Over the weekend we introduced a new sales tax feature that some members have been asking for. Before talking about it, I’d first like to say that if you don’t charge sales tax, then this feature doesn’t apply to you.

Or if you charge one set tax % for all jobs/services/items that you provide your customers then this feature also won’t apply to you. The reason is because you can set your tax % directly on any invoice screen before creating it and all future invoices that are created will automatically include and calculate that tax %.

So who is this feature for?

• If you have to charge different sales tax percentages based on the county your customer lives in, then this feature is for you.
• If you charge one sales tax % for residential customers and another tax % for commercial customers, then this feature is for you.
• If you charge different sales tax percentages for different services/items/products that you provide your customers, then this feature is for you.

Before talking about these options and about the sales tax feature in more detail, I wanted to mention that even if one of the above 3 options apply to your business, you don’t have to use the sales tax feature. Always keep in mind that you can set any tax % you want from the invoice screen itself when you’re creating the invoice.

So with this said, why did we create this feature? It’s all about automation! For example, many members print customer invoices directly from the daily calendar. There is a “print all invoices” button that can be clicked on the daily calendar screen. So if you have 6 customer appts. listed for the day for example, you can click this button and have 6 invoices created and printed in just seconds with all the company, customer, and job details filled in automatically.

But you wouldn’t be able to use this “print all invoices” feature to print all invoices automatically if for example let’s say one invoice had a job on it that you charged 5% sales tax for and another customer invoice had an item on it that needed to be charged a sales tax of 4%.

So by setting this up on our new Sales tax screen, The Customer Factor will now know what sales tax % applies for each job/customer so that you can print all invoices automatically from the daily calendar and have them all be calculated correctly with the proper sales tax %.

So where do you find the Sales Tax feature?

Run your mouse over the “Business Center” tab and you’ll see a new “Sales Tax” dropdown. Click on it and you’ll see 3 options available to you. Here is what the screen looks like:

It’s just a matter of choosing which option applies to you.

Here is option 1 chosen:

Counties can be added directly on this screen by clicking the “Add” link or you can also add counties from within any customer profile screeen. So as you’ll see above if I have some customers living in Etowah county they’ll automatically get charged a 4% sales tax on their invoices for any service my company provides for them.

Note: Always make sure to click “update” after making your choice and inserting your tax information. And if you need to reset for any reason, click the “reset” button which will unselect all options. Then click the “update” button to save the fact you want to reset.

Here is a screenshot of option 2 selected:

Pretty self explanatory. Simply insert the proper sales tax % that you need to charge your residential customers and the proper sales tax % you need to charge your commercial customers. Then click “update”. Any future invoices you create for your residential/commercial customers will be calculated accordingly.

Here is sales tax option 3 selected:

Select this option to open it and then insert the sales tax % that most of your jobs/services/products are taxed at.

Next go through the dropdown list of your jobs and select any that are taxed differently and insert the proper tax % in the % box on the right.

We provide 4 dropdowns by default where you can choose 4 services that might be taxed differently, however you will see a “+” sign to the right of the 4th dropdown where you can open up another dropdown if you have even more services that need to be taxed differently.

And that’s pretty much it. Again to repeat what was mentioned at the beginning of this update, you don’t need to use this sales tax screen (even if you charge sales tax), but it does help save you time from having to insert the sales tax % directly to the customer invoice before creating it (assuming your sales tax percentages vary from customer to customer or from job to job).

And as a reminder, if you do charge a sales tax % that is the same tax % for all customers and all jobs/services/items, then once you insert it into one invoice and create that invoice, all future invoices will be created with that tax % calculated into the invoice.

Take care and have a great day,

Steve