Setting up tax (VAT) for UK

[DaveS]

Cheers! Thanks for letting me look at your site.

I just set up an account on yours and took it as far as the checkout... yours is the same...


Sub Total - 4.00
Shipping - 2.00
VAT - 0.90
TOTAL - 6.00

As I understand it, that's not sufficient for the VAT man. The sub total and the shipping prices need to be VAT exclusive and the total needs to be VAT inclusive.

The only way around this is to raise a VAT invoice in another piece of accounting software for each sale. This might be OK for you as your products are higher value so I assume you sell less of them than me. The bulk of my products are under £3 but I currently sell 50-60 a day online and I'm not going to have the time to raise 50 invoices a day when my website catches up.

I'm going to look at bulk exporting the invoices so they can be re-formatted in excel or something, but at the moment I'm considering looking at another more UK friendly cart. I love Zen Cart, but this is something which is pretty much essential to the running of my business.

There has to be someone in the UK who is VAT registered and has a correctly working cart. Please help!

Will the developers fix this for me if I pay them?

[Waitrose Carpark]

Indeed, that's what I do here I have another program to invoice people on. PM me your website DaveS and I'll take a look

[DaveS]

Will do. Although I can't remember what state I left it all in, I think I actually reset it to the default like yours and put the original files back where they should be.

What program are you using for your invoices?

[Waitrose Carpark]

I am using a niche program for my line of work (car garage) for invoicing which no one will have heard of.

Internal invoicing is done with Quickbooks.

[DaveS]

How are you exporting the invoices from Zen Cart? Or are you entering them manually onto your other system?

[MikeyG]

Hi,

I too am in the UK and trying to get prices to show without VAT to show a Subtotal and then show VAT anbd and then show and inc. VAT total. Can no one on the Zencart development team enlighten us. Please?

Many, Many thanks in advance.

MG

[Matchworker]

I have the same problem here. I have been tinkering with Zen for the last 2 or 3 years now and again - now determined to get my store opened!. As far I can remember this has always been an issue.

The only fudge I can think of is to show the VAT amount in brackets with a disclaimer saying something like 'Your total includes VAT of xx'.

I find it hard to understand that there is not more info on this. ZenCart now in its 1.3.7 guise is so powerful and a joy to work with compared to the first version. Surely someone, somewhere, has a workaround for this.

[Chrome Orange]

Just so you are aware yo are calculating your VAT incorrectly.

Strictly speaking you should calculated on a per individual product basis and then totaled up at the end.

You should not be totaling the ex vat and shipping and then calculating VAT.

If you sell 2 of 1 product then you calculate VAT on 1 and then the vat on the other.

eg

1 x productA £100
2 x productB £80

total ex £180
shipping £20
VAT £35
total £235

Is wrong.

1 x productA £100 £117.50
1 x productB £40 £47
1 x productB £40 £47

total ex £180
shipping £20 £23.50
VAT £35
total £235

is correct.


I appreciate that my examples gives the same figures but they don't always and if you use method A then you are under paying the VAT

[DaveS]

Chrome Orange, I'm not an accountant but... I think in actual fact you can do it either way, as long as you are consistent and stick to which ever way you decide on.

Neither way makes you under pay on VAT, as sometimes you will round figures up as well as down, but yes they give different results.

However, calculating VAT at the end on the total gives a more accurate figure, because you only round once rather than several times which introduces more inaccuracy.
The advantage of calculating it per line is that it makes it easier to display VAT inclusive prices on your site, catalogue or in your shop (otherwise the VAT inc price might be different on the invoice.

[crazycucumber]

Sorry to drag this old post up ..

But I too need to do this on several UK web stores.

Is it just a question of hacking about with the Order Invoice templates or is there a switch I am missing somewhere.

I too Need :-

1) Sub Total Ex VAT
2) Shipping Ex Vat
3) VAT
4) TOTAL

If any of you UK stores people have it done already , please let em take a look.

Cheers