If you need to charge taxes on the products you sell in your market, you can define a Basic tax rate that applies a tax percentage to your orders. This rate applies to orders you create manually within the software, through the Farmbrite POS, or through your online store. You'll find it easy to define this rate and start charging your taxes appropriately.
A few things you should be aware of before we go over how to set this up:
- You can define a override tax rate on any product if it should be taxed differently than the default rate.
- You can override the tax rate for any order individually with whatever rate you'd like to apply.
- You can also additionally set up Advanced Tax Rates that are used specifically for your Online Store credit card purchases. This can be done through Stripe, Farmbrite's credit card processing partner. This can automatically calculate the correct tax rate to apply to the order based on your customer's address and your product configuration. Overall, this helps account for shipping or delivering products to different areas than where your business is located.
Defining Your Tax Rate
To set up your basic default tax rate, navigate to the market section and choose Settings. You'll find it under the Taxes, Fees, and Accounting section. In our example below we are applying a 8.2% Basic Default Tax Rate.
Where the Default Tax Rate is Applied
The default tax rate will be applied when you create orders. This is true for orders you create administratively from the Orders tab, orders you add from the Farmbrite POS, and orders submitted through the online store. It is applicable to cash, check, and credit card purchases on all three. Tip: Setup Advanced Taxes to use for credit card payments in your online store if you need more accurate rates based on a customer's location. The default tax rate will be used for credit card transactions if you do not enable this advanced feature.
The image below shows the 8.2% tax rate being calculated on different order entry methods.
Overriding the Default Tax Rate
If the default tax rate applies to most of your products and orders, but some need to be taxes differently, you'll have two options for overriding the taxes.
- Set a Product Tax Override Rate - You can add a unique override rate for each product within it's product setup. This is always used for this product when it is added to an order, whether through the POS, Online Store, or Admin Orders (unless using Advanced Tax for credit card payments in the online store). If added with other products, the override rate is only used for the product it is associated with; other products on the order use the default rate (or their own override rate). In the example below, we have added a 0% rate to our blueberries, and see them untaxed when adding them to the order. After adding the hot sauce, we then see a blended rate calculated for the order overall.
- For admin orders, you can update the rate on the order itself. Regardless of the default or override percentages, if you'd like to define your own tax rate for an order. Using the same example as above, we can click the Taxes link and input whatever rate needed for this order.
Tax Reporting
You'll see taxes separate from product prices on your Completed Orders report. This is the best place to see your taxes overall, but you can also add the Tax Amount field to a custom report to see it reflected for all orders. Be careful, as orders can be edited and updated before they are complete which may cause the taxes to change.
Let us know if you have any additional questions as you start adding taxes to your orders!