Objective

The goals for the participants of this session are to demonstrate knowledge of creating sales taxes and sales tax areas. Sales taxes can be for state, county, city, etc. Sales Tax Areas can be set at Site, Customer, Location, or POS level.  Please take notes on the subjects that are covered, as everyone involved in this session will need to be certified upon completion.

Creating Sales Taxes in VendMAX

Field Options:

Description

Descriptive name of the Tax. This description will be used for the Sales Tax Report, unless there is a value entered into the ‘Report As’ field described below. 

Code

This code, like all Master table codes in VendMAX, can be assigned by the user, or auto-assigned by VendMAX. If the field is left blank when creating a new Sales Tax, the system will auto-assign the next sequentially available code number when the SAVE button (OK) is selected. The CODE for a Sales Tax can be changed at anytime in the future by any user with edit authorization of the Invoice Items table in Security Settings. Codes can be alphanumeric, and up to 16 characters. Codes are required for each record, and must be unique within each site in the database. 

Category

Category is available as another way to group and sort Sales Tax records. The values that are entered are user defined, and no value needs to be entered.  

Shared Between Sites

This setting will have no effect in a single site installation. In a multi-site operation, there may be operations in several states. Under these circumstances, there will be ‘Regional” Sales Taxes which are not used at all sites. When this checkbox is turned off, the sales tax belongs only to the Site, which created it. This will prevent other sites from using the sales tax for their accounts, or even simply seeing it in their Sales Taxes list when they are operating the VendMAX client software. 

Report As

This is a text field with 34 characters of alphanumeric data. If you enter data in this field, it will be used as a replacement for the description name of this Sales Tax when referenced on Sales Tax reports. This allows the user to refer to a sales tax by a different name than that which the reports sees.  

Basis

This field will establish the basis for calculating taxes. As an example:  When a 5% tax rate is defined, what data is multiplied by 5% to get the resulting tax amount?  The answer comes from the application of this Basis field. The options and their definitions are:

Actual Revenue

This is the most commonly used value. In this case, tax is paid only on the amount of money that is counted in the money room. This means that the tax rates will be multiplied by the total of Actual Bills and Actual Coin from the Vend Visit screen. By definition, theft and refunds that have been removed from the collection are excluded from the calculation of tax due.

Cost

This is a rarely used Basis. In this case, VendMAX will calculate the number of units Vended during a Vend Visit, and multiply these units by their corresponding COG values, as defined on the Products Main tab. The total of all products cost is then used as the basis for calculating rate based taxes. The value of Total Cost is calculated and stored with each Vend Visit during the Posting process. It can be displayed for a specific Vend Visit by opening Vend Visits – Detailed Calculations.

Product Revenue

In this case, VendMAX will calculate the number of units Vended during a Vend Visit, and multiply these units by their corresponding Price values from the POS Planogram definition, as defined on the Points of Sale POG tab. The total of all products revenue is then used as the basis for calculating rate based taxes. The value of Total Product Revenue is calculated and stored with each Vend Visit during the Posting process. It can be displayed for a specific Vend Visit by opening Vend Visits Detailed Calculations. VendMAX is only capable of calculating Product Revenue when it knows the number of products sold and their prices. This can be either at an item level or at family level. If either the Vended quantity or the price is missing or a Vend Visit, VendMAX cannot calculate a tax amount.

Metered Revenue

In this case, VendMAX will calculate the incremental movement of the Cash Meter Value, and multiply the difference by the tax rate to calculate the tax amount due. The value of Total Metered Revenue is calculated and stored with each Vend Visit during the Posting process. It can be displayed for a specific Vend Visit by opening Vend Visits – Detailed Calculations. If the driver fails to collect a Meter reading during a Vend Visit, VendMAX will not be able to calculate a commission due. When the next visit with a meter reading is posted, the total tax due for the missing period will also be calculated. This only causes a problem if the meter reading is missed at the end of a month and the tax is scheduled to be paid monthly. In this case, the total tax amount will be paid in the following month when the data is available.

