Tax Rates — QuickPOS User Guide

The most important decision — inclusive or exclusive?

Before you set up anything else, you need to understand the difference between tax-inclusive and tax-exclusive pricing. This is the single most important tax setting and it affects how every price in the system is interpreted.

Tax Inclusive (the default — recommended for most businesses)

The price you enter for a product is the final price the customer pays. Tax is already included inside that price. QuickPOS extracts and shows the tax amount at checkout for transparency, but it does not add anything extra on top.

💡 Example: You set a burger at £10.00 with 20% VAT included. The customer pays £10.00. QuickPOS shows "Incl. VAT (20%): £1.67" on the receipt. The burger always costs £10.00 — no surprises at the till.

This is how most UK cafés, restaurants and takeaways work. The price on the menu is the price you charge. This is the default setting in QuickPOS.

Tax Exclusive

The price you enter is the net price before tax. Tax is calculated on top and added at checkout. The customer pays more than the displayed product price.

💡 Example: You set a burger at £8.33 (net). At checkout with 20% VAT, QuickPOS adds £1.67 and the customer pays £10.00. Common in trade, wholesale or businesses that quote prices excluding VAT.

This is more common in B2B businesses, trade suppliers and US retail where prices are quoted without tax.

	Tax Inclusive	Tax Exclusive
What you enter as the product price	The price the customer pays	The price before tax
What appears on product cards	The final price	The net price (tax added later)
Receipt shows	"Incl. VAT (20%): £1.67"	"VAT (20%): £1.67"
Best for	UK hospitality, retail, cafés, restaurants, takeaways	Trade, wholesale, B2B, US businesses

⚠️ Not sure which to use? If your menu or price list shows the price the customer pays — use Tax Inclusive. If you quote prices before tax and add tax separately — use Tax Exclusive. When in doubt, inclusive is almost certainly what you want.

Setting up tax in QuickPOS

Go to Settings → Tax tab. You will find three controls:

1. Enable Tax toggle

Turns tax on or off for the whole system. When off, no tax is calculated or shown anywhere — prices are treated as the final amount. Leave this on unless you are not required to charge tax at all.

2. Prices include tax toggle

This is the inclusive/exclusive switch described above. It is on by default (tax inclusive). You can change it at any time — switching it does not affect historical orders, because every saved order records which method was used when it was placed.

3. Tax rates

Add one or more named tax rates. Each rate has:

✓ Default — the rate applied automatically to any product that hasn't been given a specific rate. Exactly one rate must be the default.
✓ Name — what appears on the receipt, e.g. "VAT", "GST", "Service Charge"
✓ Rate — the percentage, e.g. 20

Click + Add Tax Rate to add a rate. Click the ✕ on a row to remove it. Click Save Settings when done.

Assigning different rates to different products

Some businesses charge different tax rates on different products — for example a UK café that sells both food (zero-rated) and alcohol (standard 20% VAT). QuickPOS handles this with per-product rate overrides.

When editing a product in Products, you will see a Tax Rate dropdown listing all your configured rates. Select the rate that applies to that specific product. Products with no override automatically use the default rate.

💡 Mixed-tax example: Create two rates — "Zero VAT" at 0% (set as default) and "VAT" at 20%. All food items use the 0% default automatically. Assign "VAT" only to your alcohol and hot drinks. QuickPOS calculates each line at the correct rate and shows a full breakdown on the receipt.

How tax appears on the cart and receipt

When tax is enabled, the cart and checkout show a breakdown of all tax amounts before the total. The wording tells you which mode is in use:

What you see	What it means
Incl. VAT (20%): £1.67	Tax inclusive — the £1.67 was already inside the price, extracted for transparency
VAT (20%): £1.67	Tax exclusive — the £1.67 has been added on top of the net price

If you have multiple tax rates on the same order, each rate appears as its own line so the customer and your accountant can see exactly how the total is made up.

Switching between inclusive and exclusive

You can switch the Prices include tax toggle at any time without any risk to your data. Here is what happens:

✓ Historical orders are not affected. Every saved order records which tax method was used when it was placed. Old orders always display correctly regardless of the current setting.
✓ Future orders use the new setting. From the moment you save the change, new sales are calculated using the new method.
✓ Product prices do not change. But their meaning changes — if you switch from exclusive to inclusive, the price the customer pays stays the same but now includes tax rather than having it added on top. You may want to review your product prices after switching.

⚠️ Reviewing prices after switching: If you switch from tax-exclusive to tax-inclusive, your product prices remain unchanged but will now be treated as the total the customer pays. This means your effective net revenue per item will be lower. Check your prices make sense after switching — you may need to update them.

Disabling tax entirely

If you are not required to charge or report tax at all, toggle Enable Tax off and save. No tax is calculated or shown anywhere in the system. Prices are treated exactly as entered — the final amount the customer pays.