Assign the correct Tax Schedule in Visual Integrator

SOLVED

Hey All,

I have a VI question. I have a pretty decent understanding of import jobs, but this one has me stumped.

For our eCommerce website, we now have to start collecting sales tax in states where we meet economic nexus, and bring those taxes into Sage via Sales Order when we export them from our eCommerce platform. We are located in MO and have been collecting taxes since we opened shop, but the Tax Schedule property in the job in question is set to default to the MO tax Schedule. So anything that is taxed, when imported into Sage, shows up as MO state tax. It's easy enough to change manually, but I'd love for this to be automated.

The way it has been set up by a previous technician, is via a Temp Field.

1. The Temp001 field is set to look at column 11 in the .csv we use to import. Column 11 is where tax values are listed.

2. Then a Tax Schedule Field looks at the Temp001 field and is conditionally set to Temp001=0, with the default set to NONTAX.

3. The a second Tax Schedule field looks at the Temp001 field and has its conditional value set to Temp00<>0, with the default set to MO (for our MO state tax schedule).

How do I get the second Tax Schedule field to look at the State of the order being imported and then assign the appropriate state Tax Schedule? Again, right now, it just defaults to MO. I understand why - because it is the default. But if I create more temp field/Tax Schedule combos like the one for MO, it defaults to the the highest alphabetic state two letter code, and consequently that state's tax schedule. How do I get the VI job to tweez out the correct schedule by state?

I hope this makes sense.

Thanks in advance!

  • +1
    verified answer

    First, I suggest you consult with your tax or financial advisor about the proper sales tax treatments for items you ship. Sales taxes can be more complex than they seem, especially in tax-complex states that may require multiple sales taxes to be collected on one order.

    You might get away with using the ship-to-state as your sales tax schedule. However, that's likely not enough for states where you could be required to collect and remit multiple taxes for different jurisdictions.

    Some third-party solutions, such as Avalara, resolve the technical ( and tax ) side of this issue by substituting one tax schedule - AVATAX - and relying on their servers to compute sales tax based on item and ship to ( additional fee applies ).

    The best approach to the collection of sales tax is probably to sit down with your accountant, discuss the states that you have nexus, and determine how complex the sales tax process might be. From there, decide whether to create your own sales tax schedules or rely on a third party like Avalara to manage the sales tax for you.

  • +1 in reply to Wayne Schulz
    verified answer

    Hey Wayne!

    Thanks so much for the reply. I think I solved it in buddhist moment of "what is the sound of one hand clapping?"

    I created a TaxSchedule field for each state where we are collecting taxes and set each to Assign, and the default value of the two letter state abbreviation. Then I used the Conditional statement to read the column with the state abbreviation and made that = "the state code." Like this:

    For Ohio

    {AR_Customer.State$}="OH"

    This creates the Customer in customer maintenance and assigns the correct Tax Schedule and auto fills the tax amount in the Sales Order that gets created as part of the VI job.

    The TaskSchedule Property looks like this:

    I totally get what you're saying about collecting state and municipalities taxes. Sage makes you assign a static value. We are just going to monitor that manually for the time being and change it as needed. If we start getting a bunch of states where we have to do this, we will most definitely need a more automated process.

    Thanks again for the reply! I love this forum and the folks on it! Everyone is crazy nice and always so willing to spend time helping!

    Best,

    J