UK VAT reconciliation

[ray]

We like ejunkie but now have a problem with VAT reconciliation.



We need to be able to identify EU customers that are VAT registered. There is no option to ask customers to tick a box or to enter a number. We need something to be able to identify them for our VAT returns.



We can't just assume as we have a mix of business and personal customers.



Ejunkie: Any plans to address this issue for your EU clients?



Anyone else: Have you found a workaround or a cart as cost effective and simple as ejunlie that manages this? We're using PayPal.

[E-junkie_Guru]

We have no means to support validation of VAT numbers. We can only calculate VAT by treating all buyers as regular end-consumers. You can ask affected commercial buyers to provide their VAT numbers privately, so you could validate that on your own and refund any VAT paid.

[ray]

That's not a feasible, cost effective solution I'm afraid.



Given this is possible what's the underlying barrier to implementing this? Cost, lack of interest in the EU market, other development priorities?

[E-junkie_Guru]

Frankly, it's more a lack of interest ~from~ merchants in the EU in general, and regarding a live VAT number validation feature in particular.



Development prioritizes new feature requests according to broadest potential benefit and the simplicity of programming them into our existing codebase and algorithms. Because ours is a centrally-managed service that is shared in common among thousands of merchant subscribers, it's impossible for us to make a modification for one merchant that does not also affect all other merchants, so we place the utmost importance on maintaining bug-free stability for all merchants using our system.



Greater priority is given to popularly-requested features which many or most merchants could benefit from, and which can be written into our existing system fairly straightforwardly with minimal risk, whilst lower priority is given to features rarely requested and of benefit to fewer merchants, or which require substantial reprogramming or complexity that may introduce new bugs or instability problems in well-polished and stable parts of our existing system.

[ray]

Thanks Tyson,



That's a surprise (the low interest from EU merchants). The overall devt strategy makes perfect sense. I appreciate the reply.



Thanks.

[paulusmaximus]

ive been trying to get my operation running with E-junkie. I am in Germany.

The more I get to know it , the more I realize it cant possibly work for any EU based operation as it is.



A: The VAT can be duped by anyone, by simply choosing some country which which is VAT free from a European standpoint. this basically measn , If the worst came to the worst, I woud have to pay the VAT for the buyer.



B: your checkout does not display the VAT rate !! which is now required by EU law.



C: a company can not enter its own VAT ID.



D: there are no custom cheeckout feild for additional information.



your platform is currently an invite to every 2 bit con-artists to rip people off.

it may be simple,but you can strike the words secure or proffesional from any description of e-junkie.





The above response from "guru" sums up why people really shouldnt use E-junkie in europe.And is the reason E-junkei will never have much EU based usage.Its quite simple, if you make your platform EU complient ,you get lots of EU custommers.If you dont, you dont get any at all.There is not much ground inbetween. The demand is there, the problem is your platform. not the other wayaround.



To be quie frank, After a bit of a burn in period on these forums its quite evident that the EU and VAT issues are not unsermountable and actually quite trivial to implement.



Seriously, how hard is it to insert the TAX/VAT rate into your shopping cart ??

how hard is it to replace the word tax with VAT or MWST by detecting the country?

these are stdent level trivial tasks.



RE: "priorities"

what priorities? It ssems to me that you guys dont actually do anything at all.nothing changes and nothng gets fixed. or do you have some kind of change list?



I have come to the conclusion that the e-junkie programmer(s) is simply not capable of implementing a robust international e-commerce platform.I read a lot of excuses which are often quite simply laughable and short minded.



If your guys dont know how to do these things and can't implement them, thats ok, just find some guys that can! europe is quite big (and important on the scale of things) and worth it.





Sorry if this sounds a bit negative, but I invested quite some time into E-junkie and had hoped it would be a solution only to discover that it has no future and is not going anywhere.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Thanks for your input; I will forward your concerns to our Development team.