How to show VAT inclusive amounts in cart & on invoice?

We already have our store configured to show a VAT inclusive price with each product, but see an increasing enquiry from customers who see and query the amount at checkout and on the invoice where the price is shown exclusive of VAT. Only yesterday I took a call from a lady who thought we were ripping her off because she saw the product price at £25.00 by viewing the cart instrad of the £29.99 we asked for at the payment stage.

Is there a way to show a produt price on the invoice by example showing a VAT inclusive amount, but then showing the VAT element from within that figure or similar?

Similarly, is there a way of reconfiguring the Perl scripts for the cart as well please?

I concur that the way Catalog seems to be set up is for a B2B sale but our business is B2C. We believe the consumer gets confused when talking about VAT, expecially as High Street store receipts do not itemise VAT in such detail as Catalog.

[murf]

I do believe that most business online need to identify the VAT element if they are to deal with international customers.

Take a look at our site, and how we manage the VAT element for each product.
www.thefreemason.com

mike

[m@rk.to]

Dear Mike,

Thank you for your reply.

Yes, I too have publishied a VAT exclusive amount online, though experience suggests that the retail consumer just wants to know what he is going to pay for the item. As soon as one starts with a £10.00 exclusuve amount, then add £1.75 at checkout then add P&P they end up complainaing! ;-)

I don't want to show a VAT exclusive amount online, just show a VAT include amount on the invoice. If anything, this is a common 'complaint' of ours, namely to explain how the invoice is calculated.

While writing and totally off topic, I am *very* impressed with your site design and layout. I have been searching for a company to resdesign ours without success. May I ask, who designed and implemented for you as I too am looking for something as clean, crisp and clear.

Kind regards,
Mark

[murf]

Hi Mark

I understand your VAT problem. Are you only supplying the UK & EU ?

For info, we actually designed the site in-house as we have the designers/programmers here.

Regards

Mike

[m@rk.to]

Hi Mike,

Yes, 98% of our business is UK based with the other 2% spanning EU and USA and other 4 corners of the globe, which funny enough is increasing. It's us pesky UK public who generally do not understand VAT because normally we do not see it at the High Street. Hence I would like to change the invoice templates if I can.

As for the site design, certainly is one of the (if not the) best I have seen. Any of your programers fancy a bit of moonlighting ;-)

Cheers,
Mark

[eAbsinthe.com]

Yeah I'd like to chime in here;

If you have to pay it, and you can't claim it back, i.e. you’re a consumer, then there really isn't any point in having a gross-price-centric checkout system.

It's just confusing. I'd like to second Mark's observation that it causes unnecessary customer queries.

[TraceyG]

Hi,

You can switch off having VAT added into the cart and being printed on invoices, however, you can only have it one way or the other and not a mixture of some with VAT and some without.

To do this you will have to input the cost including VAT into each product. You may also want to let the consumer know that the prices include VAT by editing your Act_ProductLine.html template and adding (including VAT @ 17.5%) into the html after NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTPRICE (note that you will have to do this for each product template if you are using different ones for different products).

Then go into 'View | Business Settings | Tax' and select 'Simple tax' and uncheck the 'Include Tax 1' box. This will then not add VAT onto anything and therefore, won't be displayed in the checkout or on the invoice (or anywhere for that matter).

If it just on the invoice that you don't want the VAT displayed then you could try one of our partners (http://www.mole-end.biz ) to see if they can edit your invoice report in a way to only show the total amount of the products including VAT.

[murf]

Hi Mark

If you want to talk about designs etc, contact me personally at mike@thefreemason.com and let me have some basic design
/site requirements.

Just for info, we have never had a query on VAT in the history of our company (4 years), although we are only Actinic users for 2 years.

Tracey has a good ideas though although slightly limiting.

Regards

Mike

[m@rk.to]

Thanks Tracey. I am not sure this will work for two reasons. [a] I will have to re-edit all product prices which could be a chore and more imprtantly [b], we do have products such as books and child clothing which are zero rated. Thus, to edit a static .html page to say 'includes VAT' would be incorrect.

Murf, I'll fire you an email off list sometime early next week if I may.

Regards,
Mark

[TraceyG]

Hi Mark,

we do have products such as books and child clothing which are zero rated. Thus, to edit a static .html page to say 'includes VAT' would be incorrect.

You can use a different product template that does not include 'includes VAT' for the products that are VAT exempt and if they are all in a section on their own, you can declare them at the section level rather than specifying them for each product.

I will have to re-edit all product prices which could be a chore

You can run an update query on the 'Product' table in Microsoft Access (if your VAT exempt goods are in a section of their own) to update all your prices in one go.

1. Take a backup of your ActinicCatalog.mdb database (in your site folder).

2. Open the database in Microsoft Access and open a new query in 'Design' view.

3. From the 'Show Table' window, select the 'Product' table and click 'Add'. Close the 'Show Table' window.

4. Change the query type to an 'Update Query' by clicking on the 'Query' menu and selecting 'Update Query'.

5. In the first column of the grid, click on the 'Field' cell and from the drop-down list select 'nParentSectionID'. In the same column click in the 'Criteria' cell and type '<>n' (where n is the ID number for the section that your VAT exempt goods are kept in').

6. In the second column, select 'Price' from the drop-down list in the 'Field' cell.

7. In the 'Update To' cell, type [Price]*1.175.

8. To run the query click on the 'Query' menu and select 'Run'. You will get a warning that you are going to be updating a number of records and that it is not reversible.

9. Check a few of the prices to make sure they have updated correctly - note that decimal places are not displayed in the database so 1055 is actuall £10.55.

If your VAT exempt goods are not in the same section on their own then I agree that it will be quite a chore.