VAT sets

This article explains what a VAT set is, how you pick one, and why it always stays a suggestion that you check with your accountant. By the end you will have one place where your rates live instead of forty. Allow a quarter of an hour, plus one conversation with your accountant you had to have anyway.

If the word VAT is new to you, read the section on VAT in Products and prices first.

Why this exists

You used to type a percentage on every product. A product with tickets got a 6, a beer a 21, chips 6 or 12 — and you had to remember all that. Two things go wrong with that.

The first: you repeat yourself. An association with forty products types a rate forty times, and on the forty-first somebody gets it wrong. The second: you are stuck with one country. Move your dinner event to a hall across the border and you have to open forty products and change every rate.

A VAT set solves both. On a product you no longer say "I am 21%" but "I am drink with alcohol". The rate looks itself up in the set that belongs to your venue.

What exactly is a VAT set?

A VAT set is a list of rates, one per kind of sale, that belongs to one country. This is what such a set looks like:

Kind of sale	Rate
Alcoholic drink	21%
Soft drink	21%
Food eaten on site	12%
Takeaway food	6%
Deposit	no suggestion
Admission ticket	6%
Other	21%

The numbers above are an example, not an answer. What is in your sets you see on your own screen — those are the rates of your country.

Look at the Deposit line. For most countries nothing stands there, and that is not an oversight. In Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Italy a deposit is not a sale but money you are only holding, and then there is no rate to suggest. For Spain and Bulgaria we could not establish it with certainty. Germany is the only country where it is laid down. An empty line means: fill this in yourself after talking to your accountant. We would rather put nothing there than a number that looks reliable and is not.

Those seven kinds are called tax categories. There are exactly seven and no more, because every extra category is a drop-down that gets longer and a volunteer behind the bar who has to stop and think.

Category	What you put in it
Alcoholic drink	Beer, wine, spirits
Soft drink	Water, cola, coffee, tea
Food eaten on site	The plate that is eaten at the table
Takeaway food	The box of chips that goes home with someone
Deposit	The deposit on a cup, and giving it back
Admission ticket	Admission to your event, your performance, your guided tour
Other	Everything that does not fit here

Why food eaten on site and takeaway food stand apart: that is exactly where the line between a reduced and a standard rate runs in almost every country. The same portion of chips is something else fiscally when it goes over the bar on a plate than when it goes home in a box. That is no hair-splitting of ours; that is what the law says.

What you need beforehand

• The Owner or Administrator role for the VAT sets and your products. Only the Owner can choose your organisation's default set (step 1). See Staff and roles.
• At least one venue with the right country filled in. See Setting up your organisation.
• A quarter of an hour.
• After that: five minutes of your accountant's time. Read on first, so you know what exactly to ask them.

This is a suggestion, not tax advice

This is the most important section of this article, and it comes before the steps on purpose.

For each of the seven countries this platform sells in we prepare a set, with the rates that apply in that country according to the European Commission's VAT rates database. Every set states the source and the date on which we consulted it. You find those on the set's own screen.

And still it stays a suggestion. Three reasons:

1. We are not accountants and we do not know your organisation. Whether a rate applies to you depends on your legal form, your activity and your turnover. A non-profit with a dinner event is sometimes under a completely different regime than a brewery with a visitor centre.
2. Some categories are not laid down unambiguously. Alcohol with a meal falls outside the reduced restaurant rate in most countries. In some countries a deposit is not a taxable sale but money you are only holding. Where we are in doubt, we pick the conservative rate — the highest — and put a note beside it. That is safer than handing over too little VAT, but it is not necessarily what applies to you.
3. Rates change. Countries adjust them, sometimes halfway through a year. What we once prepared stays as it stood until you change it.

What you ask your accountant: "These are the rates in my till for admission, drink, food and deposits. Are they right for us?" That is all. Print the screen or take a photo of it.

The responsibility for what ends up on your VAT return is yours. We calculate exactly with the number in your set, and that is precisely the only thing we promise.

The set we suggest

You do not have to create anything. The first time you open Sales → VAT sets, the sets are already there: one per country this platform sells in. Your organisation gets the set of its own country as the default straight away.

A set that still stands exactly as we prepared it you recognise by the tick in the Our suggestion column. As soon as you change something about it, that tick disappears. That is not bookkeeping for the sake of bookkeeping: it is how we know to keep our hands off your work.

Picking a set

There are three places where a set is picked. They belong in this order, from general to particular.

Step 1 — your organisation's default

1. On the left, under Settings, click Organisation.
2. On the The details tab, look at the VAT set field.
3. Is the set of your country there? Then you are done. If not, pick it.
4. Click Save.

This is what applies wherever you set nothing further. If you sell everything in one country, this is the only thing you will ever have to do.

Step 2 — a venue in another country

If you rent a hall across the border, you create a venue for it with the right country in it. The VAT set then follows along by itself.

