Use this article when your shop bills with a flat single-rate tax (GST, VAT, Sales Tax) that needs to appear on every quote letter and on the in-app totals — and the rate is not already coming from another system. After this you will have a tax line on every quote letter PDF, and on the estimate page the totals bar will split into a Subtotal (excl. ...) line and a Total estimate (incl. ...) line — with your Tax label substituted into the parentheses (for example, Subtotal (excl. GST) and Total estimate (incl. GST)).
Steps
1. Configure General Settings tax fields
Open Estimate Setup → Settings → General Settings. The tax fields sit in one group near the top of the page. Fill in the fields below.
Tax line on the quote letter
Tax label — the label printed next to the tax amount on the rendered PDF and substituted into the in-app Subtotal and Total estimate lines. Use the term your jurisdiction recognises, e.g., GST, VAT, or Sales Tax. If a Tax rate (%) is set and this field is blank, the PDF defaults the label to Tax. Leave both fields blank if you do not publish a flat rate on quote letters.
Tax rate (%) — the flat rate applied to the calculated Total estimate after the rebate gross-up runs. A number from 0 to 100, e.g., 10 for 10% GST, 20 for 20% VAT, 7.5 for a regional Sales Tax. Decimals are accepted. The dialog rejects negative values with Tax rate must be a number. and values outside 0–100 with Tax rate must be between 0 and 100. Leave blank to omit the tax line from quote letters entirely — even on estimates that were calculated under a previous rate.
The rate is one flat number for the tenant. Per-customer or per-product tax (a customer that is tax-exempt, a product on a reduced rate) is not configured here — those cases belong in pricing rules and customer settings, which are outside this article.
Save the change. The Pending Changes count increments by one in the sidebar.
2. Apply the changes to live setup
Open the Pending Changes panel in the sidebar and review the staged edits to Tax label and Tax rate (%). Select Apply Changes to publish them.
The Pending Changes count returns to zero. The tax fields are now active for every quote letter rendered after this point.
3. Verify on a calculated estimate
Open a calculated estimate in Manage Estimates (a quote that has finished its calculation; if it has not, run Recalculate first). The totals bar at the bottom of the estimate now shows two new lines:
Subtotal (excl. ...) — the Total estimate before tax. The parentheses render the Tax label value you typed — e.g., Subtotal (excl. GST).
Total estimate (incl. ...) — the Total estimate after tax is applied — e.g., Total estimate (incl. GST).
Select View PDF on the estimate. The rendered PDF shows the Tax label line at the configured rate, the subtotal before tax, and the new total after tax — these match the in-app values exactly.
If the tax line does not appear on the PDF, the Tax rate (%) field is empty (label alone does not render a tax line). If the label reads Tax even though you typed VAT, the Tax label field was saved blank in Pending Changes — return to Step 1 and re-save.
Things to know
Tax rate (%) applies after the rebate gross-up, not before. The tooltip on the field is explicit: the rate is applied to the final estimate total after rebate markup. If your finance policy expects the rebate to be tax-inclusive (the rebate base already includes tax), the rate configured here is not the right place — that policy is configured in pricing rules and rebate setup, not in General Settings.
Leaving Tax rate (%) blank removes the line everywhere. Blanking out the rate after a previous value removes the tax line from quote letters and from the in-app totals on every estimate, including estimates that were calculated and previously rendered under the old rate. Re-render the PDF for any customer-facing letter that still needs to show the old rate.
Multi-rate tax handling is not in scope here. Shops that bill different rates per customer (B2B reverse-charge, tax-exempt accounts) or per product (reduced-rate products) configure that through pricing rules or in their MIS export, not through this flat rate. The flat rate stays as the shop default; cases outside it are exceptions.
The General Settings page is gated for some tenants. If General Settings shows an upgrade prompt rather than the tax fields, the tenant has not enabled the settings package that includes these fields. The fields cannot be filled in until the package is enabled — confirm tenant status before training operators on this flow.