Sales Tax Report

Overview: What are we talking about?

This article will cover how to use the Sales Tax report to extract tax information from Gingr. The Sales Tax report breaks down your charges into taxable and exempt charges, giving you the information needed to aid in reporting your sales tax information to the government. 

This article includes:

• Accessing the Sales Tax Report
• Using the Sales Tax Report
• FAQ
  
  • How does Gingr calculate tax?

How to: Access the Sales Tax Report.

In order to access the Sales Tax Report in Gingr, you must belong to a user group that possesses the permission to view financial reports. To configure this permission, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Left-hand Navigation: Reports and More » Groups.
   
   
2. Enable the Can View Financial Reports permission for applicable user groups.
   
   

Once this permission has been enabled for your user group, the Sales Tax Report can be accessed from Left-hand Navigation: Reports and More » Reports » Financial: Sales Tax.

How to: Using the Sales Tax Report.

To generate the Sales Tax report, enter the Charges From and Charges To dates in the corresponding fields and select the Location(s) you'd like to run the report for. Click Generate Report! to pull up the report for this date or date range.

Once the report has been generated, you'll see a few informational sections, which are described below.

Sales Tax Summary

The Sales Tax Summary is the main section of the report, and provides a summary of invoice charges and refund information within the date range of the report.

Each of the columns in this summary are defined here:

Charges

 Below the summary, we'll find the Charges section. This section lists out all invoices opened during the date range, giving an invoice-level of detail to see how the charge numbers in the sales tax summary are being derived.

This section can be helpful to look at specific transactions and aid in locating discrepancies, should they arise.

Transaction Refund Data

Following the charges, we'll see the Transaction Refund Data section, which lists out all refunds performed during the date range,. This gives an invoice-level of detail to see how the refund numbers in the sales tax summary are being derived.

Tax Settings

Another awesome feature of this report allows you to view all of your app's tax settings in one place! 

The Tax Settings section provides a view of all applicable tax settings entered in your application to allow you to quickly reference your settings at a glance. This section includes Location tax settings, which are specific to each location in the application, as well as the individual Open Line Item, Package Type, POS Item, Reservation Type, and Additional Service tax settings.

Important! Users that belong to the Admin user group will be able to edit tax settings from this view. It is important to note that changing your tax settings will not effect past transactions, or the information displayed on the Sales Tax Report for those dates.

FAQ: Check this out!

How does Gingr calculate sales tax?

Depending on your settings, you might notice that the number that Gingr calculates for tax doesn't equal calculations done by hand (often by taking the subtotal multiplied by the tax rate). This is the case because Gingr calculates tax per unit of time (per unit of boarding/per unit of service, per retail item, etc.), which provides a more accurate calculation of tax. 

There are several reasons why Gingr charges tax this way, but the main reasons are to: 

1. Provide a breakdown of tax charged per item in reporting
2. Account for the usage of packages

Here is a visual representation of how Gingr calculates tax in this way...

Say that a boarding reservation lasts 5 nights. We treat the reservation as 5 “units of time”, and each unit of time has a charge and a tax value. Then, say we use prepaid package credits on this reservation. These package credits are sold up-front—generally, one “credit” would be equal to one “unit of time”. 

So:

- Boarding costs $42/night

- Reservation lasts 5 nights

- Sales tax rate is 8.23%

- Package credit is valued at $-42

- Customer will use 5 package credits to cover the cost of this transaction

Now, let's display the calculation that Gingr performs:

Per unit of time calculation

$42/night x 8.23% = $3.4566 tax per night rounds to ~$3.46 * 5 nights = $17.30 tax for the reservation

Compared to how it could be calculated if it was calculated by the subtotal:

Subtotal calculation

$42/night * 5 nights = $210 * 8.23% = $17.283 rounded to ~ $17.28 tax for the reservation

Note that between these two calculations there is a $0.02 difference. 

Now, let's look at the calculation when using package credits:

$-42 * 8.23% = $-3.4566 rounds to ~$-3.46 * 5 credits = $-17.30 tax credit for package credits

If the reservation were to be calculated by way of the subtotal, there would be a $0.02 tax liability after the package credits were applied. Instead of leaving the business with this liability, we lean on the side to charge tax per unit so that this liability does not exist.