Creating automatic receipt/invoice for for tax purposes?

[xandermusic]

Hi,

I know after a little research here, that I can request shipping address. This is super! I can combine a physical product with a special membership type.

For Tax purposes, I had to collect and use Receipt information from my customer (Receipt name/company, receipt address, country, etc.)

Shall I do it through paypal? Is there a similar shortcode, as ns0 ns1 ns2 for the shipping address?

Will Paypal send automatically these to customer/to me? Or it is a total separated action handled only by me, or by s2member? (I created now in s2member custom registration fields, for the sake of solving this problem, but maybe this is not the real solution...)

Thanks for Your support

Sandor

[Cristián Lávaque]

I believe you can add tax to the PayPal transaction. Wouldn't the PayPal invoice be enough for the buyer to use in his accounting?

For shipping, I think the custom registration fields may be the best thing in s2Member, from what I know. Or is it not being good enough for you? What would you prefer?

[xandermusic]

HI, Cristián!

Thanks for answering!

No, it is good, I think. I don't know the Tax office thinking, maybe the Paypal invoice is not enough for them, I will inform myself, how it is handled in Hungary.

Actually if Paypal invoice would be enough it would be really nice ,and convenient

To obtain this data ie. the recipient invoice data, address, name, etc. I thought, the custom registration fields will be good, so I already created them.

I think, the Paypal receipt is already a receipt, and the important thing is, that I should provide a real legal receipt and somehow send to the user. Otherwise the Tax office would believe, I want to hide something.

Actually if only about shipping data, the Paypal itself can be told to obtain it. And I can use a custom shortcode in the s2member generated paypal buttonm n2 means, I require mandatory the shipping data, n0 means I require but not mandatory, and n1 means, I don't ask for it. And paypal will do the job.

I have no experience, but maybe very soon I will have, because I am in the finish in publishing my new website.

Sincerely,

Sandor

[Cristián Lávaque]

Great! Good luck with that, Sandor. Let us know how it goes.

[openmtbmap]

HI, Cristián!

Thanks for answering!

No, it is good, I think. I don't know the Tax office thinking, maybe the Paypal invoice is not enough for them, I will inform myself, how it is handled in Hungary.

Actually if Paypal invoice would be enough it would be really nice ,and convenient

To obtain this data ie. the recipient invoice data, address, name, etc. I thought, the custom registration fields will be good, so I already created them.

I think, the Paypal receipt is already a receipt, and the important thing is, that I should provide a real legal receipt and somehow send to the user. Otherwise the Tax office would believe, I want to hide something.

Oh and Paypal ProForms are not possible. I would have joined up but in EU only British residents can join up for Paypal ProForms, so it really would be neccessary that all those ProForm options were usable for PayPal button too (Paypal supports most of this, just manual buttons are annoying as they get destroyed by visual editors). So for people who buy s2member pro, there should be better paypal support without proforms. Else s2member pro will never become popular in the EU (I guess 90% of Pro buyers are from US or UK??)

Actually if only about shipping data, the Paypal itself can be told to obtain it. And I can use a custom shortcode in the s2member generated paypal buttonm n2 means, I require mandatory the shipping data, n0 means I require but not mandatory, and n1 means, I don't ask for it. And paypal will do the job.

I have no experience, but maybe very soon I will have, because I am in the finish in publishing my new website.

Sincerely,

Sandor

Hey Sandor, hope you're still following this thread. How have you solved the problem?

I just realised that if I continue to send no real invoice, I might get into big troubles with the authorities in Austria.



This is what I need to provide according to the law for amounts under 150€:
1. Den Namen und die Adresse des liefernden oder leistenden Unternehmers (Leistungserbringer).
2. Die Menge und die handelsübliche Bezeichnung der gelieferten Waren bzw. die Art und der Umfang der erbrachten Leistung (Leistungsumfang).
3. Das Datum der Lieferung bzw. erbrachten Leistung oder den Zeitraum, über den sich die Leistung erstreckt (Leistungszeitpunkt, -zeitraum).
4. Gesamtrechnungsbetrag
5. Das Ausstellungsdatum.

or translated:
1. my name and the name of my company and its address (MISSING)
2. The amount and the trade specific name of the delivered goods (well this should be fine, dunno I I get into trouble as this is all English but I'm living in Austria so maybe I have to do this in German??
3. Should be fine (again not sure if it's allowed to be English only).
4. Total amount .... Again here we have a big problem. I need to tell the customer that this is without any taxes according to law X and my state as small business (not sure how I can get this onto the customers bill)
5. date of billing. (okay).

