Mass removal of a sales tax on client accounts - anyone know how to do this? Delete tax from table?

Question

One of the counties we serve had a small stadium sales tax for several years which will now end. To go through maintain customer for every single one at a time and remove this seems tedious and I can't imagine this is how BW handles it. I do not see this under Customers, Global Customer Change... So, I am wondering if I just go into Maintain Tax Tables under A/R and delete this tax if that will remove it from all these accounts? However, if I do so, I wonder how it would then affect any reporting I do from previous years months stored in BW and/or my YTD or my G/L reports, etc. etc.

WIKS · Accepted Answer

Update: My other idea is to simply change the tax rate in maintain sales tax tables to 0%. It will still show on all the customers that have this on their maintain customer account I assume though?... This would be fine through year end, but would like to see go away after that...

Coleen Graber · Answer

Unfortunately, there is no option using imports to change the Sales Tax in Maintain Customers. This will have to be done manually in AR, Customers, Maintain Customers. I would not recommend deleting the Sales Tax ID, because that will not remove it from any default settings (like in Maintain Customers or in recurring invoices), plus that would prevent you from generating reports on that Sales Tax ID. Chaning the percent to %0 is a quick fix to stop an amount from calculating. But to truly remove it from the default settings for the customer, you will need to go into Maintain Customers.

Janice Carnarvon · Answer

Hi WIKS, 
If you change the sales tax rate to 0% it will continue to show on the Sales Tax Report as non-taxable sales. Another option is to use the Import Customer Information and do a change. Import formats can be accessed through the Sage BusinessWorks Welcome screen under Sage BusinessWorks News, Product information. Make sure to back up your data files prior to importing any information into your company. There is no undo. For additional assistance, please call Customer Support at 800-447-5700, option 3. 
Thank you, 
Janice

WIKS · Answer

I did not think of that. Perfect. I am very versed using the BW imports. I do have a question though. How will this affect A/R recurring transactions. By default, the distribution feeds in the tax from maintain customers, but you can also manually add additional tax IDs directly on the recurring set up. I can certainly run my list of those with the tax ID I want to remove and go through those that by chance had it added here, but never thru maintain customer (I could test this thru the sample company too), but curious offhand if you might know. Thanks!!

WIKS · Answer

Okay. I see I can use Order Entry (O/E), Import Ship-To-Addresses. Questions raised. There is no change, only update... So, I realistically need to write over all 3 fields and have Tax ID 1 be the state tax, Tax ID 2 to be cleared and Tax ID 3 to be cleared. Or regardless, when I export and see the order of the Tax IDs for a custy, clear out the one that is the special tax. Not sure how to accomplish this. Could use a dummy tax ID, but to me, that would be the same difference as zeroing out the existing special tax TAX ID rate. Which, reflecting over all of this, may be the best solution anyway as then that would take care of the recurring invoices and any changes needed there.

WIKS · Answer

Thanks. I understand. I will zero the %'ge off the Tax ID. Removing it from 1000+ clients is a big waste of time. It is unfortunate. BW should consider enhancing for at least the Manager login, the global customer change and filters within.

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Mass removal of a sales tax on client accounts - anyone know how to do this? Delete tax from table?

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