Here you’ll find answers to frequently-asked questions from our customers. If you need help with something not listed here, please contact us and we’ll do everything we can to assist.
Click on any question below and the answer will appear below it.
TaxTools was created as a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution, which means as you use the service you are charged for the amount of calls your store makes to the server. A call occurs when your store communicates with the AccurateTax server. There are two types of calls: one for Address Validation (which happens after the customer enters their address) and another for Sales Tax Information (which is what calculates the sales tax on the items being ordered).
When you install AccurateTax TaxTools, you will be asked to indicate which states you wish to collect sales tax for – these are called your nexus states. Sales tax calls will be made only for orders shipping to these states. To determine the number of sales tax calls you will need, look at your order history to determine how many orders to those states you receive each month.
The TaxTools Advanced solution also makes address validation calls. You can set the server to only validate addresses in your nexus states, or to validate all addresses. If you validate all addresses, you may need to choose a higher-call package than indicated by your number of orders to nexus states.
Address validation provides several benefits beyond its need for sales tax calculations. First, it can reduce the time you spend researching a correct address when a customer provides an address that is noted as invalid by your shipping software. Second, it reduces or eliminates address correction fees charged by certain carriers:
Finally, address correction also prevents packages being returned and requiring re-shipment if the address provided by the customer could not be corrected by the carrier.
In Magento, if you go to the tax report, the sales tax amount is recalculated based on tax rate stored inside of Magento. This calculation is done every time the report is viewed. As a result, it doesn’t reflect the amount that was actually charged to the order. The solution is to compare the actual rate charged on the order itself to what is in your AccurateTax reports, rather than using the Magento tax report feature.
In MIVA Merchant, you call tell us how to map charges that are added to the basket. If a coupon is added by a third-party module, its tax class needs to be set to taxable in order to reduce the amount of tax charged to the customer.
This is due to a setting in your store, and has nothing really to do with AccurateTax. The reason is that OpenCart is primarily developed in Europe, where sales tax (VAT) is included in the product price that you see while shopping. You can easily turn this off in your OpenCart settings. To do so, click the "cog" icon in the OpenCart admin, and then click Settings. Next, click the Edit button (blue button with a pencil icon) next to the name of your store. Click the Option tab on the next screen, and scroll down to the Taxes section. The first option should say "Display Prices With Tax". Change this to No, then scroll back up and click the Save button (blue button with floppy disk icon).
When you download our OpenCart extension or view the documentation on our website, you’re working with the OpenCart 2.0 extension. We do have a version for the older OpenCart 1.x releases, but you’ll need to contact us for the extension and help getting it installed. The 1.x version requires modifying a number of additional files that our 2.0 extension doesn’t require.