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All countries have tax compliance laws and regulations. As a business software developer Development-X Ltd has specifically designed Ostendo to meet most of these requirements. The purpose of the information in this section is to bring to your attention any unique requirements specific to a country. These may be enacted laws, pending changes or common business practice.

Australia

New Zealand

Australian Registered BAS Agent Legal Requirements

A person setting up business software that helps a business client ascertain their GST liabilities (indeed any Tax Code field on the BAS form) needs to be registered to be legally installing and implementing Ostendo - Sales and Purchases GST configuration that is unique to the client environment. Please refer to the Australian Tax Practitioners Board website for more information www.tpb.gov.au

• Link to BAS Services Information Sheet

Alternatively, an Ostendo Consulting Partner can work under the direction of a Registered BAS Agent, with a Formal Agreement and Quality Assurance Process in place where the BAS Agent is ultimately legally liable for any such work performed by an Ostendo Consulting Partner.

New Zealand

How to handle the New Zealand GST Tax Rate increase effective from 1 October 2010 in Ostendo

Ostendo Tax Codes

Firstly set-up a new Tax Code with a Tax rate of 15%. It would be advisable to use a code like ‘GST15’ so that it is obvious when entering orders & invoices.
Please Note: It is important to set this new Tax Code as the default Tax Code on October 1, 2010.

Ostendo Tax Matrix

We have added an additional field in the Tax Matrix screen called ‘Effective From’, this allows for Tax rules to be defined for a specific effective from date. As an example let’s assume that you have an existing rule as follows:

You would now add a new rule for the effective date of 1/10/2010 with the new Tax code you have already defined:

Once this new rule has been added to the matrix, any transactions entered on or after the 1 October 2010 will default to the Tax Code ‘GST15’.

Ostendo Tax Code Mapping to Accounting Solution

After setting up the new Tax Code, you will need to export the Tax Codes so that the new code can be mapped to the appropriate Tax Code in your accounting system. To do this, click on the ‘Export Lookup Files’ in the ‘File-Accounting Link’ screen within Ostendo.
The next step is to run the Accounting Link application and map the new Tax Code to the appropriate Code (i.e. S15 for MYOB).

Important Note: For both Quickbooks and MYOB it is important to co-ordinate the mapping of the Tax codes with the update for each of these programs. Each have taken different approaches to handling the rate increase, so it is important to understand this.

• MYOB: A new Tax code of ‘S15’ will be defined for the GST rate of 15% and the existing Tax code of ‘S’ stays for any 12.5% transactions. Therefore the new Tax code you define in Ostendo will need to be mapped to the new S15 MYOB Tax code. You will manually have to create this rate code if you haven’t run the GST Transitional Assistant in MYOB. If you are not upgrading MYOB make sure you change the tax mapping in the MYOB Ostendo link accordingly.
• Quickbooks (QB): The current Tax code of ‘S’ will be renamed to ‘ST’ (12.5%) and then the Tax code of ‘S’ will be reset to a rate of 15%. Therefore the new Tax code you define in Ostendo will need to be mapped to the ‘S’ QB Tax code, and more importantly the existing mapping rule for ‘S’ will need to be changed to ‘ST’. In other words, if you currently have an Ostendo Tax code of ‘GST’ mapped to a Tax code of ‘S’ in QB, you will have to change that to ‘ST, and the new Tax code in Ostendo (say GST15) will have to be mapped to the QB Tax code ‘S’.

Existing Open Orders & Tax Inclusive Prices in Ostendo

We have added a new screen called ‘Global Tax Code Change’ in the ‘System Configuration’ menu. From this screen you are able to retrospectively update all Open/Outstanding Sales, Job, Purchase Orders & Recurring Invoices in the system with the new Tax rules, and also update Tax inclusive prices for Items & Descriptors.

NOTE: This should be run on, or after the 1st October. If it is run before that date, it will use the Tax matrix rules – therefore no changes will be made.

Credit Notes in Ostendo

There are 2 main methods of generating a credit note (Reversing an existing Invoice, or using Direct Invoicing to manually create one).

1. If you reverse an existing Invoice (by clicking on the ‘Credit’ button) – the Tax codes originally used in the invoice will be used for the Credit Note.
2. If you create a Direct Invoice as a Credit (i.e. negative quantities) – if you are back dating to before the Tax change you will have to change the Tax codes for each line to the Tax code that is set to 12.5%.