Tax rates determine the taxes applied to your purchase and sales transactions. This guide explains how to set up and manage tax rates in your account, whether you're using the system standalone or integrated with accounting software like Xero or QuickBooks.

Your setup and management approach with your account's taxes depends on whether you integrate with an accounting provider or not:

After a tax has been created or imported, it cannot be edited or deleted. This ensures data integrity and accurate audit reporting. However, taxes that are no longer needed can be made obsolete by ticking their Obsolete check box. When obsolete, the tax will no longer be available to select in a record or transaction, but will remain on completed transactions.

When manually creating a new tax, ensure the following conditions are met:

To manually create a new tax:

When initially setting up your accounting integration, or if new rates have since been added in your Xero or QuickBooks accounts, sync the tax rates to automatically create them in your account and ensure consistency across both platforms.

For steps on syncing taxes from your integrated accounting provider:

Once synced, the tax rates in your accounting platform will be imported and available to use.

When taxes are integrated and synced from your accounting platform, the "Accounting Tax" field in Settings > System > Taxes will list all taxes with the same rate. This means you have the flexibility to assign various accounting taxes with a single tax code as and when appropriate. However, if each iteration of the same tax rate is expected to be used in your transactions, you will need to manually create a tax for each of the remaining accounting taxes of the same rate.

To manually create a tax for a synced tax rate:

Should you need to change which accounting tax your taxes are mapped to:

From then on, when a transaction that uses the updated tax is completed, it will export with the updated accounting tax included.

Sales and Purchase Orders created in your account will apply taxes based on a specific hierarchy:

This hierarchy ensures the most specific tax rate always takes precedence.

To set the default sales tax for a product:

To set a default purchase tax for a product:

To set a default sales tax for a customer:

To set a default purchase tax for a supplier:

To set default taxes for your account:

The Default Sales Tax or Default Purchase Tax fields in Settings > System > Taxes must always be populated. If they are left empty, users may experience login issues.

When a Sales Order is created for a customer, if the customer has a tax rate set, their tax will automatically populate in the Sales Order's "Tax Rate" field. If the customer does not have a pre-set tax, your account's default sales tax will populate. Whilst the Sales Order is in an open status and has not had an Invoice completed, you can use the "Tax Rate" drop-down menu to change the sales tax that applies to the products and charges on the order.

However, should any of the products included on the Sales Order have their own sales tax rate set, this will take precedence over the Sales Order's assigned Tax Rate. Review the Order Lines' Tax Rate column to see the tax rate that's been applied per product's order line.

You can remove all tax applied to the lines on a Sales Order, regardless of any default sales taxes that have been set at the product, customer, or system level, using the Order Lines' action cog:

The selected lines' Tax Rate will update to show 0% and the NONE tax will be applied.

Much like Sales Orders, when a Purchase Order is created for a supplier, if the supplier has a tax rate set, their tax will automatically populate in the Purchase Order's "Tax Rate" field. If the supplier does not have a pre-set tax, your account's default sales tax will populate. Whilst the Purchase Order is in an open status and has not been receipted or completed, you can use the "Tax Rate" drop-down menu to change the purchase tax that applies to the products on the order.

However, should any of the products included on the Purchase Order have their own purchase tax rate set, this will take precedence over the Purchase Order's assigned Tax Rate. Review the Order Lines' Tax Rate column to see the tax rate that's been applied per product's order line.

"Unmapped tax" error: Ensure all taxes used in transactions have an "Accounting Tax" assigned in Settings > System > Taxes.

Cannot obsolete tax: Check that the tax isn't assigned to any active products, customers, suppliers, or open transactions.

Sync failures: Verify that tax rate names match exactly between Unleashed and your accounting software, including capitalization and special characters.