Square does not round sales tax correctly

[Gerd]

In our store we have to charge sales tax on food and beverage items. Out tax rate is 8.75%. If I have an item that sells for $6.00 the sales tax calculated by Square is $0.52, however, the sales tax is $0.525, which should round to $0.53, but it does not.

We extract the daily items details to import them as sales transactions into our Quickbooks finance system. Unfortunately QB does round the sales tax, thus, causing a $0.01 difference. In order to match the QB sales receipt with Square, we now have to add a $0.01 correction to the QB sales receipt.

I have found other threads in the forum talking about tax rounding issues and using Quickbooks, but there does not seem to be any option for us to get this corrected. After QB is our certified finance software, I have to use the sales tax calculated here.

Does anybody have the same issue and if yes, how do you handle this? I

[TheRealChipA]

Hi there @Gerd.. A little clarification is needed.  Where, exactly, are you seeing that the Square sales tax is calculated incorrectly?  Is it on the POS/online store, or is it when you are importing your sales into QB?  This is important to help track down where the error is occurring.  Also, screen shots would be very helpful here.

Thanks.

[Gerd]

It's in the tax column of the Item Detail CSV extract I do from our online account.

I just created a new ticket about it again.

This morning I extracted the Item Details CSV, added a filter on the net amount field to select only amounts of $6.00. With our tax rate of 8.75% it should calculate $0.525 tax amounts, rounding it to $0.53.

On the excel I only selected time periods 11/07, when we opened our store, till today. About 50 rows showed tax amount $0.52, but 20 showed tax amount $0.53, which is actually correct, and is the one I need in Quickbooks as well.

[Gerd]

Well, I should have just tried with copy/paste.

Here is a subset from the Item Detail CSV with the item details, amounts and taxes.

At the bottom I added a count how many rows had $0.52 and how many had $0.53.

[Gerd]

The complete count for all rows with $0.52 and $0.53 is

[TheRealChipA]

@Gerd Interesting.  Am I understanding correctly that you opened a trouble ticket with support?  If so, from what I see in your posts, that was definitely the right thing to do.  This looks like a Square issue (not QB), in this case.  Anyway, I'll tag the Community moderators in case they can help at all.

@Kassi_@RSosebee1@_Violet@MayaP@Summer2024@Summer2024@Ellie_@Katie_SQ@Laurie_@Sammie_C

[Gerd]

Well, my support experience was rather "dissatisfying" to say the least. Even though I had said I am using the Item details CSV extract, I got a one line reply from support, that they can't do anything. From that reply I had to assume, they had not even done the same extract and check why I have different tax amounts for the same net amount.

I think the reply was based on my question if there is an option where I can do my own rounding to match what Quickbooks requires. I had replied to that one-liner. mentioning again the extract I do, but did not get another reply, but a survey how the tech did. I did NOT want to fill in the survey.

They further did not address the issue I now have in Quickbooks where I have to apply a $0.01 correction to match QB and Square.

I just would with Square would be more open to such issues, and accept the fact, that I don't use Square for my tax reporting, but rather Quickbooks. Even though Square does not charge the correct tax amount I still pay it as QB does the correct rounding.

[Gerd]

Sorry, I just realized I have the counts the wrong way around.

Here are the correct counts

[Kassi_]

Hey there, @Gerd!

Appreciate all of the information on what you're seeing. From what I have seen, I know this integration isn't perfect and other sellers have experienced this before. Normally, when it comes to integrations - I would recommend reaching out to see if there's anything the partner (QB) could do on their end to help. 

How did you contact support recently? Were you able to send all of the documentation you mentioned in here? 

I will keep an eye out for your reply👀.

Thank you for the tag, @TheRealChipA !

[Gerd]

All the answers I got for my post, and answers I read on other posts regarding the same tax rounding issue, are rather disappointing. 

Reaching out to Quickbooks is not an option, as the sales tax calculation rules in QB cannot be changed. Further, this is our financial software that is also used to report the collected sales tax to the tax authorities.

Since we started using your register in our store beginning of November last year, I have to correct several transactions every single day, to add a rounding adjustment to ensure the QB transaction matches your sales transaction total. And this is REALLY annoying.

I was an IT guy and programmer for many years, and what I would have expected from Square is, that you have some settings in our register software where I can tell the software what tax rounding rule I need in our store. I don't see, that this would be such a complex fix.

I also want to point out that I had sent your item detail CSV, which I use to export our daily sales transactions. to your support team, showing, that on a $6.00 sales amount the CSV shows sales tax amounts of $0.52 and $0.53. Thus, your tax rounding routine does not work correctly on all those items. And still, I did not get much of a reply about a solution, or even an explanation why you calculate 2 different tax amount for the same sales amount.

I found another thread about sales tax rounding in the community from 2018/2019. Lots of complaints from users, and very often a single comment: "it cannot be changed". it just shows, the problem exists for many years, and your developers were never "interested" in providing a fix, or adding some settings that the different users could set for their register/software.

And to come back to your previous answer to look "elsewhere" for a solution, just shows, that there is no hope to get this fixed in Square.

It's sad, as I have automated the sales transaction import into QB using your item detail CSV and transaction CSV, and since we have to charge sales tax in our store, I now have to manually check each transaction for the tax rounding differences, and add a rounding correction line item in QB to the transactions. So much for automation.