AccurateTax for ShopSite Documentation

Table of Contents

Introduction

AccurateTax is a product that allows online retailers to accurately calculate and charge sales tax on all orders shipped within the United States. It looks up the correct sales tax rate(s) for the order based on the address and the items in the order, and calculates the tax amount, adding it as a sales tax charge to the customer’s order.

Prerequisites

Before continuing, you should have the following:

  • A ShopSite Pro or Enterprise e-commerce website running version 12 sp3 r4 or greater
  • An AccurateTax account and its corresponding license key and checksum
  • Tax codes for any special tax classes for products you sell, such as apparel. Contact your AccurateTax account manager for details.

Configuring AccurateTax as Your API Tax Add-On

The first step is to configure your ShopSite store to use AccurateTax. To do so, follow these steps:

  1. In the ShopSite admin menu, navigate to Commerce > Tax
  2. In the section labeled “Please choose a tax system”, choose the “API Tax Add-on” option
  3. Click the Configure button
  4. On the next screen, in the “Custom Tax Add-on” section, choose the option labeled “URL of Tax Add-on CGI:” and enter “https://us1.accuratetax.com/service-shopsite.php”. (Note that “us1” may be different for your account; ask your account manager if you need clarification.)
  5. Scroll down to the “Extra Parameters” section.
  6. For “Additional Parameter 1” enter your license key.
  7. For “Additional Parameter 2” enter your checksum.
  8. Scroll down to the “Tax Codes” section
    • Optional: In the “Tax Codes used to create pull down list when editing products” enter the tax codes necessary for your store. Examples are “99999” for General Taxable Goods and “00000” for Non-Taxable goods. If you have products with special product taxation, enter those codes as well. Codes should be entered one per line. (This step is required only if your store has non-taxable goods and/or items that have special tax classes.)
    • Required: For “Default Product” enter “99999”.
    • Required: For “Shipping” enter “11010”.
    • Required: For “Surcharge” enter “99999” if your surcharges are taxable, or “00000” if your surcharges are non-taxable.
    • See screenshot below for an example.
  9. Scroll to the bottom and click “Save Changes”.
Shopsite Configuration Settings for AccurateTax

Assigning Tax Codes to Your Products

If you sell items that are non-taxable, or that have special tax classes (such as Apparel), then you need to assign these to your products. (If all of your products fall into the General Taxable Goods category, you can omit this step.)

To set the tax classes, you will use the Power Editor as follows:

  1. In the ShopSite admin menu, navigate to Products
  2. Click one or more products to select them for editing. To select multiple products, hold down the CTRL or CMD key on your keyboard while clicking each products. Selected products will be outlined with a border.
  3. Once all products to be edited have been selected, click the 3-pencil icon to PowerEdit those products.
  4. In the box on the left that contains the fields to be edited, click Tax Code, then click the “Add >” button.
  5. Click the “Proceed” button.
  6. On the next screen, in each dropdown, select the appropriate tax class. The list will contain the values you entered in Step 8 from the list above. See screenshot below.
  7. When you are finished, scroll to the button and click the “Save Changes” button.

Testing Your Store with AccurateTax

To test your configuration, go to your storefront and add at least one taxable product to your shopping cart. View the shopping cart, and if you have an “estimate shipping” form, enter a sample zipcode for any taxable state. (The state must be marked taxable in your AccurateTax account.) Once you do this, you will see a tax amount in the shopping cart.

If you do not have a shipping estimator on your website, proceed to checkout. Enter a taxable address for shipping, and you should see a tax amount on that page as well.

Note that the tax calculated in checkout might be different than the tax estimated on the cart page. This is because more specific address information is included during checkout (street, city, state, and ZIP code), so the calculation during checkout is more precise.