VAT Receipt for UK

Question for those using SambaPOS in the UK @JTRTech, RickH etc…

How are you doing a proper VAT receipt? I know there is 2 ways that either you can not mention the VAT then you have to specify “This is not a VAT receipt” on it, or show the VAT.

I know for B2B businesses you generally quote excluding VAT prices then show VAT at the end before the total, that is straightforward. I am more interested in B2C examples, where typically for B2C type businesses I think for giving a VAT receipt that is suitable for business customers, generally they show a VAT Summary section at the bottom, which would show the amount of each VAT rate (e.g. 20% VAT, 0% VAT), the exc VAT total and the total VAT included.

I’ve seen it so many times, but not living in the UK now I can’t find a receipt for an example, and having trouble finding an image online of a typical receipt like you get from Tesco Express stores or similar that I remember having a VAT Summary on it.

So wondering if you have an example receipt template that meets the requirements?

It’s ok, I found many examples online… brain not working or something no idea why I couldn’t find earlier :stuck_out_tongue:

This is what I was meaning:

The “VAT Receipt Summary” at the bottom.

I guess we also need to specify which items are each rate, like the Tesco receipt has A and C next to each line?

So I can just recreate this :smile:

There are many ways you will see it done.
For uk displayed prices should be including vat, businesses which primarily deal with businesses often show the exc price but it MUST be shows as exc vat on the price.

Receipt wise generally you will see

Products price inc vat

Exc total
Vat amount
Total amount

Many bigger business will often show as you say

amount which is non taxable
Exc amount with 20%
Sometimes they will show this as a grid.

Your example of Tesco is not a good one as many consumer business like Tesco and b&q etc do not give true vat receipts which is really annoying as they should and often it’s a real hassle getting one.

Tesco for example often don’t show a vat breakdown, not sure what defines it, I know of you use club card they defiantly don’t.
What you will see if that the prices will all be including vat and items which are taxable will be marked with a * on the receipt which makes working out vat of petty cash a PITA as have to backwards calculate it by item.

My understnding of a acceptable vat receipt is that it must show the businesses vat number and the AMMOUNT of vat charged on that sale.
I believe the minimum you should show and often see on smaller businesses is

Total £12.00
This ticket includes £2.00 of VAT

Or something along those lines.

I have only sold 2 systems where customer specificly wanted vat setup within samba.
The first justifiably as they were a breakfast bar not all products were taxable so needed to see the true amount of vat due on their accounts.

Hospitality generally would have all products taxable as generally anything which is eaten in is a service and vatted, take away is completely different in cold takeaway is generally not however pubs and hotels generally rarely offer takeaway.

For the other customers which are vat registered they have either opted for just a line saying includes vat at 20% or includes vat of {ticket total}/6
Decided by 6 to give a vat amount from the gross total.

Wow, am suprised you got a Tesco express receipt with vat breakdown.
Am not sure how they decide whether or not to show the breakdown LOL.

The A C on order line is a common one at whole sellers.

The Tesco receipts I usually have to work through at hotel generally just have the * next to the products.

Pot noodle & monster munch!!! :smile:
Hope they were pickled onion flavour!! My favourite :wink:

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haha… yeah those are good. Living in Hong Kong I can’t find pickled onion crisps easily. Best I can find is maybe Walkers picked onion which isn’t the same as likes of monster munch. Don’t know if they still have them? That receipt appears to be from 2009…

As I recall for Tesco, if it is an Express store or a petrol station, they give the VAT receipt by default, not certain why. Big stores never give it, I’m sure in their system you must be able to ask for it though. Not sure if the * on the receipt is related to VAT though, I remember I used to wonder about that.

I’ve setup the VAT receipt like the example shown at the start of this topic, however I am struggling to handle 0% VAT sales.

In the UK, some items are sold as 0% VAT. In SambaPOS, I cannot create a tax template and set the Rate to 0. So I just have to omit products that are at the zero rate from any tax template. I am struggling to show the VAT summary on the receipt to include the 0% VAT amount.