So points 1 and 4 are not at all according to the law, and if I continue like this, then I know for sure I go to court for money laundering or similar. Currently anyone donating to me, could ask for a return of the VAT. (as I don't specify that the amount is excluding VAT, common assumption is that it is included, hence every business or client from outside EU has a claim to get the VAT reduced, that I don't even charge...)

BTW: The invoice that s2member sends out for buying s2member will also not be accepted by Austrian tax authorities (as it misses the address of the customer) and then even saying this is not a bill. It really shows that in US you seem to be able to do whatever you want, but for European Union s2member cannot be taken serious for business, as it misses out a lot on the invoice section.

So for now I have to send manual invoices to all people who donated on my website. Which is a pain if people donate 1€..... But if I don't do it, the tax authorities will crack me down.

Also there needs to be a possibility for users to enter a shipping and a separate billing address (even if you do not send anything actually).


It really seems to me that there is virtually noone using s2member professionally in the EU. Else this thread would have received much more attention.


P.S. this is more or less the basis in German for point 4:
Steuerbefreite Kleinunternehmer dürfen auf ihren Rechnungen keine Umsatzsteuer ausweisen. Wenn sie dies trotzdem tun, schulden sie die Umsatzsteuer aufgrund der Rechnungslegung. Die Angabe der UID-Nr. ist nicht erforderlich. Auf die Steuerbefreiung ist hinzuweisen. Möglich wäre z.B. folgender Zusatz: "Umsatzsteuerfrei aufgrund der Kleinunternehmerregelung".

[openmtbmap]

Oh BTW, for German users, they would even need to add a digital signature to the invoice. Else it is not valid. So currently if you are based in Germany, you would HAVE to send an invoice by paper mail or acquire a digital signature processing system to bill your customers.
Any invoice by e-mail or pdf is invalid... (and in Germany there are many lawyers who do nothing but search for German people/companies not following those rules, and then send you 4-5digit big action for injunctions so based on this I would not recommend any German private user to use s2member without digging that topic and making sure you comply to the law.)

And for customers in the EU, if they ask you for a paper bill, you are required by law to send it to them free of charge, so mind this....

[Jason Caldwell]

Thanks for bringing this to my attention Cristián.

If any of you would like to post some recommendations/ideas about ways in which s2Member might help you deal with some or all of these issues, please feel free to share them. Also, please keep in mind that s2Member can be configured to send a Signup Confirmation Email, and this email can be completely customized inside your Dashboard. Several Replacement Codes are available in this configurable email template, so you might find a solution going that route. See: s2Member -> PayPal Options -> Signup Confirmation Email. Otherwise, please let us know where/how we can improve this for EU merchants. Thanks!

[openmtbmap]

Okay, I'll have a look at the Signup email -- this will be okay for all but local (Austrian) residents (so good I'm not not based in Germany, as then it would mean I would have to go the hard way for 75% of my customers).
However what should I do with those people who simply donate but do not sign up? About 25% of my "customers" send money just as a donation so I would need the email to be sent regardless of the people registering or not (well I do know that my case is special, in so far as all payments I receive are 90% regarded as donation and only say 10% as actual delivery of a service...)

For Austrian residents I need a digital signature, which for right now I can only add to PDF documents. No approved (by authorities) software to sign a mail exists for right now. I contacted Paypal and read through bout 500 pages of business guides by the chamber of commerce to gather the below information (ain't no place were ebiz info for small companies is layed out in detail regarding to selling services only and to selling most stuff not in your own country):


The Papyal invoice is an invoice by Paypal (not you!!) to your customer notifying him that he paid. It is nothing more and legally not binding for you but for Paypal. The layout choices and text you put on it, are just a service by Paypal to match your corporate design/strategy. So for anyone using s2member inside the European Union, you have to (manually) create a correct invoice additionally to the Paypal invoice.

