Hi all,
We have recently upgraded to v16 in the past few months and with it we migrated our membership structure from product over to contribution and are now trying to figure out the finance/reporting side of it all. Because our memberships used to be products, we would calculate VAT on them using a custom report but this no longer works (because they are now contributions). Does anyone know of any reports or any other way that would allow us to account for this?
Any insights would be appreciated, thanks!
- Yumna
Hi YumnaWe haven't fully explored this yet - but have you had a look at the new membership tax functionality in v16?https://www.tessituranetwork.com/Help_System_v160/TN-Application/Memberships/Membership-Taxes.htmIt's not clear what the reporting is like.
best wishes
Alison
Hey Alison,
Thanks for your reply! I have looked into it, that's how we've been trialling our membership VAT in v16 but the reporting doesn't give us what we need unfortunately. The output doesn't separate out the tax amount from the contribution amount which is what our finance team need.
Thanks again :)
Yumna
Hi Yumna,
I wanted to clarify how membership taxes work. The tax amount is not included in the contribution amount. Whether the tax is set up as an Inside tax or Outside tax, it is separated out into a different GL and managed using the fee infrastructure in a ticket order. With an Inside fee, the contribution amount get's reduced so that it plus the tax/fee amount equals the original membership amount. For example, if a membership costs £75, and the tax is 5%, the contribution gets recalculated to £71.43 with a tax/fee amount of £3.57 equaling a total of £75. When you look at the contribution generated by that transaction you will see £71.43 attributed to the contribution's fund and corresponding GL account. With an Outside tax, the tax amount is calculated and added on top of the membership contribution. So with a £75 membership and a 5% Outside tax you would get a contribution amount of £75 and a tax/fee amount of £3.75. For that transaction you will see £75 attributed to the contribution's fund and corresponding GL account. And in both cases the tax amount is attributed to the tax's GL account. Here's a link to the membership tax help topic for your reference and additional details and nuances regarding discounts and fair market values: https://www.tessituranetwork.com/Help_System_v160/TN-Application/Memberships/Membership-Taxes.htm.
As long as you are using a unique GL for your tax setup, you will be able to see tax revenue broken out on GL reports. In tax setup you also assign a revenue designation value (a revenue category value that is assigned any time you are assigning a GL to something) and that gives you additional options for reporting if you create a designation value specific to taxes.
Your original post mentioned that you used custom reporting in v15 for you VAT tax and Memberships as Products. You could certainly create a custom report in v16 that breaks out membership taxes. As explained above, the contribution amounts will be automatically correct as recorded in the database. For the taxes your report would look to the fee tables where the taxes are recorded.
If we had a standard report specific to membership taxes, what kind of information would you be looking for on that report? Any information you can share on what your finance team is looking for in VAT reporting will help us as we plan out future tax reporting.
-Kevin
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for all that info! We have it all set up correctly (have confirmed it with support) and our membership tax is included in the final price so it's inside, as with our regular admissions tickets. Our custom report takes the ticket price and separates out the ticket cost and the VAT so something similar to this would be great! We are currently trying to see if our finance team can get what they need out of either the GL report as you mentioned or through analytics.