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**NEW** Global Taxes
**NEW** Global Taxes

Create or adjust tax rates in a global setting to apply to selected Price Book items.

Updated over a week ago

Global Taxes allow you to control many different tax rates across all of your estimates and project budgets in a global setting! Global taxes can be applied to selected line items in the Estimate or Budget and that rate will be applied to those items.

If your work spans over multiple states or tax jurisdictions, you'll be able to add those as different tax rates. You'll then apply that saved rate to the specific estimate or budget for that area.

We're only able to add a single tax rate at this time, if there is a combined tax rate for your area, use the sum of all of the rates to create the tax.

Adding Tax Rates

To add a tax rate, go to your Settings in BuildBook. Click on your avatar in the top right hand corner and then settings:

From your settings, click on Manage Tax Settings under Financial:

In the top right corner, click on + Add Tax:

Enter the name and the tax rate, then click on save to create it.

Note: This is a single tax value. If you have a combined tax rate, add all of the values into a single tax rate and add it here.

Setting Default Tax Rates

Once you have your tax rate created, you can choose to make it the default! Click on the ellipsis menu to the right of your tax rate:

This will apply that tax rate to all new Budgets and Estimates.

The default tax rate for all estimates and budgets currently will be set as Do Not Tax which removes the ability to add Tax to the line items on the estimates or budget. Budgets and estimates that already have a tax applied to items will switch to Custom Tax so that your information remains intact!

Delete a Tax Rate

You can delete global tax rates by going to the tax rate menu and clicking Delete Tax:

Deleting a tax rate will remove it from future use, as well as from existing estimates and project budgets that currently rely on it. However, the tax value will still be retained as a custom rate in an estimate and budget items where it is currently being used even after deletion.

Click ok to delete the tax rate or cancel to keep it.

You can set a Tax Rate to be active or inactive by toggling them on or off:

Tax rates will be active upon creation. Inactive tax rates will not appear in the tax rate list on Estimates/Budgets. Any Estimate/Budget with the deactivated tax rate will change to Custom, the line item tax values will remain, and the tax field will be editable.

Using Tax Rates

Estimates and Budgets

Newly created Estimates and Budgets will default to Do Not Tax which deactivates the tax checkboxes.

  • You can set a global tax rate as the default which can be used instead of Do Not Tax

  • If you move from an applied tax rate to Do Not Tax, the tax field will be disabled but taxable items will remain checked. This allows an easy transition between tax rates and Do Not Tax.

  • If taxable Price Book items are added with Do Not Tax selected, the check box will be disabled but remain checked.

Once a Tax rate is added and chosen, you'll notice that the line items tax field chances from a box percentage to a check box:

This will allow you to check all items that are taxable in that Estimate or Budget. All existing Estimates and Budgets will default to the Custom global tax rate.

If you integrate with QuickBooks Online and have enabled QuickBooks AST, you'll also see an option to select QuickBooks-generated tax and QuickBooks Custom Rates in this step. We recommend selecting a QuickBooks-labeled option for all users that push Invoices to QuickBooks Online to reduce differences between estimated tax and actual tax on Invoices.

  • The option "Automated Sales Tax" will apply location-based tax (as determined by the project's address and QuickBooks Online's AST engine) to the budget, estimated invoice tax, and actual invoice tax.

  • Any other options labeled as QuickBooks are custom tax rates managed in QuickBooks Online Sales Tax Settings and will use their user-defined custom rate to estimate tax on the budget and invoice, and to generate actual tax.

  • If a BuildBook tax rate is selected on a QuickBooks project, the BuildBook rate will be used to estimate tax on the budget and invoice. When an invoice is moved to open and pushed to QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Online will default to their location-based AST and apply their generated tax to the "actual tax" on the invoice.

The Custom tax rate keeps all fields as individually editable tax fields with the original tax rate inputted. This is designed to maintain your taxes across Projects and Estimates that have already been started.

You can then choose to create and use a global tax rate instead of the Custom Tax Rate:

  • When you select a global tax rate, you'll see a prompt that says your existing tax data will be overwritten with the global tax rate and the change can’t be recovered.

  • Upon application, any tax field with a value greater than 0 will become a checked box. Any value 0 or null becomes an unchecked box.
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You can't return to a Custom tax rate once you've selected a different rate and this option is not available in new Estimates or Budgets.

Price Book

The tax field in the Price Book will become a checkbox. When an item from the Price Book is added to an Estimate or Budget, if checked it will inherit the applied tax rate.

If there is a default tax rate selected, items marked with a check will become effected by that Tax Rate. If there is no default tax rate selected, items with a checked box for tax will automatically apply the tax that is currently set up on the Budget or Estimate.

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