Tax

Tax in OrderDen is charged per line, at rates you name and manage yourself. A line points at a tax — "WA State 6.5%", or a group that charges state, county and city together — and the document totals list each rate by name, which is what a client expects to see and what a filing is built from.

Set up your rates

Company Settings → Taxes is where the rates live.

• Add a rate with a name, a percentage (three decimals, so 9.975% is fine), and its place in the list. That's it — every rate is immediately pickable on a document line.
• Deactivate a rate you have stopped charging. It disappears from the pickers but keeps working on the documents that already use it.
• Delete a rate you added by mistake. Documents already written are never touched: they keep the rate name, the percentage and the money exactly as they were saved.

Groups: several rates on one line

Where a sale is taxed by more than one authority at once, build a group: give it a name, tick the rates it charges, and pick it on a line like any other tax. The order you tick them in is the order they are charged.

That order only matters for a compound rate — one that charges on the line total plus the tax the rates before it already added. Quebec's QST on GST is the classic case: 5% GST, then 9.975% QST on the GST-inclusive amount, which comes to 15.474% combined rather than 14.975%. Tick "Compound" on a rate to make it behave that way; leave it off for everything else, which is nearly everything.

Groups and plain rates sit side by side in every picker, so a workspace that charges one flat rate never has to think about groups at all.

What a line is taxed at

When you add a line, OrderDen fills in the tax for you, in this order:

1. Whatever you pick on the line. Always wins, including "No tax".
2. The item's default. Set Default tax on a catalog item for something taxed differently from everything else — or never taxed. (For something that genuinely is not taxed but should still show up on your tax report, add a 0% rate and point the item at that.)
3. The workspace default, set in Company Settings → Sales defaults. Leave it as "No tax" if most of what you sell is untaxed.

Every line also has a Not taxable tick, for a one-off that is exempt no matter what tax it would otherwise carry.

Tax-exempt clients

A client marked Tax exempt (on the client form, under Tax) is never charged tax. Their new document lines come in untaxed and locked, the totals say "Tax exempt" instead of a rate, and the document carries a badge — with the exemption reason you recorded, so the certificate number is on the paperwork where an auditor expects it. Their Tax ID prints alongside it.

Clear the flag and their next documents are taxed normally again; documents already issued keep the figures they were issued with.

Discounts and tax

A discount on a single line comes off that line before its tax is worked out. A discount on the whole document is shared across the lines in proportion to what each is worth, and each taxable line is then taxed on what is left of it. Sharing it over every line — not just the taxable ones — is what keeps a mixed document honest: a $20 discount on a document with one taxable and one untaxed $100 line takes $10 off each, so tax is charged on $90.

The sharing is exact to the cent, with any leftover cent landing on the largest line, so the lines always add back to the document's total.

Shipping

Shipping is not taxed unless you say so. Pick a Tax on shipping group next to the shipping amount on the document, and it is charged the same way a line is. Leave it as "Not taxed" — the default — where shipping is not taxable.

What the document shows

The totals block lists one row per rate the document actually charged, by name and percentage, on the document page, the print, the emailed copy, the PDF and the client portal. A document that charged two rates shows both; one that charged none says so.

Those figures are a snapshot. Changing a rate in Settings changes what future documents charge and never rewrites a document already written — the same rule that keeps prices and costs stable.

The tax you have collected

Reports → Tax collected is the report a filing is built from: tax charged per rate and per period across the invoices you have issued (drafts and voided invoices are left out), with the taxable sales behind each figure and the non-taxable sales alongside, so the totals reconcile against your revenue. Switch the period between day, week and month, and download it as CSV like any other report.

Prices that include tax

Where VAT or GST is quoted to the customer, the price on the shelf is the price they pay. Tick Prices include tax in Company Settings → Taxes and every price you type on a quote, order, invoice or credit note is read that way: a £12.00 line at 20% is £10.00 and £2.00 of VAT, and the total is exactly the prices as typed, never a penny more.

The tax comes out per line, at that line's own rate, so a document mixing a zero-rated line with a standard-rated one is right on both — there is no single average rate that could be. A discount comes off the listed price first, and the tax is taken out of what is left: £12.00 less 10% is £10.80, which is £9.00 and £1.80. Taking it off the net instead would charge the client tax on money you never asked them for.

On the document itself, the Amount beside each line includes its tax — the same figure the client would get multiplying the unit price by the quantity — and the totals block underneath says Subtotal (excludes tax), then the tax, then the total. The two columns are looking at the same money from two ends.

Three things worth knowing:

• It applies to documents raised from now on. Every quote, order, invoice and credit note keeps the way it was priced when it was raised. Turn the setting on in March and nothing you sent in February moves — not even if you edit it afterwards.
• It travels down the chain. An order raised from an inclusive quote is inclusive, and so is the invoice raised from that order, whatever the setting says by then — the closing invoice included, so a £120 project closes out at £120. A credit note credits what its invoice charged.
• Money taken up front is a share of the price, not a price of its own. A deposit, a prepayment and a stage of a payment schedule are each a slice of the total the client agreed, so half of a £600 inclusive contract is £300 with the tax already inside it. Those documents list the slice net with its tax beside it, which is why their totals block reads the same in either mode.
• Your reports do not change. Reports → Tax collected, the margin on an order, and the accounting export all read net sales and tax the same way in either mode, because that is what is recorded either way.

Through the API

Rates and groups are managed at /api/v1/tax-rates and /api/v1/tax-groups; document line payloads take taxGroupId and taxable, documents take shippingTaxGroupId, and every document response carries a taxBreakdown and a read-only pricesIncludeTax saying which way it was priced. The workspace setting is pricesIncludeTax on /api/v1/settings/sales. The report is at /api/v1/reports/tax-collected. See the API reference.