1. On the left, under Settings, click Venues and open the venue, or create a new one with New venue.
2. Under Country, fill in the country of that hall — the Netherlands, for example.
3. As soon as you do, the VAT set field underneath jumps to the Dutch set. That is our suggestion: you see it standing there and you can change it.
4. Click Save changes (or Create for a new venue).

All the products of that venue follow that set from now on. You do not have to open a single product for it.

Why it hangs on the venue: a VAT rate is determined by the place of the sale, and the venue is the only thing in this system that knows an address. An event with us is a product with a date and a venue, so the address of your event is the address of its hall.

Step 3 — one event that differs

1. Open your product under Products (an event can also be done under Events).
2. Scroll to the VAT block.
3. Under Kind of sale, pick what this product is — Admission ticket, for example.
4. The VAT set field underneath shows which set is followed. Leave it empty and the product follows its venue. Fill one in and that one applies.
5. Click Save changes.

The VAT rate field next to it then shows the rate you actually charge. It stands there greyed out, because the set fills it in. We do not hide it: a rate you cannot see is a rate that can stand wrong for months.

Your own rate on one product

Does your accountant say something else for just that one product? Then he gets his way, without having to call us.

1. Open the product and go to the VAT block.
2. Switch on Own rate on this product.
3. The VAT rate field becomes editable. Type the percentage: 12 or 13.5. Not 0.12.
4. Click Save changes.

From now on this product no longer listens to the set. If you change a rate in the set later, this product stays where it stands. That is exactly what you want: your exception stays your exception.

Changing a rate in a set

This is what you wanted the whole thing for.

1. Go to Sales → VAT sets and open the set.
2. Adjust the rate for the category that is changing.
3. Click Save changes.

If products follow the new rate, you are shown straight away how many. Those products are: everything that carries that category and follows that set. A product with its own rate does not move along, and neither does a product of another venue with another set.

What does not change: everything that has already been sold. Every order line carries its own copy of the rate as it applied at the moment of the sale. A change today should not change last quarter's VAT return retrospectively, and it does not.

My existing products

They do not change. Full stop.

Every product that was there before VAT sets existed carries no category. Without a category no set comes into play and the product keeps the percentage you once typed into it — an idiosyncratic rate such as 13.5% as well. After this change it settles up to the cent the same as it did before.

If you want such a product to run along with a set, open it and pick a Kind of sale. From that moment it follows the set. Take your time over it, one by one, and start with the products the most money goes through.

Common mistakes

Picking a category and forgetting to check the amount of your price. Your price always includes VAT. If a rate goes from 6% to 21%, your visitor still pays the same amount — but less is left over for you. Check your prices when a rate changes a lot.

Filling the rate in as a decimal number. You type 0.21 instead of 21. The field asks for a percentage.

Thinking an empty category is the same as 0%. It is not. No category means: this product arranges its rate itself. A rate of 0% means: no VAT is charged here. And an empty rate in a set means: we make no suggestion here, fill it in yourself.

Making a second set for the same country so that one product can differ. That is possible, but it is rarely what you want. Use Own rate on this product; then it stays with that one exception instead of with two lists that start to drift apart.

Creating a venue without changing the country. The country of a new venue is set to Belgium by default. If you do not switch that over for your hall across the border, you get the wrong rates suggested and nothing about it is right.

What if …

What if my country is not there?

Then we suggest nothing — that is more honest than showing you the rates of another country. Create a set yourself with New VAT set, pick the country, and fill in the rates your accountant gives you.

What if a rate in my country changes?

Then you adjust it in your set, and all the products of that category follow. We do not touch your set any more once you have adjusted it, not even with a platform update.

What if I do not have to charge VAT?

Many small associations are not liable for VAT, and cultural admission is exempt in many countries. In that case simply put the rates in your set at 0. No VAT is calculated then. Do check with your accountant whether that really applies to your organisation.

What if I give a deposit back?

That is a negative line on the receipt, with the same rate as the deposit itself. Which rate that is, you decide: for deposits we make no suggestion in most countries, so you fill it in yourself on your cup product. Once you have done that, it works out by itself in both directions afterwards — charging and giving back use the same number. See Selling at the bar.

What if I delete a set that is still in use?

You delete a set with Delete at the top of the set. The products and venues that hung on it fall back on the level above — a product on its venue, a venue on your organisation. Their rate stays as it stood; nothing quietly goes to zero.

Frequently asked questions

Can a fellow organisation see my sets? No. A VAT set belongs to one organisation. We prepare the same suggestions for everybody, but they are separate lists: what you change nobody else sees, and nobody else can touch yours.

Why is the rate still on the product and not only in the set? Because an order, a receipt, an invoice and a Z report have to know what was actually charged, years later as well. The rate on the product is the outcome; the set is the reason. You see both.

I put a rate in a set wrong and things have already been sold. What now? Put the rate right for the sales still to come. The orders that are already there keep the old rate — that is deliberate. Talk to your accountant about what has to happen with those orders.

Do you give tax advice? No, and we are not allowed to either. We make a suggestion on the basis of an official source and we calculate exactly with what you confirm. The return is yours.