Sales Tax Frustrations

I've brought this up before... but could we get some clarity from the top on what the motivation is behind maintaining sales tax rates at an item level? Could we have ONE example where that is beneficial? (OK, I can think of a couple, but really... does anyone use this?)

My biggest frustration with Commit's sales tax system is that it has NO expandability. NONE. I live in the US as do most of your users. Here we live in states that have hundreds of counties. We have to track sales tax BY county. There is NO way to do this in CommitCRM. Quickbooks, yes. But what if I don't want everyone to have to use Quickbooks? That should be back-office accounting only. Anyway. This cost me $50 today. I would rather pay that $50 to get this working the way it should. Actually, I would pay more than that to have this system use some method of sanity to figure out sales tax.

Here's what we need. We need an UNLIMITED # of sales tax configurations. That can be attained by maintain tax rates in a separate window, and specify tax groups (like Quickbooks does). Then you assign a tax group to each customer, and mark each item as taxable or not.

Stuff like this frustrates me to no end. I just don't understand the thought process behind this. Anyway... Just curious if this is ever going to see any development time?

As you know RangerMSP is not an accounting system. Nevertheless it does offer flexibility of tax settings at both the Item and customer Account levels.

When invoicing from RangerMSP to QuickBooks - QuickBooks is the only system that sets the taxes. So, if you are using the RangerMSP-QuickBooks Link option let QuickBooks handle all taxes for you and does not use any of the Tax settings and options in RangerMSP (we do not aim to replace QB in regards to tax calculations).

Having said all this, we have received a few other requests to offer more taxing options right within RangerMSP and we will definitely be looking into this. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on how you believe that it should work.

I don't want CommitCRM to be an accounting system. I just want to be able to print an accurate invoice out of CommitCRM. Is that too much to ask?

Invoices are generated from RangerMSP but these are QuickBooks invoices and have all correct tax settings as you configure in QB. In any case, we do understand that you're looking for more flexibility in regards to the built in tax module in RangerMSP and we will look into this. Thanks.

Getting CommitCRM to give us a correct invoice is something we have wastes many of hours on.

It never seems correct how matter how much we play with it.

I don't necessarily care about printing an "invoice" fromCommitCRM. I want to be able to print a work order or service form that has the correct dollar amount. When the tech is done working we want them to be able to have the customer sign off on the work that was done with the charges associated.

Thank you for the clarification.

We service three counties, with three different tax rates
County1 6% (Florida Base State Sales Tax)
County2 6.5% (County1 levy .5%)
County3 7% (County2 levy 1%)

How to handle this in the quoting module. Will not be using the QBooks link very soon.

Thank you

Here's what you should do:

Create 3 Tax records for the countries you serves and set a "code" for each:

"F" - County1 6% (Florida Base State Sales Tax)
"C" - County2 6.5% (County1 levy .5%)
"T" County3 7% (County2 levy 1%)

Assign all 3 tax codes above to your Item records settings. This is done via the Item properties Window.

To each of your customers assign the tax code/s that is/are relevant for them. This is done via the Account's 'Details' tab.

Done.

The selected Tax/es for the Accounts will affect new Quotes created for this Accounts.

Hope this helps.

...But what happens with County3, County4, County5, etc...

Hey! While answering racassel we expected this follow up question from you :-) For additional countries additional Items can be created. Yes, we have this on file...

Lol, ok.

1.) Seems cumbersome to have to add this to every single item, then, if a county changes rates which happens occasionally, go back and change a thousand items?

2.) Is there a way to set default tax codes (3) for all items to reduce the digital drudgery?

3.) How will this work with the merge to Quickbooks when I implement it Q3 this year?

Rick

1) You do NOT need to update the Items, just the Tax Rate value in the for the Tax definition. Done, this will affect All items using this Tax code immediately.

2) Yes, for new Items. Under Tools > Options > Charges & Contracts tab.

3) If you use QuickBooks everything related Taxes is solely set by QuickBooks. RangerMSP Tax settings will Not affect any tax related settings or calculation in QuickBooks.

HTH

Yea. :)

We have the same issues taxes. We have resorted to NOT having CommitCRM deal with tax on invoices but rather have Quickbooks do that.

HOWEVER, we have been using the CommitCRM QUOTES and there is where we have been running into many issues again!

Would be nice to have this work correctly or not sure why even include it as an option to use.

Doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to change. If anything it seems like it would make it simpler to code. But that's easy enough for me to say since I'm not a programmer :-)

Is there a way to change the value limit for the tax code? Currently in GA each county is identified with a three digit number and I would like to use the correct tax format for our State in CommitCRM. We want to utilize the sales tax functions for Quoting.

Thanks for asking. As discussed you're limited to about 35 different tax rates while we understand that you need more. Unfortunately this is a current limitation and we've added your feedback. Thanks!

As others have mentioned, in the U.S., there is no reason for taxable rates by item as sales tax is based upon the state/county/municipality you sell/deliver the products to. Therefore, Why Doesn't CommitCRM simply allow us to have a Taxable/Non-taxable check box in an item and let it pull the rate from the customer account for which the item is being selected, based upon the account's tax setting? Our company gave up on individual items in CommitCRM a long time ago and only have items such as "Hardware," "Software," "Shipping & Handling," etc. (we pull in the detail & sales tax under QuickBooks for billing). I wouldn't mind much but we now want to start using the quotation features of CommitCRM and this sales tax issue is making this impossible, as far as we can tell. Again, this is not for any billing reason but just so we can distribute an accurate quote fromCommitCRM. If we assigned a tax rate to a customer and the items were either deemed taxable or not, then CommitCRM could calculate the tax on the various taxable items based upon the customer's rate, not the items themselves (which again, makes little sense). Think for a moment that if I buy 1000 network cables that I plan to sell to customers across the country, what good does assigning a tax rate to the cable item do me when the tax for each sale will be based on the customer location that I sell to? Further, when trying to quote on the cables, how do I get the sales tax correct for 100 different end-user quotes across the nation? How about at least allowing us to manually fill in a field with the appropriate amount of tax and a description so we can add "Sales Tax at x%" for the quotations. Please let me know if we are mistaken or haven't done our research on the quoting portion of this. All we need is to be able to do is add a generic item like “hardware” to a quote and somehow get the right sales tax figure to show, based upon any random account that we decide to quote for, as this would solve our problem. The way it stands now, we just can't use the quoting system because of this sales tax calculating issue and this is very frustrating.

+50. As far as I can tell, there is no logical reason for the current implementation.

+50 from me as well! For us tax is based of where we are and not where the customer is so it isnt a big deal currently.

It was when we had a location in another county, but that was pre- CommitCRM for us.

It would be easier to put the sales tax in the customers account and then check tax/non tax.

That would solve all kinds of problems!

We hear you. Our next release, 6.2, will take care of this :)

Are you serious? That's is fantastic!!!

Yep! :-)

Great news!!!