Newbie question on collecting Sales Tax

[Vince Clark]

I'm having trouble understanding how to properly set up sales taxes. Two
areas of misunderstanding:

1) Company setup

We have set up a production instance and created a company. The ID
defaulted to 10000. The demo data uses "Company" as the system company
id and I have seen reference to the fact that this company id is
sometimes hardcoded.

I have also seen reference to a file called
AccountingProperties.properties where there is a setting for
accounting.company.partyId.
http://www.neogia.org/Scratch_deployment_procedure_-_part_II

However, this appears to based on an old version as I cannot find that
file in the source. As far as I can tell the current functionality can
determine everything it needs based on the Company and tax authorities
being set up properly. No settings in properties files or hardcoded
values are necessary.

2) Sales Tax determination
The setup seems to tie everything by Geography. Is the assessment of
sales tax based on the state of the customer and a lookup to the proper
tax authority? If it is an out of state purchase, ie., the customer is
in a different state than the Company is it automatically not taxed?

Also, is state as granular as OFBiz is currently capable of? What about
local tax authorities like city or county?
--
Vince Clark
Global Era
The freedom of open source.
[phone]
[phone] fax
[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>
www.globalera.com

[David E Jones]

Here's the best source for this info:

http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBENDUSER/Apache+OFBiz+Business+Setup+Guide

If you are looking for anything on these topics that is not covered there then just let us know.

-David


Vince Clark wrote:

> I'm having trouble understanding how to properly set up sales taxes. Two
> areas of misunderstanding:
>
> 1) Company setup
>
> We have set up a production instance and created a company. The ID
> defaulted to 10000. The demo data uses "Company" as the system company
> id and I have seen reference to the fact that this company id is
> sometimes hardcoded.
>
> I have also seen reference to a file called
> AccountingProperties.properties where there is a setting for
> accounting.company.partyId.
> http://www.neogia.org/Scratch_deployment_procedure_-_part_II
>
> However, this appears to based on an old version as I cannot find that
> file in the source. As far as I can tell the current functionality can
> determine everything it needs based on the Company and tax authorities
> being set up properly. No settings in properties files or hardcoded
> values are necessary.
>
> 2) Sales Tax determination
> The setup seems to tie everything by Geography. Is the assessment of
> sales tax based on the state of the customer and a lookup to the proper
> tax authority? If it is an out of state purchase, ie., the customer is
> in a different state than the Company is it automatically not taxed?
>
> Also, is state as granular as OFBiz is currently capable of? What about
> local tax authorities like city or county?

[Vince Clark]

David

I've looked at this resource. The section "Business Setup Process" seems
to assume that demo data was loaded. It suggests that you must use a
companyId of "Company" to properly set up the "company that owns or is
running the system."

We started from scratch and only loaded seed data, no demo data. Here is
the fundamental question:
How does the system know what Party "owns or is running the system."

David E Jones wrote:

>
> Here's the best source for this info:
>
> http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBENDUSER/Apache+OFBiz+Business+Setup+Guide
>
>
> If you are looking for anything on these topics that is not covered
> there then just let us know.
>
> -David
>
>
> Vince Clark wrote:
>> I'm having trouble understanding how to properly set up sales taxes. Two
>> areas of misunderstanding:
>>
>> 1) Company setup
>>
>> We have set up a production instance and created a company. The ID
>> defaulted to 10000. The demo data uses "Company" as the system company
>> id and I have seen reference to the fact that this company id is
>> sometimes hardcoded.
>>
>> I have also seen reference to a file called
>> AccountingProperties.properties where there is a setting for
>> accounting.company.partyId.
>> http://www.neogia.org/Scratch_deployment_procedure_-_part_II
>>
>> However, this appears to based on an old version as I cannot find that
>> file in the source. As far as I can tell the current functionality can
>> determine everything it needs based on the Company and tax authorities
>> being set up properly. No settings in properties files or hardcoded
>> values are necessary.
>>
>> 2) Sales Tax determination
>> The setup seems to tie everything by Geography. Is the assessment of
>> sales tax based on the state of the customer and a lookup to the proper
>> tax authority? If it is an out of state purchase, ie., the customer is
>> in a different state than the Company is it automatically not taxed?
>>
>> Also, is state as granular as OFBiz is currently capable of? What about
>> local tax authorities like city or county?

