Announcement

**oldhasbeen** · 22-Mar-2006, 08:55 AM

Hi Remmo

There's been a lot of "wishing" for this for the B2C market in the UK as well. We also get a lot of confused customers who can't understand why the basket and their confirmations show ex-tax prices (when our sale receipts generated from different software shows the prices all inclusive of tax) - even though the totals are ultimately the same on both, they still contact us to say "on the website it says �x amount (which it doesn't on the product page - but does in their cart/emails) - but on my receipt you've overcharged me cos it says �x amount (which we haven't)".

It makes you wonder if we're potentially losing business over this - I'm sure we are.

And the decimal place problem is an old chestnut as well - we basically custom tax everything to make sure actinic adds up as accurately as possible to match our accounts software (and even then it still breaks sometimes).

The only other way it might work is if you're not a tax registered business, turn off tax in actinic and enter all your prices gross! Probably no use for most of us as we need the tax split for accurate reporting to the old VAT and Tax police!

Oh well - been wishing for it for my birthday, Christmas and now mother's day...........

**Mike Hughes** · 22-Mar-2006, 10:44 AM

I would also like to see VAT handled properly by actinic.

- In the retail business, customers expect to see the VAT prices and have to do some double checking to understand why the prices in the cart aren't what they expected. Definitely not nice and almost certainly losing customers and business.

- It's also a problem that the Shipping charge is displayed ex VAT even when VAT inclusive prices are chosen within actinic. For me this is a serious bug.

- And then, even when you adjust the ex-vat prices to get the desired VAT-inclusive price, the customer gets a different price when they order multiple items. I had an example just last week. I charge �4.99 for something and luckily this works out at �4.25 +VAT. OK so far. But if a customer buys 3 of them, which they sometimes do, then the total comes out at �14.98 even though 3 x �4.99 should be �14.97.

So I get pricing inconsistencies on the website, disgruntled customers, and I'm breaking the law by over-charging customers.

Complete and uttter cr*p and time actinic produced a proper solution to it.

Mike

**KenWheeler** · 22-Mar-2006, 11:03 AM

This is a serious and important factor and could well make a major difference to our decision as to whether to buy Actinic or not (currently half way through the evaluation period).

Some comment from Actinic on this would be useful.

**remmo** · 22-Mar-2006, 09:10 PM

I agree Kenneth... it would be good to get an answer from someone at Actinic on this one. These issues seem to have been raised many times with no resolution.

**stonda** · 22-Mar-2006, 10:44 PM

Why is it so difficult for Actinic developpers to give the possibility to use 3 decimal instead of 2 actually? A lot of French sotware use this possibility with success.
Is it possible for an Actinic members to give us an answer ?
Thanks

**oldhasbeen** · 23-Mar-2006, 07:45 AM

Our accounts system goes to 5 decimal places so having to force a custom VAT on actinic because it only goes to 2 is not only an additional time burden but it still doesn't always work.

By exporting orders to our accounts system, this goes some way to producing proper VAT inclusive sales receipts - we can at least manipulate the figures where required but lose money where actinic still hasn't added up properly and we have to adjust. It maybe only pennies here and pennies there, but over a period of time this adds up and really grates. For people using actinic all the way through this must be a real headache.

And even though prices are shown VAT inclusive on the product page, we've had to set our flat rate shipping up as a gross price because actinic for some bizarre reason nets this figure down if you include VAT! We use a �2.95 flat rate and this displays as �2.51 - not only ugly but again customers then perceive that they've been overcharged when they get their sales receipt showing �2.95.

However none of this address the initial fact of how many sales are we losing because potential customers are confused by one price showing against the product and another price showing in their basket?

The number of times we have to explain that this is down to the software and get the response "well other sites don't do this so why can't you fix yours?" - oh if it was that easy.

I'm sure the majority of UK users must be B2C - so using the US model where all prices are shown net with tax added at the end - and where the public expects this - doesn't show that it's been thought through for the UK market where by law we must show tax inclusive prices.

