Adding an order from backend

Not at the moment. The EU VAT Assistant doesn’t allow to enter VAT data manually, to prevent tampering. It was designed to detect all the VAT information automatically for orders placed by customers, and it doesn’t currently handle the case in which orders are entered manually.

I understand,
can I ask you if you think to implement a VAT check from the backend somewhen in the future?

Apart from the VAT number (which can already be checked via an Ajax call, if you like), there are checks that cannot be performed in the backend.
One of the most important ones is that the IP address of the customer matches the country declared on the order (required by EU rules as evidence). Since the IP address does not exist when you create the order manually (your IP address is irrelevant, and you would be declaring a country on someone else’s behalf), the EU VAT Assistant would not be able to validate it. The VAT evidence field, therefore, would indicate that there is a mismatch and that the validation failed.

This is an important reason why implementing backend features would have little relevance for EU VAT compliance, as the plugin would not be able to validate the data properly.

If you would like to know how to validate an EU VAT number using Ajax, you can refer to file frontend.js. The function is called validate_vat_number().

Example (as a guideline)

var ajax_args = {
  'action': 'validate_eu_vat_number',
  'country': 'GB',
  'vat_number': '12345678'
};
$.get(<URL to admin-ajax.php>, ajax_args, function(response) {
  //console.log(response);
  if(response.valid) {
    // Valid EU VAT Number
  }
});

Hi Diego,
thanks for details.

I understand that it’s not possibile to check evidences if the order is placed from the backend. But I still think there are some cases when a way to insert B2B orders from backend may be helpful.
For example if I have a recurrent B2B customer asking me for weekly order without the need for him to come to the website. Or someone else that has already made an order but only later he realizes that he can buy without taxes (in that case i would need edit the order).

By the way, thanks for pointing me to frontend.js ??

Hi guys,

I was wondering about this lately too.

I understand there is no way to check for evidence from the backend, and I honestly don’t care about this, as I can check the validity of these VAT numbers myself, but I wonder if there is a way for an order filled in the backend with a VAT number AND no VAT charged to appear in the VIES reports.

I understand the fight against tampering data from the backend, but honestly, one can do this in the database anyway…

@funkysam That’s the key: if you tamper with the data in the database, you are “hacking” the site. If the product allows you to do it, then the product is responsible for misuse as well, and that would increase the volume of support requests significantly. To prevent such issue, we would have to write a dedicated Admin UI, with a very thorough set of checks and, most importantly, an audit of all the operations performed, to check if the operator entered the wrong data and blames the plugin instead (it happens more often that we like to think).

@bluantinoo Changing the VAT data is definitely something that we don’t want to allow, for the same reasons described above. Once the VAT information is calculated and stored, it should be considered “written in stone”.
If a customer places an order, then realises that he didn’t enter the VAT number and would like to get a VAT exemption, the best way to handle this would be to refund the order entirely and place a new one.

Without an audit trail, allowing small changes such as recalculating the VAT, applying an exemption or a reduction, and so on, would create an endless amount of issues, whose causes could not be proven. This is why any accounting software keeps track of each and every single change made to a document (who change what, when and why).

It’s not as easy as it may seem, and the cost of such features, both in terms of development and maintenance, would be too high for us to cover them (we would have to remove the product from the free repository and stick a three figures price tag to it, and it’s something we would rather not do).

For completeness, and to better understand why the EUVA didn’t have a full featured backoffice section from the beginning, it’s important to note the reason why we developed it: compliance with the new EU VAT MOSS regulations, that came into effect on the 01/01/2015. Those regulations affect sales of digital products, which require “little to no manual intervention”.

Since the concept of “little to no manual intervention” is ambiguous, and changes depending on the interpretation of different Revenue Offices, we refereed to the information provided by us by the Irish Revenue, which is our point of reference. Based on the information we received, the scenario that should be covered is the one where a customer goes to a site, places an order, pays for it, and receives a digital product automatically. An order placed manually by the shop owner falls outside the scope of the VAT MOSS regulations, therefore our plugin doesn’t take it into account.

Orders related to physical products are also outside the scope of the regulations, however it’s quite frequent that merchants sell both physical and digital products. Due to that, we “stretched” our plugin a bit, and implemented a generic logic, that would treat all frontend sales the same way, collecting the data for digital, physical and “mixed” transactions. The reports simply filter out the irrelevant ones, based on configuration.

The EU VAT Assistant could definitely be extended to provide additional backend features, it’s just a matter of time and cost. The new regulations are complicated enough, therefore we have to focus on the features strictly needed to comply. Considering that more countries are to jump on the bandwagon, requesting VAT to be charged at their rate, we need to keep focused on these high priority features.

“Funny” note
The EU provides a single point of reference to file the VAT returns for all EU members, but the new countries who demand merchants to charge VAT at their rate do not. Most of them require a local accountant (with related fees) and the returns would have to be submitted to each and every country separately. This will go way beyond what a small, independent merchant can afford.

Update
I queued the suggestions for review and possible inclusion in an extension to the EU VAT Assistant. Although I cannot give a deadline, the features are now in our list. ??

Thanks Diego for considering this.

It’s true that lots of us do not use this plugin for digital goods at all, but the title of the plugin says EU VAT assistant, and this is not only related to digital goods, even if I understand that it’s the law change regarding digital goods that was the trigger to start the development of it.

Currently, we can fill a B2B order in the backend without calculating VAT. It’s a bit weird but it works.
Adding a custom field “vat_number” shows it on the invoice too, so that’s great.

From a legal perspective, i am responsible of checking the vat number, so as long as I do it, that’s OK for me. My invoice is OK. Not much different than doing an invoice in a spreadsheet editor, except it’s integrated into woocommerce, and as such, in reports.

The only thing missing, at least in my case, is the inclusion of this order in the tax VIES reports.

That’s right, the EU VAT Assistant is generic enough that can be used, to a certain extent, by non-digital businesses as well. Its description explains in mode detail that its purpose is quite specific, though:

The WooCommerce EU VAT Assistant is designed to help achieving compliance with the new European VAT regulations, coming into effect on the 1st of January 2015. Starting from that date, digital goods sold to consumers in the European Union are liable to EU VAT, no matter where the seller is located. The VAT rate to apply to each sale is the one charged in the country of consumption, i.e. where the customer resides. These new rules apply to worldwide sellers, whether resident in the European Union or not, who sell their products to EU customers.

We originally developed it for ourselves, as we are subject to the VAT MOSS system too, and, since we don’t deal with physical products, we focused on the primary purpose of the plugin. Developing it and maintaining it is not cheap (well into five figures), but, instead of selling it, we decided to make it a 100% free product (not “freemium”), so that small merchants would not have to pay a hefty bill to become compliant with the new, abstruse regulations.

All feature requests are duly noted, and reviewed for future updates. Since this is a “pro bono” project, we just have to weigh them carefully.