WordPress Version: 3.3.1
WP-eCommerce Version: 3.7.8
WP-eCommerce Version: Fixed At 3.8.7.6.2
Plugin Author: GetShopped / Instinct
Problem:
WPEC Email Content – FIXED – Kind of!
Update: 26/11/2012.
I’ve recently updated a site running the WP e-Commerce plugin 3.8.8.5 to implement inclusive sales tax. It appears that the %total_tax% tag works if your tax system is Exclusive, if it’s Inclusive then the tax tag seems to report nothing. Tax inclusive handing by the plugin is weak. It appears that the tax inclusive total is not recorded and the inclusive tax amount on shipping is not itemised and recorded.
Inclusive tax total:
No tax total appears in the customer and administrator emails or on the packing slip and it is not stored in the database as part of the sales record. The total does appear correctly displayed in the shopping cart widget and on the checkout page but that’s all.
Inclusive shipping tax:
If shipping is tax inclusive then the tax on that is only shown in the shopping cart widget and on the checkout page as part of the tax total, it is not itemised seperately on the website, in emails or the packing slip and is not stored in the database as part of the sales record.
Update: At 3.8.7.6.2 there is now a %total_tax% tag that can be set under the Admin page to appear in the Purchase Receipt and Admin Report emails. As the content of the Purchase Receipt also appears on the shops checkout page it’s great to now have the numbers balance everywhere. A small change with excellent results. 🙂
Total Tax Tag Use
Original Report: There are numerical errors in the WPEC emails sent to the website administrator and to their customers when sales are made.
The emails titled “Purchase Report”, “Order Pending: Payment Required” and “Purchase Receipt” all have numerical errors in them. None of them balance if you add up the itemised totals.
For the “Purchase Report” and the “Order Pending: Payment Required” the Tax line is missing. For the “Purchase Receipt” the Tax AND shipping lines are missing.
Again, this is something that should be easy to fix but for some reason it’s not being done. These incorrect emails are going out to our customers – that’s as bad as it gets.
hi.
I am still searching for the %total_tax% thing. I have 3.8.8.5 running and the problem still exists…
regards,
max
Hi Max,
Sorry for the delay I responding – I’ve been away for a while. At WP e-Commerce 3.8.8.5 I do see the %total_tax% tag under the Admin tab within the Store settings. See the screen capture above for an example.
Regards, Mike.
Hi there,
I’m running WPEC 3.8.11.1 and also can’t get the %total_tax% tag to display anything other than £0.00 in both transaction report emails and purchase receipt emails – do you know if there might be a solution – many MANY thanks for your help (in advance!)
Paul
Hi Paul,
It’s been a while since I’ve looked at these tax issues and the site I look after is now on WPEC 3.8.8.5. That site is Australian based so is set up to be Tax Inclusive as per the legal requirement there. From memory it seemed to me at the time when working on the tax side of the site that tax exclusive sites handled the reporting/display of taxes better than tax inclusive sites.
Looking at 3.8.8.5 it seems the %total_tax% tag does not work for the Australian site in either the customer Purchase Receipt or the site admins Admin Report (the email with subject Purchase Report).
Admins Purchase Report Email:
Shows no tax but it’s not really necessary I guess.
Customers Purchase Receipt Email:
Shows tax on a per product basis.
Does not show tax on the shipping charge which it should.
Does not show the total tax which it should.
Bizarrely, WPEC does show the Total Tax in the shopping cart widget and on the checkout page but not on the transaction results page or the emails. The WPEC developers are very inconsistent in how they do things.
Your several versions of WPEC ahead of us so I don’t have a site to compare yours to. It’s interesting that you do actually have the %total_tax% tag appearing in the emails even if it is £0.00. I guess it’s a config issue or bug – take your pick. Some countries allow tax inclusive and tax exclusive prices so if that’s the case for you then you may have better results trying the alternate method if that’s an option for your shop. As I noted earlier tax exclusive seems to be better catered for. Have you done a good search on the WPEC forums?
Personally we’ve given up on WPEC tax reporting due to its poor implementation at the version we are running and now rely on the PDF Invoices premium plugin to produce the tax invoices for customers but even then we had to edit the plugin code to include a line to display the total tax for the order (including on the shipping). The plugin developer doesn’t include the tax total by default because WPEC don’t show it – but I think he should add value by putting it in the code – why not make it better than WPEC.
This WPEC Invoice plugin looks interesting as it allows you to tailor the emails as well as producing the invoice.
Good luck, Mike.