Tax & Shipping

tax configurations introduction in the context of b2b, it's really important to understand the two types of pricing available to customers price type tax setup gross the pricing will include tax for example, if the price is $20 00, this price will include any tax calculations net the pricing will exclude tax for example, if the price is $20 00, this price will exclude any tax calculations b2b customers typically make payments in one of these ways either with tax included (gross pricing) or tax excluded (net pricing) how sparklayer handles pricing sparklayer will always output the prices in the net amounts, regardless of the tax status you set on your website in effect, when you upload your b2b pricing via sparklayer, the customer will see the exactly the same prices on your website when the customer then proceeds through the checkout, they will then see the tax calculations added how sparklayer calculates tax simply put, sparklayer calculates tax based on the setup you have on your website and you can see full information for specific platforms below before starting, there are two important resources to review your specific shopify store set up by visiting this link , you can see how your tax is setup shopify help guides shopify how their own guides on setting up tax, please see here broadly speaking, shopify lets you configure tax rules at a global level but also apply specific edits against customers and products to help set the scene, we've summarised some of the key ways you can configure tax below please note if you're using sparklayer to power your b2b store alongside your b2c (retail), you'll need to check carefully before making any edits setting a customer to be tax exempt it's possible to set a customer within shopify to be 'tax exempt' within shopify, click edit on a customer and under ' manage tax exemptions' you can untick "collect tax" once done, the customer will then be exempt from any tax charges on your website in the context of sparklayer, they'll see all your pricing as net and on the final step of the checkout, the tax will be set to zero setting up tax settings for products (including variants) shopify has the ability to set tax rules on a product and product variant basis, giving you a great deal of flexibility on how tax is charged when editing a product, you'll see a checkbox 'charge tax on this product' which, when ticked, will use the tax settings you've configured here you can also configure this on a product variant level in the context of sparklayer, if you have specific products that are set to not charge tax, this will be factored in when the customer gets to the final step of the checkout to see their overall tax charges setting up country level tax settings it's also possible to set up country level rules for tax which will apply to customers based on their shipping destination country you can manage country level tax settings from the markets area of shopify in the context of sparklayer, if your store is setup to allow shipping to multiple countries, this will be factored in when the customer gets to the final step of the checkout to see their overall tax charges draft orders and collecting tax if you've set up sparklayer to send orders into shopify as "draft orders", it's also possible to change the tax charges against an order when tax is removed, this will adjust the "estimated tax" calculation in the order totals for the draft order in the context of sparklayer, if you remove tax against a draft order, this will only apply to the "estimated tax" calculation it will not retrospectively apply this against specific products in the order displaying gross pricing (tax inclusive) and net pricing (tax exclusive) if there are circumstances where you do want to show gross pricing and net pricing to your b2b customers, you can consider the following approach by default, sparklayer will always output the pricing as net pricing (see above to learn more) when a b2b customer sees pricing, it will always be tax exclusive within your storefront theme, you could use custom coding to display a custom price on the page, shown only to logged in customers this could use the metafields system available within platforms such as shopify and bigcommerce to show gross pricing, you could potentially make use of our pricing display docid\ s vtljborgmnwjjfsmom9 that lets you set a price independent to the b2b price note this is not the intended use but can act as a workaround displaying gross pricing if there are circumstances where you do want to show gross pricing to your b2b customers, there is a potential way around this it's possible to set a customer within shopify to be 'tax exempt' (see above) this would mean their order would be zero tax rated in the price lists you upload to sparklayer, set the prices to be the "gross" amounts (even though they don't technically include tax) as to reporting, you would need to report on the tax amounts after the fact (e g via your accounting system) "line item tax" handling products with differing tax rates if you have products within your shopify store that have different tax rates, sparklayer is able to support "line item" tax levels to check if you have this enabled within shopify within your shopify admin, go to settings and click taxes and duties (or click here ) ensure that the "include sales tax in product price and shipping rate" setting is enabled if this setting is enabled and you have products in your store that have different tax rates within a single jurisdiction, you're able to enable a special sparklayer setting that has handling for this please speak to our team to assist you please note the following when this setting is enabled, the draft will be created in shopify when the customer reaches the shipping / payment method select step of the checkout, before they've clicked "complete order" at this point the draft order will have a tag of b2b pending once the customer clicks "complete" the draft order is updated to have a tag of b2b why is this necessary? when an order is placed via sparklayer we calculate a discount to be applied to each line item to yield the correct b2b price when the "include sales tax in product price and shipping rate" setting is disabled disabled , we calculate the difference between the shopify price and the sparklayer b2b price and apply that as a discount when the "include sales tax in product price and shipping rate" setting is enabled enabled we must also compensate for tax historically sparklayer used a single tax rate (the rate for the first line item) to calculate the discount for all line items the only way for sparklayer to get the tax rates for each line item from shopify is to create a draft order here are some screenshots showing the difference between two identical orders created with and without the "create draft order during calculation" feature enabled when the feature is disabled the second line item has the incorrect discount applied when the feature is enabled the second line item has the correct discount applied please refer to the sparklayer technical docs ⚠️ troubleshooting ⚠️tax shows as zero (e g $0 00) when placing an order through sparklayer, the tax is