Customer Creation and Editing

Customers and prospective customers or prospects, are stored in the customer master file.  New customer records are created using the Customer Manager program, and existing customer records can be edited in the Customer Manager or the Customer Detail programs.

Each customer record contains a Taxtype and a Taxcode field, and both of these tax fields are required for all customer records. 

Taxtype Assignment

As each new customer record is set up, a default Taxtype (normally RETAIL) is automatically defaulted or loaded into the new record.

This behavior causes the customer to be taxed (based on the Taxtype) until a Resale certificate or other information is received from customer verifying their non-taxable status in a certain state.  Once a Resale certificate is received from the customer for the state in the customer billing address, the Taxtype can be changed to RESALE so that tax is not charged for shipments to the customer address.

Taxcode Assignment

The Taxcode is used to id the tax authority you will collect tax for, and the rate to be used when you ship to a specific customer address.  The Taxcode also indicates if shipping is taxed for shipments into a specific tax district.  

The Taxcode for each customer address is normally loaded based on the zipcode in the address.  If the system parameter F248:TAXZIP01 is set to Y, and the customer address is in the US, the system will automatically load the Taxcode associated with the zipcode being used into the address.  

For this method to work, all zipcode records should be loaded with the valid Taxcode for each zipcode (this can be a tax district – like CA9 or NO TAX – to indicate a zipcode you do not collect tax for.  The Taxcodes in each zipcode record should also exist in the Taxcode file and should have the total rate for the Tax Authority specified in the file.

When this method is used, the system automatically points each customer billto address to the correct tax authority and rate.  If the customer Taxtype is set to retail tax is charged based on the rate in the taxcode record, if the customer Taxtype is set to RESALE, tax is not charged (based on the Taxtype being non-taxable).

Taxcodes can also be manually assigned if required.  This option is used when you collect tax in very few districts, when you are shipping to non-US addresses, or when it just makes more sense to manually assign the Taxcode information (ie VAT tax is being collected instead of sales tax).   

If there is no Taxcode specified for a specific zip code, or if there is no corresponding Taxcode record in the Taxcode file, the system leaves the Taxcode field blank and the operator must manually assign the correct Taxcode to the record.

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Shipto Record Creation and Editing