ChannelEngine: automated VAT invoices

About this article

This article describes ChannelEngine's value-added tax (VAT) invoice automation feature, and how to configure it.

Table of contents

Introduction

Settings

• Invoice settings
• Email settings
• VAT settings
• Channel settings
• Language settings

Example

Introduction

ChannelEngine offers the option to automatically send customers an invoice when their order is retrieved by from the marketplace. As most marketplaces do not calculate VAT themselves because of differences per country, you must create VAT invoices for businesses that require it, be it to reverse-charge the VAT or other tax purposes.

To make this possible, certain settings need to be configured on ChannelEngine.

Settings

Invoice settings

Go to Settings, Invoice settings.

In this section you can enter your company name and logo, if desired, your address, your chamber of commerce and VAT numbers, and your customer service's email address and phone number.

You can also add a header or footer to the invoice, if you want to further personalize it.

Email settings

Outgoing email settings (SMTP)

Go to Settings, Settings. Scroll down to the Outgoing email settings (SMTP) section and enter your credentials.

ChannelEngine requires your email server credentials so it can send emails on behalf of your company.

Due to common restrictions, such as SPF records, DKIM keys, and DMARC, ChannelEngine cannot easily send emails from your domain unless it uses your own email server and IP address – and buyers would be confused if they received emails from ChannelEngine.

Note that if you use Gmail, you may have to set Access to less secure apps to On under your Gmail account settings.

Commercial order number

If the order number you see on invoices generated by ChannelEngine does not match your desired order number, you can use the commercial order number instead.

To use the commercial order number as the order number on invoices and packing slips:

1. Go to Settings, Settings.
2. Scroll down to the Advanced settings section.
3. Enable the Use commercial order number setting.

Note that this feature is currently in beta.

VAT settings

To add VAT to an invoice, you also need to enable VAT calculations on ChannelEngine. To do so, go to Settings, VAT rate settings.

A list of countries and their default VAT rates is displayed. Go to the countries for which you have a VAT number and select Edit. Bear in mind that ChannelEngine can only check and accept international VAT numbers, so no local VAT numbers such as the German Steuernummer.

Enter your VAT number and select Save. Note that only invoices generated from this point on include the VAT calculation, it is not possible to apply this setting retroactively.

Channel settings

It is also possible to enable automatic invoices per channel.

1. Go to the Setup section of the channel you want to enable automatic VAT invoices for.
2. Scroll down to the Invoice settings section, and switch the Send emails toggle.

From this point on, when an order for this channel comes in, the buyer automatically receives a VAT invoice in their inbox.

Language settings

The language on the invoice sent to the end buyer is set to the language (a.k.a. locale) of the customer, if ChannelEngine has relevant translations for it. E.g.: if a customer in France places an order, they receive an invoice with French attributes. If there is no translation available, the template used defaults to English.

Invoice check

To check a translated invoice, download it from the ChannelEngine interface. There are two options for invoices and packing slips: an invoice in the language set in your ChannelEngine account; and one in the language of the billing customer. Depending on the situation, these could be the same.

1. The translated invoice is based on the country of the invoice address. In the example above, this language is Russian. Selecting that option results in an invoice with attributes in Russian, as seen below. This is also the invoice sent to the buyer.

   

2. The other invoice is based on the language setting of the account. In the example, the result is an invoice with attributes in English.

Example