Configuring Accounts and Tax Rates

For questions regarding correct tax rates, please contact your tax advisor. ChargePoint does not provide any tax advice! We explicitly point out that the correct configuration of the tax types and in which application cases they are used is solely the responsibility of the customer.

 

In the menu Finance/Settings you can define the settings for your accounts, tax rates, terms of payment and invoicing numbers. Please go through the individual points from top to bottom, as each subsequent point builds on the previous one.

 

This article covers the following topics:

1. Types of taxes
2. International tax configuration - Settings for value-added tax in the EU and non-EU Countries
3. Terms of Payment
4. Invoice number ranges

 

Types of taxes

In this menu you have the option to store various tax rates for different countries and apply reverse charges for a tax-exempt invoice to other companies.

A tax class is used to automatically calculate the sales tax correctly for the selected products. To do this, you must assign the tax classes you have created to your respective use cases, which are configured in the next point "International Taxes". 

German and English are mandatory when entering "Name and Description".

Optionally, various other languages can be added.

Under Finance information, the respective tax rate, as well as the respective tax and revenue accounts (Account.No. = tax account) must be stated.

For the correct indication of your tax and revenue accounts, please consult your accounting department. Fill in the application criteria as it corresponds to your company.

 

Example configuration: The correct input of the different tax types is the responsibility of the customer

 

International taxes (tax configuration): Settings for Value-Added Tax (VAT) in the EU and non-EU Countries

To configure this please click on Finances in the backend. On the left side you will find the menu item Settings/International taxes.

In the item "International taxes" you map all your use cases. Please note that although the item is called "International taxes", these tax configurations must also be made if you only operate domestically.

Click Add tax configuration and complete the form accordingly.

Here it is important to distinguish whether the respective tax configuration is to be applied to the "Country of the charging station" and/or the "Country of document recipient".

 

In order to be able to issue invoices in the correct tax for each country outside of your national borders, the correct tax configuration must be added to be.ENERGISED.

 

Country of charging station: checks for the geo-data of the station. 

Country of document recipient: checks for the residence of the invoice recipient (CRM contact) 

Tax: country specific tax rate 

 

In addition, further fields for specification are available in the tax configuration: 

Tax account: Configuration is assigned to this tax account 

Tax scope: Selection of various application areas (what kind of service does the configuration refer to)

Revenue account: Configuration is assigned to this specific revenue account 

Sub Entity: tax configuration can only be applied by the selected sub entity 

Receiver must be a company?: for B2B invoicing. The decisive factor here is whether the CRM contact is created as a company.

Receiver must be an energy reseller?: for passing on EMP tax liability. An invoice recipient is a reseller of electricity if the item "Is reseller" is set to YES in their CRM contact under Edit/Finance and Tax Configuration. 

 

Please note! In order for invoicing for charging processes to occur, a tax configuration for the "Other services" tax scope must UNCONDITIONALLY exist alongside the "Energy delivery" tax scope, even if the charging process only includes energy costs and no additional charges.  This can be checked in the charging process data sheet in the "Information on costs" tab. There, three lines must exist in the item "Information on tax calculation" for successful invoice generation (in the case of an invoice for a charging process where only energy costs are incurred). One line for the energy delivery, one for other services, and one for the sum of these two tax rates.   In this case, we recommend that you always specify the location of the charging station in the tax configuration. You can also select "No specific configuration" for the application area. This gives you a so-called "fallback" variant that covers all application areas. The same applies to the "Sub Entity" field for entity-based billing. It is sufficient for the above case to leave the field set to "none selected". Thus, the configuration applies to all sub entities. However, it is also true here that the most precisely defined configuration is always applied.

 

ATTENTION In order to enable correct invoice generation, it is absolutely necessary to fill in all of your desired application criteria in a separate tax configuration! Example: You would like to charge for charging processes, but have also defined a monthly basic fee, as well as a one-time activation fee in your tariff model. In that case, you need to create 3 different tax configurations: 1 Tax scope = Energy delivery (for charging processes) 2 Tax scope = Monthly costs for authentication media 3 Tax scope = Setup costs for authentication media A practical example can be found in this article.

 

In the example below, the Austrian VAT rate is used for customers from "all countries" in Austria.

 

You can find more detailed instructions on the subject of sales tax here (currently in German only).

 

 

Please note the following:    

Regarding the tax configuration, the most specific configuration always takes effect before a less concretely defined rate (same as in the tariff management). 

 

Example: In the "International tax configuration" figure (see image above) the line marked with "1st” (Country of charging station-Austria; Country of document recipient-Austria) will be applied before the line marked with "2nd" (provided the country of the invoice recipient is Austria).

 

Regarding prioritization, the system proceeds as follows:

This means that when a charging process has taken place, the system first matches the location of the charging station with the tax configurations. The next step is to check the country of the invoice recipient. After that, the system checks if the invoice recipient is a company and matches this with the tax configurations as well. Thus, step by step, the system goes through the tax configurations you have created. Finally, the configuration that has the most matches is applied. 

 

 

Terms of Payment

Before you assign the payment terms to your customers, they are entered here in multiple languages:

 

You have the option to enter payment requests for non-German or English-speaking countries in their respective national language or in English, for example.

 

Invoice Number Ranges

The configuration of default settings for invoice number ranges as well as standard payment conditions are configured here. An invoice number range is also required for credit memos to Sub-CPOs, if applicable.

Configurations can then be used for automated billing, prepaid account creation, and rate management. Likewise, this data is available for the manual creation of invoices.

 

(*)These settings are considered mandatory fields for proper allocation:

Name*: internal description in the backend; used for clarification.

First invoice number*: see info box "Invoice number information".

Invoice title*: This will be printed on the invoice. If nothing is entered here, the word "Invoice" will be used. This field is limited to 65 characters, if more characters are entered the text will be truncated. 

Payment terms*: a standard payment term, for this number range must be specified.

Document type*: e.g: Invoice or Credit note

Document layout configuration*: This can only be selected after a document layout has been created. Please follow this link for further information. 

Force currency: Use this function to specify whether a certain currency should be forced on invoices created using this invoice number range. This makes it possible to issue invoices in different currencies within the same instance.

 

 

Invoice number configuration:
Please fill in the fields according to your requirements.

Invoice numbers that start with zeros are removed during the invoice generation process. Invoice numbers should therefore start with a value of a digit that is not zero e.g. 100000, to ensure consistent and long invoice numbers. The be.ENERGISED backend allows up to 10-digit invoice characters (EXCLUDING the pre- and suffix characters). A prefix usually consists of a two-digit letter combination that is printed in front of the invoice number. This is used to make it easier to distinguish between the individual invoice codes in the summary overview. A prefix can contain spaces. In addition, please note that the first invoice number is considered the default and the backend counts up one number with each subsequent invoice. If "1" is entered as the first invoice number, the system counts upwards (prefix plus number: R1, R2,...R135, etc.). We do not recommend this, because in this case there will be invoice numbers of different length.

 

Direct Payment & Mailagent queue:

In these fields you do not need to make any settings, because they are configured by ChargePoint.

You have to assign the billing areas to the applicable companies under User management/ registered companies/update data.   

Furthermore, you have the option to assign separate payment terms to one of your CRM contacts. You can do this via the additional information in the editing area of your contact.