Price Includes Taxes

When this box is checked, the Total Taxes calculated for the Vend Visit, before the commission rate is applied will reduce the tax basis amount. This setting prevents the calculation of a tax amount using a basis that includes OTHER taxes that are included in the Vend Price. It only affects the calculation of rate-based taxes. The value of Total Taxes is calculated and stored with each Vend Visit during the Posting process. It can be displayed for a specific Vend Visit by opening Vend Visits – Detailed Calculations.

Back Out Deposits

When this box is check, any unit level deposits that are defined for products in the POS will be subtracted from the Tax basis amount before the tax rate is applied.  It only affects the calculation of rate-based taxes. The value of Total Deposits is calculated and stored with each Vend Visit during the Posting process. It can be displayed for a specific Vend Visit by opening Vend Visits – Detailed Calculations.

Back Out Vending Refunds

When this box is checked, the Total Refunds recorded for the Vend Visit, before the tax rate is applied will reduce the tax basis amount. It only affects the calculation of rate-based taxes. This setting will not effect the calculation of taxes based on Actual Revenue, since refunds are taken out of the collection before the money gets to the counting room, and has therefore already been deducted. The value of Total Refunds can be displayed for a specific Vend Visit by opening Vend Visits – Detailed Calculations 

User Defined Fields

The Miscellaneous tab allows you to set up and maintain 10 User Defined data fields for Sales Taxes. Most Master Tables in VendMAX provide a place to create and maintain 10 User Defined data fields. The use of these fields is optional.

Sales Tax Items

By pressing the + button, the following dialog box will be revealed:

Applies To

There are three options for this field:

Vending

If this option is set, the sales tax item defined here will only be applied to Vend Visits.

Delivery

If this option is set, the sales tax item defined here will only be applied to Delivery Sales.

All

If this option is set, the sales tax item defined here will apply to both Vend Visits and Delivery Sales.

Item Type

One of the following items must be chosen for each Sales Tax item. Only one of these options will apply for each Sales Tax Item.

Product

Choosing this option will activate the field box to choose a specific product or SKU. Once this option is chosen, the user can type the description or code for the desired product directly into the field, or can use the button to reveal a dialog box listing all products in the Product Master File. This dialog box will allow all VendMAX Search Options.

Product Family

Choosing this option will activate the field box to choose a Product Family. Once this option is chosen, the user can type the description or code for the desired product family directly into the field, or can use the button to reveal a dialog box listing all product families in the Product Family Master File. This dialog box will allow all VendMAX Search Options. 

If this option is chosen, the Sales Tax rate or Sales Tax unit value defined below will apply to all products that belong to the product family defined here. If a product that belongs to this product family also has a PRODUCT level Sales Tax item defined within the Sales Tax rule, the PRODUCT level Sales Tax item will take precedence over the Product Family Sales Tax that would have otherwise applied.

Pricing Family

This type of Sales Tax item can only be defined when the “Applied To:” field is set to DELIVERY. This is because Pricing Families are only defined for Delivery Sales. 

Choosing this option will activate the field box to choose a Pricing Family. Once this option is chosen, the user can type the description or code for the desired pricing family directly into the field, or can use the button to reveal a dialog box listing all pricing families in the Pricing Family Master File. This dialog box will allow all VendMAX Search Options.

If this option is chosen, the Sales Tax rate or Sales Tax unit value defined below will apply to all Products that belong to the pricing family defined here. If a Product that belongs to this pricing family also has, a Product or Product Family level Sales Tax item defined within the Sales Tax rule, the Product or Product Family level Sales Tax item will take precedence over the Pricing Family Sales Tax that would have otherwise applied.

Invoice Item

This type of Sales Tax item can only be defined when the “Applied To:” field is set to DELIVERY. This is because Invoice Items are only defined for Delivery Sales. These are not things that can be vended. 

Choosing this option will activate the field box to choose a specific Invoice Item. Once this option is chosen, the user can type the description or code for the desired invoice item directly into the field, or can use the button to reveal a dialog box listing all invoice items in the Product Master File. This dialog box will allow all VendMAX  Search Options.

All

If this option is chosen, the Sales Tax rate or Sales Tax unit value defined below will apply to all products. If there are any PRODUCT FAMILY Sales Tax items defined, Products sold within the PRODUCT FAMILY defined will use that Sale Tax rate instead of the ALL rule defined here. If there are any PRODUCT Sales Tax items defined, this PRODUCT Sales Tax will take precedence over any conflicting PRODUCT FAMILY Sales Tax items or ALL Sales Tax Items that would have otherwise applied. 