--
Vince Clark
Global Era
The freedom of open source.
[phone]
[phone] fax
[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>
www.globalera.com

[David E Jones]

This isn't built in or special anywhere, you just have to setup the data in many places for it. Also, this system is setup to be multi-organizational so you could technically have many of these company parties in the system (each with its own store, accounting settings, etc, etc).

Hence the recommendation to use the demo data... or sift through ALL of it and understand it all.

-David


Vince Clark wrote:

> David
>
> I've looked at this resource. The section "Business Setup Process" seems
> to assume that demo data was loaded. It suggests that you must use a
> companyId of "Company" to properly set up the "company that owns or is
> running the system."
>
> We started from scratch and only loaded seed data, no demo data. Here is
> the fundamental question:
> How does the system know what Party "owns or is running the system."
>
> David E Jones wrote:
>> Here's the best source for this info:
>>
>> http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBENDUSER/Apache+OFBiz+Business+Setup+Guide
>>
>>
>> If you are looking for anything on these topics that is not covered
>> there then just let us know.
>>
>> -David
>>
>>
>> Vince Clark wrote:
>>> I'm having trouble understanding how to properly set up sales taxes. Two
>>> areas of misunderstanding:
>>>
>>> 1) Company setup
>>>
>>> We have set up a production instance and created a company. The ID
>>> defaulted to 10000. The demo data uses "Company" as the system company
>>> id and I have seen reference to the fact that this company id is
>>> sometimes hardcoded.
>>>
>>> I have also seen reference to a file called
>>> AccountingProperties.properties where there is a setting for
>>> accounting.company.partyId.
>>> http://www.neogia.org/Scratch_deployment_procedure_-_part_II
>>>
>>> However, this appears to based on an old version as I cannot find that
>>> file in the source. As far as I can tell the current functionality can
>>> determine everything it needs based on the Company and tax authorities
>>> being set up properly. No settings in properties files or hardcoded
>>> values are necessary.
>>>
>>> 2) Sales Tax determination
>>> The setup seems to tie everything by Geography. Is the assessment of
>>> sales tax based on the state of the customer and a lookup to the proper
>>> tax authority? If it is an out of state purchase, ie., the customer is
>>> in a different state than the Company is it automatically not taxed?
>>>
>>> Also, is state as granular as OFBiz is currently capable of? What about
>>> local tax authorities like city or county?
>

[rajsaini]

My understanding is:

Create a Party Group for your company.
Assign it the roles demo data "Company" have.

When I do it without demo data,  I generally run two instances of Ofbiz
and refer the demo data setup to create similar setup (with different
names). As David suggested work with demo data before you attempt to
setup afresh. I did the setup with demo data couple of times to
understand the Ofbiz and finally, for production did it from scratch.

Thanks,

Raj
Vince Clark wrote:

> I'm having trouble understanding how to properly set up sales taxes. Two
> areas of misunderstanding:
>
> 1) Company setup
>
> We have set up a production instance and created a company. The ID
> defaulted to 10000. The demo data uses "Company" as the system company
> id and I have seen reference to the fact that this company id is
> sometimes hardcoded.
>
> I have also seen reference to a file called
> AccountingProperties.properties where there is a setting for
> accounting.company.partyId.
> http://www.neogia.org/Scratch_deployment_procedure_-_part_II
>
> However, this appears to based on an old version as I cannot find that
> file in the source. As far as I can tell the current functionality can
> determine everything it needs based on the Company and tax authorities
> being set up properly. No settings in properties files or hardcoded
> values are necessary.
>
> 2) Sales Tax determination
> The setup seems to tie everything by Geography. Is the assessment of
> sales tax based on the state of the customer and a lookup to the proper
> tax authority? If it is an out of state purchase, ie., the customer is
> in a different state than the Company is it automatically not taxed?
>
> Also, is state as granular as OFBiz is currently capable of? What about
> local tax authorities like city or county?
>