[Koha] Prices and tax in koha (also send on koha-devel)

[Ann-Marie Breaux]

Hi everyone,

I work with ILS's on behalf of YBP. We've recently had an ongoing discussion with another system supplier about tax and freight charges. Having Koha calculate charges based on percentages will likely lead to differences by pennies, especially if a currency conversion is also involved. That may be fine, so long as the library is able to adjust the invoiced amounts in Koha to make it equal the vendor invoice.

In any event, I'm sending along these thoughts in case they might be helpful to the discussion:

YBP always produces tax and freight consistently, at the invoice level, on printed and EDI invoices. However we find that libraries prefer to work with these charges locally in different ways. 

1.  Do not import the non-line item charges - libraries work with those charges manually, or leave them out of the local system accounting. This can be especially desirable if they tax is some sort of GST that is accounted for at the university level, and reimbursed to the university separately from the library.

2.  Allocate to each line item (in which case you have to decide if you're allocating a) against each line item equally or b) proportionally depending on the cost of the particular item, and then figure out what to do with the rounding/remaining cents to make the line item extra charges match the invoice-level amount that the vendor originally output)

3.  Allocate as a single charge to a separate fund from the regular line items (in which case, the library system needs to be able to assign a default fund for tax and/or freight as part of the vendor setup or as invoices are keyed/loaded)

All my best,

Ann-Marie Breaux
Vice President, Academic Service Integration
YBP Library Services
Phone/fax: +1 (678) 445-5720
e-mail: abreaux at ybp.com 


> -----Original Message-----
> From: koha-bounces at lists.katipo.co.nz [mailto:koha-bounces at lists.katipo.co.nz]
> On Behalf Of BOUIS Sonia
> Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2013 9:17 AM
> To: koha at lists.katipo.co.nz
> Subject: [Koha] Prices and tax in koha (also send on koha-devel)
> 
> Hi,
> I'm a French librarian working at the University Lyon3 and in charge of  Koha.
> I want to know your feelings about the prices processing in koha and the question of
> the tax.
> From  3.10 version, some prices are recalculated according to this tax before they
> are stocked in the database. It's a pretty good thing but not all the prices are
> recalculated and there's sometimes a bad calculation : tax is added or subtracted 2
> times... Another difficulty is that there's a lot of tables in acquisitions and not all of
> them works in the same way...
> 
> So I wonder if a decision about the prices and a correction of all the tables in
> acquisitions isn't necessary...
> My suggestion is to stock all the price including tax and to calculate the price in the
> budget and in all the displaying tables according to the preferences in the vendor. I
> think, all the scripts of calculation and the template for displaying tables have to be
> correct.
> 
> It could be a new goal for koha 3.16 or perhaps for koha 3.18...
> 
> I'm sorry if my explanations are short and not very clear but I want to know what the
> community thinks of it.
> 
> Have a good day
> 
> Sonia BOUIS
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Responsable du Système intégré de gestion des bibliothèques SERVICE
> COMMUN DE LA DOCUMENTATION Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3
> 6 Cours Albert Thomas - B.P. 8242 - 69355 Lyon Cedex 08
> 
> ligne directe : +33 (0)4 78 78 79 03 | Fax : +33 (0)4 78 78 79 89
> ------------------------------------------------------
> http://scd.univ-lyon3.fr<http://scd.univ-lyon3.fr/>
> 
> L'Université Jean Moulin est membre fondateur de l'Université de Lyon
> 
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