Generic VAT import/export anything avaialble?

[SteveG]

Greeting all, has anyone come across or have a solution for importing the VAT rates, it's no part of the standard product import...

Thanks for your help

[Jake Herbert]

Re: Generic VAT import/export anything avaialble?

I'd like this feature too. Would be a big time saver for us.

Or just to be able to set the default value to a certain option would be nice, rather than the default 0%.

Thanks

[Pete McNamara]

Re: Generic VAT import/export anything avaialble?

OK, it's early in the morning and perhaps I am not awake, but what are the problems you are experiencing? Can you please be a little bit more specific about how you are using VAT in your stores? The reason I ask is that stores I have worked on have never had an issue with VAT (and GST, in our cases). The stores have thousands of products and dealing with VAT/GST in them requires the same amount of work as activating or deactivating products i.e. almost none. (enter 1 or zero in the tax field)

I use the German VAT module and then make a series of amendments (quite a few). I can do this work for you and if interested, please contact me offlist. It should be a relatively low cost job. If you would prefer to try and do it yourself, here are some pointers:

1. I use the cost field for the GST/VAT inclusive price and the price field for the GST/VAT exclusive price
2. We keep the product data in Excel spreadsheets and the cost field is is simply the price field multiplied by 1+the tax rate. Here is an example of such a store: http://www.abbeyarchery.com.au/ (make sure you click through to a product page). As GST is 10% in Australia, the formula for cost price in Excel = the price * 1.1
3. In the German VAT module, we delete all the default countries and add the home country - for the store above, Australia.

So, the VAT rate information is defined by the tax module and we use the product import function to import the cost field and the tax field (which is either a 1 or zero).

Hope this helps

[SteveG]

Re: Generic VAT import/export anything avaialble?

Thanks Pete,

Yes that is a good work around. I'm working on a new store that's wholesale only so just need the GST/VAT added in at check out, looks like I can get a module at a reasonable price so will go that way.

I used to have it set up as you discribe on my old miva 4 store and that did work fine, but when I migrated to mm5 I couldn't make it work. Problems with the maths and getting it to show what I wanted in Checkout so ended up entering the GST rate individually to products.... too many products to do that this time :)

[Jake Herbert]

Re: Generic VAT import/export anything avaialble?

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

We are in the UK, so we use the European VAT module. We need to charge VAT to certain countries, others a VAT free.

I use toolkit to determine what price to show on the product page, a sum of Price * Vat rate if applicable.

As far as displaying prices goes it works fine.

Our issue is that when we add a product I have to set it to taxable (by import- that's quick), then each product has to be set to 20% Vat. That takes about 30 seconds per product as it involves about 3-4 clicks.

So I just want a way of bulk importing VAT rates for the products for the European VAT setting.

If anyone can write a module for this we'd be willing to sponsor development.

Cheers

Jake

[Pete McNamara]

Re: Generic VAT import/export anything avaialble?

Jake, I just don't understand your problem. Are you using the German/European VAT module included with Miva Merchant? If so, it completes the tax rate (by country) for you. When you installed Miva, it set VAT rates for you plus you have the ability to add/delete(like when that is ever going to happen?)/change VAT rates, by country. All that should be required now is a 1 or zero in the taxable field and that sets the tax rate for that product.

Do you bulk import product (import product data) data into Miva Merchant?

[Jake Herbert]

Re: Generic VAT import/export anything avaialble?

Hi Pete.

Thanks for your time.
We use the "European Vat" setting. We need this as it allows us to select which countries we need to charge VAT to. We have to charge VAT to both the UK and all the other EU member states. This Tax setting allow us to do that as it has a countires list so we can select which countries are taxable. I think in some stores this is called the "German Vat" setting.

In the product admin screen there is a taxable tickbox. We set this by doing bulk import. That works fine.



There is also however a VAT rates field where we have to set the VAT rate for each product. This we can only do manually as there is no import functionality as far as I can tell. Annoyingly there is no way to set the default value. We only have one VAT rate but we still need to update it. See attached screen shots.
admin1.JPG

admin2.JPG

I think the European VAT tax settings work quite differently to Generic VAT.

In fact our problem would be solved if we could just have all products default to the 20% rate.

We need to have it working properly as we sell to a lot of countries which are not taxable, so just using tax inclusive prices would not work in these cases.

Thanks