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Canadians - Calculating GST and PST on expenses?
A Canadian user here... I've been talking with Ed Molyneux about an issue with expense calculations (thanks again Ed!) and am wondering if any other Canucks have a similar issue.
I charge (and reclaim) GST, but not PST. Since in the vast majority in cases, GST is calculated from the before-tax subtotal (not the subtotal + PST), in the Expenses screen I can't enter the exact total that's on my receipt, as that total also includes PST and therefore the GST will calculate incorrectly. My current solution is to manually calculate and write the "new" subtotal on the receipt, so all the numbers will match up with my FA records whenever I do reviews.
That's fine for the occasional receipt, but when I have lots of expenses, it's a real pain and twice the amount of work. :-)
Any suggestions? FA only uses one tax assignment, not two -- yes, you can specify multiple rates, but you can only apply one of them. Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't see a viable solution. This is a big issue for my business, and it's the only thing preventing me from becoming a paid subscriber... otherwise I am very impressed with FA!
ETA: For some reason, GST isn't being added at all to my invoices for one particular client. The "GST" line and my registration number aren't even appearing on the invoice. I've gone through all the settings I can think of... how can I fix this? Thanks.
I charge (and reclaim) GST, but not PST. Since in the vast majority in cases, GST is calculated from the before-tax subtotal (not the subtotal + PST), in the Expenses screen I can't enter the exact total that's on my receipt, as that total also includes PST and therefore the GST will calculate incorrectly. My current solution is to manually calculate and write the "new" subtotal on the receipt, so all the numbers will match up with my FA records whenever I do reviews.
That's fine for the occasional receipt, but when I have lots of expenses, it's a real pain and twice the amount of work. :-)
Any suggestions? FA only uses one tax assignment, not two -- yes, you can specify multiple rates, but you can only apply one of them. Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't see a viable solution. This is a big issue for my business, and it's the only thing preventing me from becoming a paid subscriber... otherwise I am very impressed with FA!
ETA: For some reason, GST isn't being added at all to my invoices for one particular client. The "GST" line and my registration number aren't even appearing on the invoice. I've gone through all the settings I can think of... how can I fix this? Thanks.
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?Tanja,
We need to have a think carefully about GST/PST and how we make that as simple as possible. Rest assured we are committed to making it work as well for you as for our UK accounts.
I'll take a close look at that invoice issue too, and will have an answer on both of these before monday.
I’m confident we can get this right
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Inappropriate?We're going go ahead and add a second, configurable tax to Universal accounts, so you should be able to handle PST. It's pretty tricky when it comes to the varying rules for purchases and invoices, as I'm sure you are only too aware, so it may be a few weeks before we include this in a formal release.
In the meantime I would be happy to extend your free trial until we're there. Just let me know.
Our plan is to focus on Canada as our second 'tax engine' - bringing it into line with the comprehensive support we have for UK businesses. So we're really keen to get this right, since we're going to be knee-deep in Canadian taxes anyway!
Regarding your no-GST invoice - we don't include GST on invoices to countries outside Canada, so that may be the reason. Is that wrong?
I’m confident
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Inappropriate?Thanks Ed, that sounds great, and I really appreciate the extension on the free trial.
Good luck on integrating the Canadian taxes... I am sure it's going to be a nightmare for your development team. Each province has its own rate of PST (except for four provinces, which don't charge PST at all). And then there's the Maritime provinces, which use a single tax called HST ("Harmonized Sales Tax") that's GST plus PST rolled into one. And then there's Quebec (and I think PEI as well?) whose PST is actually calculated on the sales price + GST... *sigh* It's ridiculous.
Re: GST not showing up, yes, that's probably the issue (as this particular client's head office is in the US). However, I still need to charge them GST, as the contract work I'm doing for them is performed in Canada, for a Canadian company, and I bill them in Canadian dollars. Would it be easy for your dev team to add the ability to charge GST to "foreign" clients, or is this a major fix? For now I can just change the client's country in FA; I doubt their payroll folks look too closely at my invoices anyway. *winks*
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Inappropriate?Yep, if it's anything like the UK we know it's going to be painful ;-!
Re GST not showing up - we're probably trying to be a bit too clever here with our assumption about charging GST. Hope your workround is OK for now, and we'll work on allowing this assumption to be overridden.
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Inappropriate?Hi Ed... just wanted to see if you guys have made any headway on the implementation of a second tax category? My expenses (and GST amounts) are starting to pile up, so if I can't get this to work in FA, I will need to figure something out so I can keep track of everything until it's implemented. :-) Thanks.
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Inappropriate?Tanja,
No, still very much on the front burner. It won't be in this week's release but probably the next if all goes well.
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Inappropriate?The Canadian tax stuff you've added for the "Vin Santo" release looks awesome... I'm playing around with it now and am very, very pleased. No more manual calculations for my expense receipts!
No problems/bugs to report so far with it, but if I run into any, I will let you know ASAP. Thanks again for implementing this for us Canadians. :-)
I’m pleased
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