Adding Taxes to Invoices

[BofRossClan]

I am working on an invoicing program. Since I am with a school district, some invoices are taxable, and some are not. I'm scratching my head as to how I should set this up. Should I create a 'tax' field in the table that would add taxes for each item (only if it is taxable - I have a boolean field to indicate if it is taxable), or should I somehow set up my reports to calculate the taxes on the total, and only show the taxes on the reports that are taxable. This is what I was trying to do, but was stuck on the report (I think I can make the taxes show if they're ALL taxable, but not make them different from invoice to invoice when I'm doing a batch). I believe I will also have trouble with the summary reports getting the correct total if some are taxable and some are not.

Has anyone else had this problem, and does anyone have a nice, simple solution? Does any of this make sense?

 

[Darrylles]

Hiya,

This really only depends on what is required by the readers of the report.

Why not have 2 reports - taxable and not?

If you have problems with total amounts, have you got a seperate field for the amount of tax? Seems like this is where you seem to have the problem.
You can then add the tax only if it exists.

I can't really see what your problem is.

Please can you try and explain further?

Regards,

Darrylle "Never argue with an idiot, he'll bring you down to his level - then beat you with experience."

 

[Laois]

If some items are taxable and some are not then you will have to calculate the tax on each item and not just on the invoice total. I would add a Tax field to your invoice details table and when each item is added to the invoice check to see if it is taxable and calculate the tax and store it in the Tax field. The best place to do this is in the AfterUpdate event of your quantity field. That way if you change the quantity the tax will be recalculated.

Some people will say it's a sin to store a calculated value in your table, but I think sometimes it makes life a lot easier, especially when creating reports. All you have to do on your invoice form or report is sum up the values in the Tax field.

I hope this helps.

Dermot

 

[BofRossClan]

Thanks. I was thinking about doing it that way. It is actually not per item that's taxable, it is per invoice - school groups are not taxable, outside organizations are. That's why I was just thinking of doing it on the report. But that obviously was creating too many headaches.

Thanks. I guess I'll go back in and add a tax field.