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Using Numeral’s Tax Engine on Stripe Invoices

This article will guide you through connecting Stripe Invoicing to Numeral and ensuring accurate sales tax is applied to your invoices.

Nick B. avatar
Written by Nick B.
Updated over 3 weeks ago

If you send invoices to clients via Stripe Invoicing, you can use Numeral’s tax engine to apply accurate sales tax rate in the appropriate jurisdictions for your business.

Getting started

  1. Connect your Stripe account to your Numeral dashboard > In your Numeral dashboard, click “Connections” on the left-hand menu, then select “Stripe.”

  2. We will then prompt you to add the Numeral app to your Stripe account > Once installed, click “continue to app settings,” and Stripe will present you with API keys. You’ll need to copy these keys and enter them into Numeral.
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    Note: If you are unable to see your entire restricted key, you’ll need to click “roll key” on Stripe, then “roll API key.” At this step, Stripe will require you to go through a verification process. Once verified, you will see your full restricted key.
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  3. Once completed > you will see a dedicated Stripe section added to your Connections page in Numeral > Status should say “syncing” with a green dot
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Timing is important

If you are already using Stripe to apply tax rates to invoices, it’s important to work with your Onboarding Manager to confirm your go-live date with Numeral.
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For example, if Numeral is taking over your existing sales tax registrations starting in August, you should meet with your Onboarding Manager on August 1 to turn off Stripe’s automatic tax calculator and turn on Numeral’s tax engine.
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Note: If your start date with Numeral is August 1, our tax engine will not attempt to collect before this date. Also, Numeral will only attempt to collect tax in states where your company has a sales tax registration.
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To see confirm your start dates and list of registered states, navigate to the “Jurisdictions” tab within your Numeral account.

Updating and confirming your configurations

During your go-live call, your Onboarding Manager will help confirm that:

  • Stripe’s automatic tax calculations are turned off

  • Numeral’s tax engine is enabled

  • Stripe’s tax behavior is set to exclusive

You can also check these settings on your own anytime by following the instructions below:

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Disable Stripe’s Automatic Calculations

To disable Stripe’s automatic tax calculations, log in to your Stripe account and go to Tax Settings > Integrations > toggle off Use automatic tax under Dashboard Transactions.

Confirm that Numeral's Tax Engine is Enabled

To confirm that Numeral’s tax engine is enabled, go to Connections > Stripe, then open the Integrations dropdown within the Stripe section.

You’ll then see a row for Stripe Invoices. This should be toggled on.

Set Your Default Tax Behavior to Exclusive

To ensure taxes are calculated correctly, your default tax behavior should be set to exclusive in Stripe. With exclusive tax, sales tax is added on top of the product price. For example, if a product is listed at $5.00 and the tax rate is 10%, the customer will pay $5.50 at checkout.
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If your products are set to inclusive tax, we won’t be able to apply the correct tax on our end.

💡 You can find step-by-step instructions for updating this setting here ↗

Product categorization

How your products are categorized can greatly impact their taxability. However, it’s important to know that the way your products are categorized within Stripe doesn’t carry over to Numeral.
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You will need to work with your Onboarding Manager to set your product categories within Numeral. Our tax engine will then use these product categories to determine taxability.

⚠️ Note: If you add new products to your catalog after your initial setup, please contact our team via the message widget in your dashboard. We’ll make sure these items are correctly categorized on our end.

Creating an invoice within Stripe

Customers

  • If your customer is not located in a state where you have an active registration set within Numeral, we won’t attempt to add sales tax.

  • If your client has a shipping and billing address, we will default to applying tax based on the shipping address.

  • If your client has a billing address, but no shipping address, we will apply tax based on the billing address.

⚠️ Important: If a customer should be exempt from sales tax, you need to mark them as exempt in Stripe:

  1. In your Stripe account, go to Customers from the left-hand navigation.

  2. Select the customer’s name.

  3. On the right side, click the pencil icon next to Details.

  4. Scroll down to Tax Status and mark the customer as Exempt.

Items

  • When adding items, please note that Numeral will only apply a tax rate if the item’s product category is taxable within your customer’s jurisdiction.

  • To confirm, you should set your product categories with your Numeral Onboarding Manager. Your product categories within Stripe will not apply.

Tax Rates

To add tax to your invoices using Numeral’s Tax Engine in Stripe, follow these steps:

  1. Add your customer and item information.

  2. Click Save and refresh your browser.

  3. If any items are taxable, Numeral’s tax engine will automatically add a tax line in the invoice preview.

⚠️ Don’t add a tax rate when Stripe prompts you after generating an invoice.
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With Stripe’s automatic tax collection turned off, you may see a prompt to select a tax rate on the invoice. Skip this step—Numeral will automatically apply the correct tax rate for any taxable items.

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