Depending on legislation this invoice has to be digitally signed. So you have to get a digital signature system that is approved by your countries authorities. For Austria there is only ONE provider that is authorised to sell digital signatures: ( http://www.a-trust.at/ ).
They for example offer a pdf signature creation tool for 69€. Mind this requires Adobe Acrobat (it comes as plugin) AND even worse this requires you to buy a terminal (at least another 100€) that you connect to your PC for verification. So well, overall this will set you back by around 500€ plus installation fees and usage fees of at least 50€/year.

However at least in Austria, the digital signature is only required for sales to Austrian citizens. For sales to other EU member country citizens it is not required. Hence I'll probably save the hassle, and send out paper invoices to all Austrian customers. For other countries a valid invoice is still needed but there is no requirement to have it digitally signed (according to EU law, this only happens once you are liable to charge customers the VAT of their (not your) country, so this depends on the amount of sales per year to that country and can be required from sales 5000€ or higher).



--------------------------
So what would in effect be really needed in the long term, is an Acrobat plugin (Acrobat is simply the business standard in EU for any invoices) that creates a pdf which then by another plugin can be digitally signed. But for the start having the signup confirmation email sent regardless of whether someone signed up or not, would solve (at least for me) 90% of the trouble.

Besides S2member documentation should warn users to look at local tax laws and ebiz laws a bit. S2member is still a really beginner friendly tool, that many may (as I did in the beginning) just use because it offers a bit more than your simple paypal donate button, then brings you in more business, and suddenly you have to watch out for all that local consumer protection laws, correct disclaimer, Terms of Use, and so on. Noone who uses s2member should be doing so without provdiding sound TOUs and a sound disclaimer - so maybe there should be standard fields to add a link to your TOU and Disclaimer too so users don't forget that.


Personal note:
when I installed s2member, I thought well just another wordpress plugin, but I just start to realise all the paperwork and legal obligations that came with receiving money commercially. It's no wonder that you have loads of startups in the US, but much fewer in EU cause everything is 10x as complicated here.

[Jason Caldwell]

Gotchya. Thank you VERY much.
I'll see what we can do about this in a future release.

Until then, you might try this plugin if you need to customize an email for ALL Users, instead of only those who are paying you: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wel ... il-editor/

[openmtbmap]

Nope, you misread. Maybe my post is too unstructured. I need an email for ALL people who Checkout/Donate regardless of them signing up. Same case would be if I sold a single page for already registered users, I would still need to send them an invoice.

In my case there are fewer users, than people who checkout/donate. Also sometimes the signup email lands in the spam folder of a user, and they don't discover and simply don't register (they get 99% of all content for free anyhow).

[openmtbmap]

Oh and just another note that is important. You are required to store the invoices for 10 years (plus the year when you created the invoice) digitally.
(Regulation is, digital invoices have to be stored for 10 years digitally, paper printout is invalid, while paper invoices have to be stored for 10 years on paper (digital copy is invalid)).
So best save them up in multiple locations so they never get lost (I use Subversion control for any important documents, plus gmail copy, plus local copy). If you lose your invoices and cannot prove that you did everything that is reasonable to prevent this, then it will be really really bad in case of control.

[Jason Caldwell]

Nope, you misread. Maybe my post is too unstructured. I need an email for ALL people who Checkout/Donate regardless of them signing up. Same case would be if I sold a single page for already registered users, I would still need to send them an invoice.

In my case there are fewer users, than people who checkout/donate. Also sometimes the signup email lands in the spam folder of a user, and they don't discover and simply don't register (they get 99% of all content for free anyhow).

Thanks for the additional clarification. Much appreciated. Just to note, s2Member provides two Signup Confirmation Email templates, one for 'Signups' and another for 'Specific Post/Page purchases', which is always sent after a Customer buys a Specific Post/Page, regardless. Does that help any?

[Jason Caldwell]

Oh and just another note that is important. You are required to store the invoices for 10 years (plus the year when you created the invoice) digitally.
(Regulation is, digital invoices have to be stored for 10 years digitally, paper printout is invalid, while paper invoices have to be stored for 10 years on paper (digital copy is invalid)).
So best save them up in multiple locations so they never get lost (I use Subversion control for any important documents, plus gmail copy, plus local copy). If you lose your invoices and cannot prove that you did everything that is reasonable to prevent this, then it will be really really bad in case of control.

OK. Yea, that sounds fun Thanks for that tip. Again, much appreciated. Do you have any legal links and/or other sources of information that you've collected, which you can share with me on this topic?