showing as zero (e g $0 00) in the sparklayer checkout or when the order has come through into your website admin ✅ view possible resolutions possible resolutions check that the customer account is not set as tax exempt go into the customer record in shopify , in the customer settings in the right hand side you are able to manage tax exemptions as show below check if you are charging tax on the products or variants in your shopify store go into the product in your store and scroll down the pricing to see the below and ensure the charge tax on this product is ticked check if you you are charging tax in the country the customer is checking out with within the taxes and duties section, navigate to the specific country and you'll see a "tick" if the country is collecting tax or not not applicable ⚠️ tax is being charged when it shouldn't be when going through the sparklayer checkout, the customer is being charged tax when they shouldn't be ✅ view possible resolutions possible resolutions check that the customer account is not set as tax exempt go into the customer record in shopify , in the customer settings in the right hand side you are able to manage tax exemptions as show below not applicable ⚠️ tax is not not being charged in the checkout when it should be when going through the sparklayer checkout, the customer is not being charged tax when they shouldn't be ✅ view possible resolutions possible resolutions check that the customer account is set as tax exempt go into the customer record in shopify , in the customer settings in the right hand side you are able to manage tax exemptions as show below not applicable ⚠️ prices are wrong when i check an order when placing and order through sparklayer, the pricing in the sparklayer checkout is different to the pricing being displayed in the shopify order ✅ view possible resolutions possible resolutions go to your shopify settings and navigate to taxes and duties when scrolling to the bottom, check if you have include sales tax in product price and shipping rate turned on as shown below if this is turned on , when creating an automatic price list you will need to ensure you click on the adjust percentage to account for tax to ensure sparklayer connects to shopify with the correct pricing in addition to this, we also recommend ensuring that the price of the product is lower in sparklayer than it is in shopify one way to do this is to go the price editor in the sparklayer dashboard and searching for the sku you can then compare this price to the price that you have in shopify it's very important to note that if the shopify price is lower than the sparklayer price, when the customer goes through the sparklayer checkout, it will default to the lower shopify price when checking your pricing, you'll also need to consider if the shopify price is including tax or not if the sparklayer price is higher "after tax" than your shopify price including tax then again it will revert to the lower shopify price not applicable ⚠️ shipping to a different country shows the wrong tax amount when a customer is placing an order to a different country from your "default" country in shopify, the tax is not being calculated correctly ✅ view possible resolutions possible resolutions check if you you are charging tax in the country the customer is checking out with within the taxes and duties section, navigate to the specific country and you'll see a "tick" if the country is collecting tax or not not applicable ⚠️ tax is being charged twice in the checkout when a customer is placing an order, they are being charged tax "twice" on their order ✅ view possible resolutions possible resolutions if you're using a managing pricing docid\ nx9q00ewv kbjxc3tg1ut , check that you haven't uploaded your prices as gross (i e including tax) in order for tax to be added correctly in the cart, all pricing must be uploaded at net pricing (i e excluding tax) if you are using managing pricing docid\ nx9q00ewv kbjxc3tg1ut and you have include sales tax in price and shipping switched on in shopify, you'll need to ensure that your price list has the adjust for tax enabled this will then reduce the price to the correct percentage, whilst taking into account tax charges not applicable ⚠️ i need to charge tax for some products and not others i sell products that have different tax rates but the calculations are wrong when the customer checks out ✅ view possible resolutions possible resolutions by default, tax is charged on the overall subtotal of the customer's cart we have a setting that will allow you tax individual line items, giving you more control over which items are taxed please support docid\ nnuw1g9z7eaj4m78vk7t9 to enable this in order to make sure that you're no longer charging tax on specfic line items, you'll then need make sure that the charge tax is not selected on the variant in shopify not applicable ⚠️ shipping costs are not showing the correct amounts when a customer is checking out, they are not seeing the correct shipping costs as set up in the sparklayer shipping system ✅ view possible resolutions possible resolutions when using sparklayer shipping docid\ cfz zpgw2umovao73lc5m , the prices listed in the dashboard should always match the prices shown to the customer when checking out if the shipping rate listed is different, please support docid\ nnuw1g9z7eaj4m78vk7t9 not applicable adjusting the text for "tax" for locations within the frontend interfaces docid\ ccz1vnh0o6d 722w35xpa where the word "tax" is displayed, it's possible to customise this and adjust the wording updating language and text you can update the default text by adding code to your frontend integration guide docid\ qwxsym9x5 pviogutekcp languages & international docid\ klrs7wtxn3wncdy8z5zvu about how to update text on sparklayer / add the below code into the sparklayer core script / / please refer to our help guide on how to do this / translations { en { "global totals tax" "tax", "cart tax shipping note" "tax and shipping costs calculated during checkout", "cart tax shipping message" "tax and shipping costs shown on next step" } }, / end of code / showing a tax information next to pricing it's possible to prefix the pricing display on a product detail page with custom language such as 'excludes tax' or any other messaging you'd like to add to highlight tax details similarly, you can customise how pricing also shows in the my cart interface docid\ efevur a3ycjxuhvrr7t making the tax information clear to your customers to make these customisations, you can simply edit the language details within your sparklayer setup, adjusting as necessary updating language and text you can update the default text by adding code to your frontend integration guide docid\ qwxsym9x5 pviogutekcp languages & international docid\ klrs7wtxn3wncdy8z5zvu about how to update text on sparklayer / add the below code into the sparklayer core script / / please refer to our help guide on how to do this / translations { en { "pdp price from prefix" "excluding tax ", "global per unit" "{price} per unit (ex tax)", } }, / end of code / shipping configurations please refer to our shipping docid\ cfz zpgw2umovao73lc5m guide for further information