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tocWhen entering Bills, Control currently only supports one line for taxes (which is charged to the expense account “Sales Tax Paid” by default). This poses a problem in places where multiple sales taxes paid must be taxed. The most prevalent example of this among Cyrious customers are Canadian customers who need to track GST and potentially multiple PST taxes.

This How-To will present two work-arounds to this problem. Both start with the creation of a liability account for each tax account (e.g., “PST - Quebec”) and enter the taxes as line items. The first approach can be used immediately from that point on. The second approach requires a bit of “hacking” the system with a direct database manipulation, but provides a solution that is easier to use and less likely to produce errors.

1. Use Other Item in the bill and manually enter the GL Account Code. Expenses, Parts, Other Materials, and most other types of line items in bills only allow you to select expenses or cost of goods as the charge-to account. However, if you select the “Other Item” type you will be able to select from any GL Account. Therefore, just select “Other Item” and choose the appropriate GL Tax Account.

1. The second tricks Control into using a Part to record the amount in the GL Tax Account rather than an expense account. Since Control will only allow you to choose an expense account for a part, it will take a direct database change to make this work.

• Danger: It is easy to delete or change things you did not mean to when directly manipulating the database in SQL. Please leave that part to the professionals.
• You should avoid assigning these tax “costs” to an order without further testing.
• Reporting for this approach does not exist. You will need to use the internal ledger capabilities of Control, develop it yourself, or pay to have any reporting needs addressed.

1. Create a GL Account for each tax liability account if needed. These probably already exist, but if they don't you will need to create them.

1. Create the Bill.

1. Add the line items for the materials.

1. Add a line item for the taxes:
   • Enter Other Item as the part type.
   • Enter the type of tax for the Description (e.g. PST - Quebec)
   • Select the appropriate tax liability account from the “Expense Account” drop-down.
   • Enter the amount of taxes as the total cost for that line.

1. Create a GL Account for each tax liability account if needed. These probably already exist, but if they don't you will need to create them.

1. Create a new Part for the tax:
   • Enter the tax name (e.g., PST - Quebec) as the name of the part.
   • Uncheck Use Category Default“ if checked.
   • Check Track Costs if not checked.
   • Set the Part Type to Other.
   • Select “Only Track Costs for Cost Accounting under Accounting Options.
   • Select any value for the Computed Costs (it won't be used).
   • Since you can't select the tax liability account, just select any account as the Expense for Bills. (We'll have to change it in the database.)
   • On the Costs tab, enter the Tax rate as a decimal under as the Fixed Cost. (For example, if the tax rate is 7%, enter 0.07 as the cost.)
   • Save the Part

1. Call technical support or your implementor and ask them to change this part's expense account (in the database directly) so that it points to the appropriate Tax Liability Account. Instructions for Tech follow:
   • Locate the tax accounts in the GLAccount table with a query like:

SELECT ID, AccountName FROM GLAccount WHERE GLClassificationType = 2006

  * Locate the new Part in the GLAccount table with a query like:

SELECT ID, ItemName, ModifiedDate, ExpenseAccountID FROM Part WHERE ItemName = 'Enter Tax Part Name'

  * Change the ExpenseAccountID of the Part to the appropriate Tax Account directly in the table or with a query like:

UPDATE Part SET ExpenseAccountID = xxxx WHERE PartID = yyyy

1. Close Control and reopen it.

1. Create the Bill.

1. Add the line items for the materials.

1. Add a line item for the taxes:
   • Enter Part as the part type.
   • Select the Tax Part. You will see it fill in the tax liability account automatically.
   • Enter the amount of taxes as the total cost** for that line, or enter the taxable amount as the number of units and it will calculate the cost for you (since the unit cost is the tax rate).
   • Save the Bill.

Contributor: Cyrious Software

Date: 10/26/2009

Version: Control 4.3+

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