[openmtbmap]

Thanks for the additional clarification. Much appreciated. Just to note, s2Member provides two Signup Confirmation Email templates, one for 'Signups' and another for 'Specific Post/Page purchases', which is always sent after a Customer buys a Specific Post/Page, regardless. Does that help any?

Not really sure. I'll have to check it out. Currently pretty low on time as from Thursday to Sunday I am in the mountains promoting my website. So I hope to check it out this week, else next week.

As for regulations in Austria (German only of course) quite some info can be found here: http://portal.wko.at/wk/format_detail.w ... 51&DstID=0

Some form of hosting provided by s2member for all that invoices and mails sent by your website for a yearly fee would be a nice addon to make the handling simpler.

[Cristián Lávaque]

If you send yourself a copy of the invoice emailed to the person, you can save that for 10 years the way you described. Does that help?

By the way, how do you use s2Member for donations without selling something? Or are you just using PayPal for that?

[openmtbmap]

1. Yes.
2. Well I have some buttons which get you an account, and one donation button without fixed amount for simple donations via s2member/paypal. However 99% of the content is free, the basic thing you get if you register for an account is support (possibility to post, future possibility to post in a forum once I get it set up) and maybe in future tutorial videos for members only. Some people don't need that and just want to support my website, so they use one of the s2member registration links, but never register...

[openmtbmap]

Well maybe it's not so important (at least for me). I called the chamber of commerce on their "free digital invoice hotline" (no joke, it's so complicated that they setup a free hotline to answer questions regarding digital invoices), and AFAI understood, if you sell B2C there is no requirement for an invoice at all. Only if you have business clients there is a need for that (this means however also that you should not put a field called "company" into the address line). Also until 2013 there will be changes to the requirements as the EU wants to prosper e-invoices. However no harmonization and depending on the country and how they implement it, it may become even more complex...

On the other hand if you have to pay VAT (and the limit is between ?? to 100.000€ yearly sales depending on the country, for AT it is 30.000, for Germany tiny 7500€) then you also have to provide an invoice (and include the VAT into it). So only for very small businesses there is no need for an invoice at all. Most companies (who can live from 600€ sales/month?) there is indeed the requirement for an invoice (however not really clear if it has to be digitally signed or not, but many consumers will ask for it as otherwise they cannot claim it as expense) also for B2C business. The only loophole is to move your company outside of the EU... (Switzerland and Liechtenstein are nice places to live and save taxes, but prepare that your personal life costs a lot more so you better generate even more sales.... )

[xandermusic]

Thanks for bringing this to my attention Cristián.

If any of you would like to post some recommendations/ideas about ways in which s2Member might help you deal with some or all of these issues, please feel free to share them. Also, please keep in mind that s2Member can be configured to send a Signup Confirmation Email, and this email can be completely customized inside your Dashboard. Several Replacement Codes are available in this configurable email template, so you might find a solution going that route. See: s2Member -> PayPal Options -> Signup Confirmation Email. Otherwise, please let us know where/how we can improve this for EU merchants. Thanks!

Oh, I can see, that our conversation went really further.

We are in the same boat in Austria, Hungary, Germany.

It is clear now, that for our country customer, I should provide after each payment a country based valid Taxation Receipt / Quittung. This must be done manually, or by means of computer based valid Billing Program accepted by our Tax Offices, or by a Valid Online Billing software.

And yes, we must keep these documents 8-10 years long.

If I don't want all these crazyness, I should consider to go offshore, where I am not the owner/director of that firm.

But going offshore means, we cannot use Paypal for these transactions anymore (Pp is not tolerant in this way either), only CcBill, or Moneybookers (which is much more cheaper than CcBill), or maybe Alertpay. They are much more tolerant.

That's why I have suggested the integration for Moneybookers or Alertpay somewhere in this Forum.

CcBill would be OK, they accept "High Risk Transaction" (direct marketing, for example "Make Money Online" belongs to this category ! Is not it funny?) but CcBill is very expensive, 15-16% which is ridiculous.

OK, this can I say now from Hungary.

[xandermusic]

For shipping, I think the custom registration fields may be the best thing in s2Member, from what I know. Or is it not being good enough for you? What would you prefer?

Hi, Christian!

Exactly this will be the solution. It requires some little handwork, but no problem. My girl friend will do the work for me

[Cristián Lávaque]

Cool! I'm glad that works for you.