Installing and setting up CereTax for QuickBooks Online

Prerequisites

Before you connect the CereTax App to your QuickBooks Online account, a new Item must be created.  

Create “Taxes” Item

The “Taxes” Item will be used when tax lines are added to an invoice. It will determine the account that sales (and other) taxes are posted to when a transaction is posted.

1.  Go to Sales > Products & services

2. Click on “New” and select “Non-inventory”

3. Enter “Taxes” or another name in the Name field.

4. Select the account from the income account drop-down menu you want taxes posted to.

5. Under Sales tax, click “Edit sales tax” and select “Nontaxable”.

6. Verify the set-up of the new product and select “Save and close” .

General Sales Tax

Create a single non-inventory item to represent sales tax (for example, "Taxes"). You will map this item during configuration.

Telecommunications Tax

Telecom tax is returned across five jurisdiction levels, so repeat the steps above to create five non-inventory items — one for each level:

• Federal
• State
• County
• City
• Specials

The item-creation steps are identical to General Sales Tax — the only difference is that Telecommunications requires five items (one per level) instead of one. Each item must be unique.

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Installing CereTax

After the applicable prerequisites are completed, open the CereTax QuickBooks app and follow the steps below to install and connect CereTax:

1. Enter your CereTax username and password on the CereTax QuickBooks app login page

4. After signing in, click on “Connect to QuickBooks”.

5. If you are not currently logged into QuickBooks, you will be prompted by QuickBooks to login.

6. After you log into QuickBooks (or if you are already logged in), you will be prompted to select a Company from a drop-down menu that you want to connect to CereTax. After selecting your Company, click “Next.

7. The CereTax-QuickBooks Online connect page will appear. To approve the connection, click “Connect”.

8. If the connection is successful, you will navigate back to the CereTax QuickBooks app page. Enter your CereTax username and password and click “Sign in”. It is important that you login directly from the page you are redirected to after connecting CereTax to QuickBooks.

9. After you log back into the CereTax app, it will show that you are connected to QuickBooks with your CereTax company name in parenthesis.

Integration settings

On the CereTax app's Integration Settings screen:

• Enable CereTax for tax calculation — turn on to let CereTax calculate tax.
• Enable CereTax for address validation — turn on to validate ship-to addresses.
• Tax Type — choose General Sales Tax or Telecommunications Tax. The default is General Sales Tax.
• Profile — select the CereTax profile that matches your account and tax type (for example, a sales profile or a telco profile).
• Default Business Type — the CereTax business type applied when a transaction doesn't specify one (for example, 01 – RETAIL for sales, or 15 – VOICE OVER INTERNET PROTOCOL (VOIP) for telecom).
• Default Customer Type — the default customer classification (for example, 02 – COMMERCIAL or 01 – RESIDENTIAL).
• CereTax tax calculation start date — optional; CereTax calculates tax on documents dated on or after this date.

Complete all settings before clicking Save Settings.

Integration Type

Choose how CereTax applies tax to your invoices. The available options depend on your Tax Type.

General Sales Tax

Both options are available:

• Apply tax using the native QuickBooks tax fields — no item setup needed.
• Apply tax as an individual line item on invoices — select the QuickBooks item that corresponds to Sales Tax (the item you created above).

Note: The native QuickBooks tax fields method is only supported for General Sales Tax accounts that have not been migrated to QuickBooks' Automated Sales Tax (AST) framework. Accounts on AST should use the individual line item method.

Telecommunications Tax

Because telecom tax spans multiple jurisdiction levels, it cannot be represented by QuickBooks' single native tax field. For this reason, the Apply tax using the native QuickBooks tax fields option is not available (disabled) when Telecommunications Tax is selected.

Tax is applied as individual line items. Map a unique QuickBooks item to each of the five tax levels:

Note: When Tax Type = Telecommunications Tax, the native-fields method is disabled. You must use the line-item method and map all five tax-level items. Each item must be unique across all groups.

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Customers & Items

All customer and product & services settings are managed within the CereTax portal.

Customers

When creating exemptions rules or other rules in the CereTax portal that need to reference a customer, use the following QuickBooks and CereTax fields for mapping:

Please note: If your Customer Name exceeds 50 characters, CereTax will truncate this field to only accept the first 50 characters.

Items

When creating product mapping rules or other rules in the CereTax portal that need to reference items/products/services, use the following QuickBooks and CereTax fields for mapping:

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Consult with your implementation specialist for help configuring customer exemptions and product mappings.

Calculating and Viewing Tax on Transactions

Tax is calculated on transactions any time the document is saved. To view the calculated tax for a transaction, save the transaction, close it, and re-open it within QuickBooks. Depending on how you have configured your QuickBooks integration, tax will either display as one or more lines on the transaction or will display in QuickBooks’ native Tax field. Below are examples of how tax will display based on the integration type selected in your integration settings.

Apply tax as an individual line item on invoices (invoice example)

Apply tax using the native QuickBooks tax fields (invoice example)

Uninstalling the CereTax QuickBooks App

If you need to uninstall the CereTax QuickBooks app, follow the steps below:

1. Go to Apps from your QuickBooks Online menu.

2. Locate the CereTax App and expand the menu options.

3. Select “Disconnect".

4. Choose a reason for why you are disconnecting the App and select “Disconnect”.  

The CereTax App will now be disconnected, and subsequent transactions will not be updated with tax details from CereTax.

The CereTax App can be reconnected by following the Installation Steps outlined in this document.