[Feature] Australian invoicing requirements

[MrJamesEllis]

Hi there, loving BeansBooks, great work.

Australian taxation laws require the wording "Tax Invoice" followed by the Australian Business Number (ABN) on each invoice. I can't see a way of adding this to a template via the admin, so for now I've hardcoded the text in print.mustache

I think this could be accomplished via "default invoice note" field in the Settings area.

If there is a more update-friendly way of doing this in a template, I'd be happy to hear.

Thanks James

[funnylookinhat]

Hi @civkati -

When you create the sales tax under "Setup", are you entering the ABN for your "License #" ? If so - it may be easiest for us to add a work item to include those numbers when printing or sending invoices so that it works across any legal requirement.

[MrJamesEllis]

Hi,

Yes, the ABN is going in the License field as "ABN 123456789" and that would be the relevant field for the invoice. The invoice also must have the wording "Tax Invoice", generally at the top.

I also had to add the {{companyname}} to print.mustache above the address as it's not shown if an uploaded logo is provided (ref: https://github.com/system76/beansbooks/blob/master/application/templates/print.mustache).. I'll fork the repo and add my updates so they are easier to reference.

The Australian invoicing requirements are shown here, as a guide: http://www.ato.gov.au/Business/GST/Accounting-for-GST-in-your-business/Requirements-of-tax-invoices/

I was thinking it could be possible to just have a field for "Invoice Note" and a template per locale, like print_AU.mustache that fulfills the local regulations.

Thanks James

[MrJamesEllis]

Actually after reading issue #60 again, maybe it's better to have this information associated with an Accounts Receivable. It would be a bit more scalable allowing different Taxation/License numbers on a per account basis, in case a business uses more than one (e.g local and foreign account for invoicing).

[funnylookinhat]

I'm not sure having the information tied to an AR would be best; you can have several taxes applied per district ( or even across districts ) while you're giving different terms to your customers ( Net Terms 30 vs. Credit Card , etc. ). I think your original idea makes lots of sense - and we may want to add a few features to allow the customization of invoices on a broader level ( i.e. "Invoice Label" = "Tax Invoice" in your case, other companies might want to call it a "Bill for Service or Goods", etc. ).