Products, tax and locations

Your catalog and the rates that turn a price into an invoice total.

Products

The Products page is your catalog. Each product has a name, an optional SKU, a kind, a price and a Taxable flag. When you build an invoice or a schedule, choose a product on a line and its description, price and taxable setting are filled in; you can still change them on that line. Editing a product later does not change invoices that already exist. Products you no longer sell can be made inactive instead of deleted, so they stay on past invoices.

Categories

Categories group your products, for example Drinks, Food and Retail. On the register they show as colored buttons above the products.

• Open Products, then Categories. Give the category a name (up to 100 characters, no colon) and pick a color.
• Open a product and choose its category. A product is in one category at a time, and there is no nesting.
• The order on the Categories page is the order of the buttons on the register.
• A category is never deleted. Switching it off hides its button, and its products still show under All and Other.

The product list on a new invoice is grouped by category too. With QuickBooks Online, categories sync as QuickBooks categories when your company has item categories turned on; QuickBooks Desktop has none.

How tax is calculated

Tax is calculated per line. Each line amount is quantity times unit price, rounded to the cent. If the line is marked Taxable, the tax rate is applied to that line's amount and rounded to the cent. The invoice's subtotal, tax and total are the sums of the lines. Because each line is rounded on its own, a total can differ by a cent from taxing the subtotal in one go; that is expected. The rate is saved on the invoice when it is created, so changing a rate later does not alter invoices or schedules that already used it.

Tax rates

The Tax rates page lists your named rates with their percentage, agency and source. One rate can be your default, pre-filled on new invoices and the register.

• Add a rate by hand with a name and percentage.
• If QuickBooks is connected, use Import tax rates on the QuickBooks page to bring in the rates you already use there. Imported rates are read-only.
• Make a rate inactive when you no longer use it. It disappears from the pickers but stays on past invoices.
• On any invoice or schedule you can type a one-off percentage instead of choosing a named rate.

Your default tax rate is chosen on your account page under Tax. Add a rate first if you have none yet.

Locations

A location is a store or site. Give each its address, phone and, when it differs from your usual rate, its own sales tax rate. Open Locations from your account page.

• Leave a location's rate on Merchant default to use your default rate.
• A sale rung up on a register uses the tax rate of that register's location. The cashier can still pick a different rate.
• When you create an invoice, choose a Location. It starts on that location's rate, and you can still change it before saving.
• If a location's rate is switched off, the location falls back to your default until you choose another. Locations are never deleted, only switched off, and a location with active registers cannot be switched off. You always need at least one active location.
• You can give a location a short code and use {LOC} in your invoice number format.