
SuperManager Support
info@thesupermanager.com

bobbininc

David,

That setting is checked in our production files for MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. (The Visa setting was from the test file I was using to play with the various settings.)  I confess that I did not know that it was on for certain pay methods. However, everything seems to be okay in our production QuickBooks - orders are uploading, being charged out, etc. In what way are orders "skipped" if this setting is on?

David Johns

Steve,

I'm sorry - I think I led you astray on that.  When I went back through it to see exactly how that setting is used, it seems that setting only applies to batch exports.  The log message SuperManager was giving looked like the type of thing that could happen if an order is skipped.  Are you getting messages like this frequently or was that something you just got for one particular order?  If the latter, were you ever able to get that order to export?

Thanks,
David
SuperManager Support
info@thesupermanager.com

bobbininc

David,

If by "messages like this" you mean the string of numbers in the screen shot (1366120991), no, we've never seen that before.

The messages we get for every order during the XML exchange with QuickBooks says "Order 123456: Pay method 'Mastercard' does not have an item name in the store settings.  the pay method name." This seems harmless, as all of our orders are being exported successfully.

I'm lost at this point. If I read the chain correctly, then I have to put "order_tax_rate" in the tax reference item, which demonstrably does not work (as shown in the screen shots). Is this a bug? Or is some other setting needed?

Steve

David Johns

Steve,

Glad we were able to do a remote connection to look at this problem together.  It seems that this is caused by the tax rate name being the name of a QuickBooks items with a different tax rate than what you have as the tax rate in SuperManager.  Once we renamed the tax rate to the name of a QuickBooks item you already had set up for the appropriate tax rate it worked.  We will address fixing the error message so it alerts the user that this is the problem.  Looking forward to your confirmation that the tax liability report works out like you want it after adjusting these settings in your live file.

Thanks,
David
SuperManager Support
info@thesupermanager.com

bobbininc

Hi David,

Yes, it seems to work exactly as desired. Attached is the revised Sales Tax Liability report from Quickbooks. The amounts now fall into exactly the needed categories. This report was produced using the same two sales receipts used to generate the incorrect report attached to my July 16 post, and you can see the radical difference in the way that Quickbooks posted the amounts from the sales. 

Thanks again for all of your help with this.

Steve