I realise this is probably a big job to fix (although really should have been set up correctly in the first place), but it's such a fundamental issue affecting so many users surely it should be a priority?!

**remmo** · 23-Mar-2006, 09:20 AM

I've just emailed Actinic directly to ask them to provide an answer, either directly to me or otherwise on the forum... let's see what happens.

**Bruce** · 23-Mar-2006, 10:27 AM

Hi All,

I have posed your questions to the Deveopment team and will update you on their response.

Kind regards,

**KenWheeler** · 23-Mar-2006, 11:42 AM

Thanks Bruce.

I have to say, as a retired software developer, that I don't understand why this is a big problem (unfortunately no HTML/Javascript experience). We wrote many commercial bespoke programs (Assembler; C/C++ and Delphi) which required accurate VAT calculations. It should, of course, be a basic design criterion but, even if it was overlooked, it should not be a major issue to put it right.

Regards,
Ken

**remmo** · 24-Mar-2006, 05:32 AM

Thanks Bruce, look forward to the response

**Froogle** · 24-Mar-2006, 07:34 AM

just a comment regarding the work around to round prices up properly (for instance �3.99)

don't you think it's horrible how it's displayed on the invoice?

because you've got to use a custom vat calculation it displays some stupidly long reference on their receipt, anyone noticed?

**remmo** · 28-Mar-2006, 11:07 AM

Hi Bruce,

Just wanted to bring this back to the top to see if you've got some news to share

**cbarling** · 28-Mar-2006, 02:58 PM

Hi Remmo,

Sorry about the delay in replying, but we have been holding some internal consultations. You are right that this has been discussed many times before.

Various points around the way that tax inclusive pricing works in Actinic are weaknesses. We accept that. Just like in Australia, UK consumers are used to seeing tax inclusive prices and people have complained about the current operation quite a few times.

At the moment, Actinic works "correctly" in the US, where prices are always quoted exclusive of sales tax, it also works well in a business to business environment where prices are normally quoted ex tax (in the UK in any case) and is also generally "right" for companies that sell a reasonable proportion overseas. In fact, around 10,000 live sites are managing to use Actinic, albeit many have some irritation in this area. It also goes without saying that Actinic is fully legally compliant with tax regulations in the UK, although I couldn't definitively speak for Australia.

Having said all of that I acknowledged that there are weaknesses. So why haven't we done anything about it yet? The short answer is because it's a huge amount of work. A number of times we have specified changes in this area and estimated them, but it's always ended missing the cut because of its size and more pressing issues.

Changing the way that tax calculations work isn't just about changes to the one place where tax is calculated. Changes are needed in both online and offline ordering, it must work with the various forms of discounting, it must work with the shipping, it has to work for the US market where there are up to four rates of tax, for the Canadian market where you have both GST and PST, (and where Quebec charges PST on the GST, but the other provinces don't, and yet others use the combined tax HST instead). Plus we have to change the way the three different accounting link products work. Then all of the reports have to be updated, import/exports changed and existing users upgraded correctly. I hope this gives a feel for the magnitude of the work involved. It's not an excuse for previous inaction, but it is an explanation.

The whole area has been a constant irritaion to us and many users for a while. As a result, we have concluded an internal review, and decided to formally commit to do this in the next major development. We will be starting on this in a few months time.

Sorry that it's not more positive than that, but we've never made this commitment before, so at some level it's a result.

I would also like to apologise for the frustrations that you've had with the product, and I hope that this commitment helps alleviate that in some way.

Chris

**PaulGrimshaw** · 28-Mar-2006, 05:24 PM

Would it be possible to have a bit of java so that instead of displaying the ex price, we grabbed the price for that item, applied the tax and then displayed the retail price? Is it possible to grab the price on a per item basis?

Then you could change the header/subtotal lines so that it says "VAT Included: " instead of just VAT. I know its a bit of a fudge, but could work? (I don't know much about java so apologies for lameness if utterly wrong <!>).

I am also having this problem, but for me I want to use ex prices for some customers, and inc prices for normal (we do retail & wholesale).

Thanks,
Paul.

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