Itemize As

The Sales Tax Report includes the description of each Sales Tax item being calculated and reported. The report creates a description made up of the functional parts of the item. As an example: All-All 5% Revenue, or Vending-Chips .05 Unit. If you would like the report to use a different description, you can enter the text in this field, and it will replace the description that the report would have manufactured.

Tax Rate

If the Sales Tax item being defined will be calculated as a percentage of revenue, the percentage rate should be entered here.

Tax Unit

If the Sales Tax item being defined will be calculated as an absolute value for each unit vended, the amount should be entered here.  

Deposit

If the Sales Tax item being defined will be calculated as a deposit, the deposit amount should be entered here. Deposits are always defined as dollar amount per unit. These are calculated the same way that sales taxes are, but are used as a deduction from revenue before calculating sales taxes, rather then a payment to a tax jurisdiction.

Creating Sales Tax Areas in VendMAX

Connect to their system so we can observe while they are executing the creation of sales tax area.

Sales Tax Header:

Area Name

Descriptive name of the Tax Area. This name will not be used on any formal documents. Tax Reports are printed for each tax jurisdiction, meaning the Sales Taxes themselves. The Tax Area is simply a ‘grouping’ of sales taxes.

This button is the key to creating, viewing and editing the list of Sales Taxes, which belong to the selected Sales Tax Area. After selecting this button, the grid view of Sales Taxes displayed in the screen area below will become split. 

Shared Between Sites

This setting will have no effect in a single site installation. In a multi-site operation, there may be operations in several states. Under these circumstances, there will be ‘Regional” sales tax areas which are only available or only useful in one geographic area. When this checkbox is turned off, the sales tax area belongs only to the Site which created it. This will prevent other sites from using this sales tax area, or even simply seeing it in their sales tax areas list when they are operating the VendMAX client software.

The screen area below will display one line item per sales tax, which are members of this sales tax area, with only the basic field information, which has been setup in your Field List setup under the Choose Fields option. Because the items in the list below are each of the Sales Taxes, which belong to this Tax Area, the available field list refers to the data fields of the Sales Taxes themselves.

Sales Tax Area – Update List:

Currently In This Area

This screen area will contain a list of the Sales Taxes, which are currently members of this Tax Area. (Will be empty when creating new area) 

Available

This screen area will contain a list of Sales Taxes, which are not currently members of this Tax Area, but are available to become members if you choose. This list could become very large if you are operating in an area with complex tax jurisdictions, or across a very large geography. In order to provide search tools for finding the specific taxes which you may want to add, the

Filtered

Check box can be selected. If you choose this option, the Filters Dialog box will appear with many options.

Fields List

All Tab

This screen area will list all of the data fields, which are available for setting search criteria. This will generally include a list of all fields in the current Master File table. By selecting one of the Fields in this list, you can then set the search criteria in the Description area to the right for that field. 

Searched

This tab will show a list of all search criteria set. The user may create an unlimited number of search criteria. All criteria will be applied together when the OK button is selected. 

Description

This area allows the user to set search criteria for the selected data field.

By Value Tab

Field Value – Enter the search value.

Search Type

Exact Match – Field value should match only the data entered in the table.

Partial Match as Beginning – table entry should begin with Field value.

Partial Match Anywhere – table entry should contain Field value anywhere.

Case Sensitive – Data match should match case of field

By Range Tab

This tab will allow the user to establish a starting and ending value, and will select all entries whose field value is within this entered range. 

Field Order

This option will sort the field list alphabetically or in the natural logical order.

This button will cause the display of a summary list of the criteria and their assigned values for all search criteria currently established. 

This button will cause all search criteria to be reset, and the user will begin the process again.

Select Sales Taxes

The following buttons are available on the bar separating the two list areas of this split screen.

>This button will move a single selected “currently in this area” sales tax over to the “available” list. 

>>This button will move ALL sales taxes listed in the “currently in this area” list to the “available” list.

<This button will move a single selected “available” sales tax over to the “currently in this area” list.

<<This button will move ALL sales taxes listed in the “available” list to the “currently in this area” list..