The relevant part of my receipt template is below:

<F>-
<C00>VAT RECEIPT SUMMARY
<J00>Rate | NET | VAT
{TAXES}
<EB>
<J00>VAT TOTAL | [={TICKET TOTAL}-{TAX TOTAL}] | {TAX TOTAL}
<DB>
<C00>VAT No.: GB 123456789
<F>=

[TAXES]
<J00>{TAX RATE}% VAT | {TAXABLE AMOUNT} | {TAX AMOUNT}

Here is an example sale containing one item that is 0% VAT:

                 Business Name
                 Street Address
               Tel: 01234 567890
                www.example.com
Date/Time: 01/10/2016 08:31         Ticket #: 65
Restaurant                            Table #: 1
------------------------------------------------
Garden                                      4.25
Misc Item (ZERO VAT)                        2.00
    * Test                                      
------------------------------------------------
Total:                                     £6.25
Cash                                        6.25
Change                                      0.00
------------------------------------------------
              VAT RECEIPT SUMMARY
Rate       NET                               VAT
20% VAT   3.54                              0.71
VAT TOTAL   5.54                            0.71
             VAT No.: GB 123456789
================================================
           You were serverd by Admin

               T H A N K   Y O U

So you can see I am missing a line in my {TAXES} section. Ideally I want to have it show like this:

------------------------------------------------
              VAT RECEIPT SUMMARY
Rate       NET                               VAT
20% VAT   3.54                              0.71
0% VAT    2.00                              0.00
VAT TOTAL   5.54                            0.71
             VAT No.: GB 123456789
================================================

I tried adding a line like this after the {TAXES} section, however I have no way to access the total of 0% VAT items:

<J00>0% VAT | [={TICKET TOTAL}-{TAX TOTAL}-{TAXABLE AMOUNT:20% VAT}] | 0.00

I am aware this won’t work so is just for illustration - there is no {TAXABLE AMOUNT:X} tag available. The {TAXABLE AMOUNT} tag is only available within the {TAXES} section. The only way I can imagine to be able to access the ticket total for items that don’t have a tax template assigned to them is like this.

Any suggestions? Or can we possibly add support for either tax templates with 0 rate or have {TAXABLE AMOUNT:X} tag available, where X is the tax template name. I am sure many UK businesses that are VAT registered and want to produce VAT receipts must have this same issue?

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We have a tag for the tax amount for a tax don’t we?
So if we know the amount of vat we can calculate the net figure… At 20% times 5 will give the net total leaving a 0% vat figure as
Ticket total - (VAT*6)

1 Like

Yeah I think that should work. My maths ability wasn’t working well in the morning when I was trying to work this out! I was also trying to think along those lines. I’ll give this a shot and let you know.

Ok I just tried it, but it’s got rounding errors - the amount is off by 0.01.

I added this line after {TAXES}:

<J00>0% VAT | [={TICKET TOTAL}-({TAX TOTAL}*6)] | 0.00

Here is an example receipt, you can see it should be 2.00 but instead is showing 1.99.

Garden                                      4.25
Misc Item (ZERO VAT)                        2.00
    * Test                                      
------------------------------------------------
Total:                                     £6.25
Cash                                        6.25
Change                                      0.00
------------------------------------------------
              VAT RECEIPT SUMMARY
Rate       NET                               VAT
20% VAT   3.54                              0.71
0% VAT    1.99                              0.00
VAT TOTAL   5.54                            0.71

I knew there was a reason we shouldn’t calculate backwards (i.e. work out original amount from the VAT charged). It’s due to rounding errors like this. So it’s going in the right direction but not sure how to get around this.

There is something as %0 Tax so we should allow that. I don’t know why I disallowed setting 0 as tax rate. I’ll check that.

1 Like

Tested it for 5.1.61 and seems to work fine. It will be available on next refresh.

Maybe it generated divide by zero somewhere and I incorrectly disabled %0 setting. Let me know if you notice something like that.

PS: %0 net amount may confuse you. I just mapped it to all products.

3 Likes

Thanks Emre, much appreciated :slight_smile:

@markjw diggin up an old post but remembered you didnt show a * on exempt items like tesco receipts do.
Since our gratuity is optional and exempt I thought i add the facility to show exempt items while tidying up template.
I added a simple ternary within orders section;

[='{ORDER TAX RATE:VAT}' == '' ? '*' : '']

[ORDERS]
-- Default format for orders
&lt;J00&gt;{QUANTITY} x {PRODUCT NAME} {PORTION}{PRICE TAG}|[='{ORDER TAX RATE:VAT}' == '' ? '*' : '']£{TOTAL AMOUNT}
{ORDER TAGS}

image

Know Carlsberg isnt vat free, changed just for testing.