Pre-VAT pricing

[sfreeman]

So I've sorted out the displaying of price information so it's now displaying the correct info to the customer.. except in one instance where a product is priced at £2.99 and is VATable.. Actinic ignores anything more than 2 decimal places, so the price is either going to be £2.98 or £3.00, not the £2.99 required!! Eeek! Anyone have any suggestions?

[Ben]

Hi Sam

This often occurs and can be resolved by using a custom tax rate for the particular product in the Product Details dialogue box. Under Tax Rate, select 'Custom' from the dropdown list and then enter the actual amount of tax that you want to allocate in the 'Custom Tax' price box.

Ben

[sfreeman]

Ace! Thanks mate!

Sam

[sfreeman]

Darnit... I came to do the trick you suggested, Ben, but the store then displays "Includes VAT at standard rate of 17.25%"... and I know I can turn that off... but my client wants it to give the VAT statement! Any ideas?

[Jan]

The VAT rate will be displayed differently on the invoices as well - it will probably say custom tax next to it with the odd rate.

Regards

[sfreeman]

oooh... yeah, we can't be having that either... I'll just tell them they have to be £3.00 or £2.98 instead!!

[cdicken]

You could try playing with the rounding rules in the 'Taxes' grid in 'Business Settings | Tax'. It may be possible to get Actinic to display the correct inc VAT value that way.

[sfreeman]

We've been playing with custom rates, which works fine. But the one problem is that across the site as a whole it works out the net price and the tax element incorrectly as Actinic won't let us use more than 2 decimal places. The total cost is fine, but the breakdown is off by a few pence each time and is particularly noticeable when ordering larger quantities of the same product. Is there any way around this problem before version 7?!

[edwardk]

This is a problem that anyone who needs to calculate VAT will face. All accounting packages and spreadsheets will calculate to 3-4 decimal places as a minimum and only use rounding for display purposes. Actinic, because it is limited to working with only 2 decimal places, cannot get the same degree of accuracy in its calculations.

The unfortunate side effect of this is that you will just have to put up with it. My own site uses multiple options/components per product and this plays absolute havoc with VAT calculations. The only way I can deal with this is to set Actinic to round down and insert a disclaimer on the checkout.

I was going to purchase the Sage Link but was told by my accountant that it would be of little use without accurate VAT calculations.

This really is something the Actininc needs to address. Accurate calulations are not a feature, they are an absolute necessity. Lets hope this will be rectified as a free patch, and not as a chargeable "upgrade".

[sfreeman]

Fingers crossed ed! Thanks for the post though

[cdicken]

Thanks for all your comments on this. I have passed all this on to the development team.

[Jenny]

You could change the include vat at 17.25% or whatever to be includes vat
Jenny

[sfreeman]

Unfortunately not... from an audit/accounting point of view that's impossible.

[skinnybloke]

For the attention of Chris Dicken:

Hi Chris - has there been any development on this as I have a client who is looking to interface the sales from his Actinic site into an external sales database which controls his sales.

To anyone else:

How do other people integrating Actinic sales into an external sales database handle this rounding error?

[cdicken]

David

Thanks for your comments. I'm afraid there have not been any developments to do with this feature.