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Bkper Tax Bot

Automatically record another transaction based on the amount and properties of a posted transaction.

Updated over a year ago

What is the Bkper Tax Bot?

The Tax Bot is a bot that records taxes on Purchase or Sales transactions posted in your book.

Taxes are calculated based on the transaction amount and some properties set in the account or group, specifying the rates to apply.

They can be included in overall transaction amount, such as VAT, or excluded such as income taxes.

Once the taxes calculated, the Tax Bot will record one or more transactions with the entry for the taxes.

How to install the Tax Bot?

  1. Open your book

  2. Click "Apps"

  3. Select "Tax Bot"

  4. Click "Install"

How to know if the Tax Bot is working?

Check the Tax Bot icon:

  • If is blue: working properly

  • If is red: error

  • If there is no icon: not installed

How to use Tax Bot for the Sales scenario?

1. Create a liability account for the tax output.

Note: Tax properties are not set on Liability accounts.

Example:

2. Create an incoming account for Service or Product that you sell.

3. Then, insert properties in the incoming account.

Set the following properties on accounts (or group) that should trigger the Tax Bot:

  • tax_description (the description of the generated transaction)

    • It may has the tax output account name (Output tax in this example) from Step 1 (above) and the expression ${account.name}. This allows you to complete accounts on the brand new transactions recorded by the Tax Bot. (See more about expressions below in this article)

  • tax_excluded_rate (the tax rate to apply, calculating the tax based on the transaction amount)

OR

  • tax_included_rate (the tax rate to apply, extracting the tax already included in the transaction amount)

    Example:

See that after set the account properties, when you post the Sales transaction, the other (tax) is created automatically:

Note: Tax Bot Properties can be set on Accounts or on Groups for more than one account.

Other examples:

Generating addional 7% of income tax:

tax_description: #incometax
tax_excluded_rate: 7


Extracting 12.85% of VAT, already included in the transaction:

tax_description: #vatin
tax_included_rate: 12.85



How to use Tax Bot for the Purchase scenario?

  1. Create an asset account for the Tax Input that represents the taxes you have to reclaim.

  2. Create an asset account that represents a Cash or Receivable account.

  3. Create an Outgoing account or group for the products or services you acquire, that will hold the tax properties.


Expressions

Expressions are like variables that allow you to dynamically use values from the posting event that triggered the Tax Bot, consisting of the account name and the transaction description. This allows you to complete accounts on the newly recorded transaction by the bot and to have a significant description that links to the original transaction.

You can add these expressions to the tax_description property of the account that has to trigger the tax bot to dynamically generate the new transaction.

  • ${account.name}: The account name of the account that triggered the Tax Bot.

  • ${account.name.origin}: The account name when participates as origin in the transaction. Empty otherwise.

  • ${account.name.destinaton}: The account name when participates as destination in the transaction. Empty otherwise.

  • ${account.contra.name}: The contra account name of the account that triggered the Tax Bot.

  • ${account.contra.name.origin}: The contra account name when participates as origin in the transaction. Empty otherwise.

  • ${account.contra.name.destinaton}: The contra account name when participates as destination in the transaction. Empty otherwise.

  • ${transaction.description}: The same description that comes from the posted transaction that triggered the Tax Bot.



More about how Tax Bot works

Trigger
The Tax Bot is triggered by the post transaction event. It checks both accounts for the tax properties and continues its actions when either account on the transaction has the properties: tax_description, tax_included_rate or tax_excluded_rate.

Action

The Tax Bot collects all the data on the transaction, including the tax properties and records another transaction on this book resembling the tax operation according to the properties.

Note: sometimes it can take a while for the tax transaction to appear on your book. As long as the Tax Bot icon is blue you only have to wait for it to be recorded.

Closing an outstanding tax balance

At some point the outstanding Input and Output tax balances closed.

If you keep two separated Input and Output tax accounts like in the examples above, you should deduct one from another and pay the amount due or claim the amount receivable.



Multiple taxes on one transaction

You cannot add two tax_included_rate or tax_excluded_rate properties to one account. So if you need to record for example a state and a federal tax on one transaction you have to work with the tax properties on Groups.

Create two groups, one for the state and another one for the federal taxes and add the corresponding tax rates to each group.

Add the accounts to which both taxes apply to both the groups.

Now, for each posted transaction with accounts that are in both groups the tax bot will record two tax entries.

How to remove/uninstall the Tax Bot?

  1. Open your book

  2. Click "Book integrations"

  3. Select "Tax Bot"

  4. Click "Remove"

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