Taxed Item added to order in Admin but Tax not auto-applied?

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Taxed Item added to order in Admin but Tax not auto-applied?

Post by AnySupport » Tue Nov 28, 2017 4:46 am

Hello all,

I'm hoping someone might be able to elaborate why taxes wouldn't have to be applied, if there are no rules for exclusion defined in the system? (e.g. for the user or the product)

Scenario
  • We've recently realized that when items that qualify for a special tax rule (all correctly associated on the product definition) are added to an order from Admin,
    that the tax rule is not automatically applied. There is also no visual indication that it should or shouldn't qualify for the tax rule (say, perhaps, by the tax % appearing on the line item, even if money was not yet added to the shipment).

    So, the users had assumed that if the tax rule/money didn't appear with the item, something must be broken with the rule or product.
    They reported it as an issue and were manually adding tax line items to each order in the meantime.
Manual Workaround:
  • They now know they have to hit the "Recalculate Taxes" button every time they add a product to an order from Admin (a common event for a normal order, and of course exchanges).
    That will see if any items added in Admin qualify for taxes and if so, then charges will be added and the tax rate will appear on the line item itself.
However, I can't come up with an explanation for them about why, except that Able "just doesn't automatically do it".
  • What could a reason be to have a product that is defined for a tax rule, but then not have tax applied?
    When the item is added to the order, that process would seem (at least to the user) to be aware of any criteria it might need to evaluate the rule and the order.
    • the shipping address (or billing, whichever zone the tax rule uses)
    • the account of the person who ordered it (if there was some special group that excluded this person from owing taxes - though this does not exist in our system)
    • Is there something else that is unknown until the recalculate taxes button is actually used?
  • Adding the tax afterwards also disconnects the tax money from the product it should be associated with, which I suspect could or would skew tax reporting as well, wouldn't it?
  • Otherwise, without any predefined rules for exclusion, don't taxes, by general definition, have to be applied to a product?
    Especially when it is otherwise automatically applied during the store checkout?

Any insight about the functionality or perhaps the alternate scenarios that wouldn't require enforcing taxes in only one section of a system would be greatly to help me explain this to the users. I'm just stumped.

Thank you!!

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Re: Taxed Item added to order in Admin but Tax not auto-applied?

Post by Katie » Wed Nov 29, 2017 1:18 am

Any number of things can happen when a merchant edits an order that might trigger a tax adjustment, or re-calculation. There are too many to list. When the feature was implemented, there may well have been a reason for making it a manual action, but I can't think of a reason why at the moment. I will very much agree with you on this point, and that there are many other needed improvements for the order admin area as well. We are working on those improvements now in a new version, so any feedback on making things more automated here is very welcome. We also have recalculate for shipping, and I believe a recalculate function for discounts might be added as well.

Thanks
Katie
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Re: Taxed Item added to order in Admin but Tax not auto-applied?

Post by AnySupport » Wed Nov 29, 2017 8:29 am

Katie wrote:Any number of things can happen when a merchant edits an order that might trigger a tax adjustment, or re-calculation. There are too many to list. ...

Which is essentially our perspective as well. There are so many reasons it would/should be triggering those calculations, that the exception existing here is rather baffling. :?
Hence, why I had hoped it may have been more readily noted somewhere. :) Oh, well. Thank you anyway!

Katie wrote:...there are many other needed improvements for the order admin area as well. We are working on those improvements now in a new version, so any feedback on making things more automated here is very welcome.

And I wish I didn't have to, but on this, I couldn't agree more.
  • As one set of examples only: the previous discussions on here about Coupon Applications in Admin, which also overlapped with warehouse structuring. Which has to be faked to handle separate charges when flat or quantity based or required to exclude certain products, even with only one physical location ever actually existing... Which ties back to the coupon needing adjustment in Admin because the fake warehouse solution breaks normal coupon functionality at the cart, so you have to adjust things manually afterward.)
Are these Admin side improvements possibly, specifically for the next release? Or are they multiple steps of a much longer roadmap?

Thank you!

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Re: Taxed Item added to order in Admin but Tax not auto-applied?

Post by Katie » Thu Nov 30, 2017 1:43 am

All I can tell you right now is that we plan to fix and improve as many of these known issues as possible. Both the coupon and warehouse/shipping issues are high on the must-have list, so yes, these are things that we do plan to fix.

About the tax auto-calculation...I need to think about this more. Do we really want to be recalculating (which may include contacting the tax gateway), each and every time something is changed about the order? Or is it better to improve the UI and make it super obvious that the order needs a tax adjustment...giving the merchant time time to make all order adjustments and then one final shipping/tax calculation at the end. Don't we also log this tax calculation difference in the admin order notes? I can't remember, but if not, that should also be a logged entry in case tax reconciliation is later needed.
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Re: Taxed Item added to order in Admin but Tax not auto-applied?

Post by AnySupport » Fri Dec 01, 2017 5:35 am

Katie wrote:...About the tax auto-calculation...I need to think about this more. Do we really want to be recalculating (which may include contacting the tax gateway), each and every time something is changed about the order? ...
Our site doesn't connect to a tax service, it only uses local rules, so I hadn't been thinking yet about the external calls.
Perhaps have a store option to auto-calculate taxes at the point an item is Added to an order. Separate option for after Editing an item? (perhaps with that option limited for just local rules and leave external service connections as is or under different rules to keep API calls more efficient or limited?)
Katie wrote:...Don't we also log this tax calculation difference in the admin order notes? I can't remember, but if not, that should also be a logged entry in case tax reconciliation is later needed.
This I'm honestly not sure about for the standard. Our site already has quite a lot of custom logging added to Admin orders for more thorough auditing and troubleshooting. I'm pretty sure our notes for these recalculations are custom, but I don't know if they were tweaked or new creations.

Looking forward to when we can hear more about the next version or the roadmap going forward.

Thank you very much!

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