Purchase orders in Stockroom can carry the tax you pay your suppliers - VAT, GST, sales tax, whatever applies to your purchases. Set up your rates once in Settings, and every new purchase order picks up the right tax automatically. You stay in control on each order: change the rate, remove it, or pick a different rate for individual lines.
1. Add your tax rates
Visit Settings > Taxes and click New rate. A rate is just a name and a percentage - VAT at 20%, GST at 10%, TX Sales Tax at 8.25%. Add as many as you need; 0% rates are fine too, for zero-rated purchases.
Two taxes together? Add them as one combined rate - for example GST + QST at 14.975% in Quebec. That's exactly how QuickBooks tax codes work too, so combined rates map cleanly if you sync your books.
Edit a rate anytime. Purchase orders keep the name and percentage they were created with, so editing a rate never changes an existing order - only orders that pick it from then on.
Archive a rate you no longer use. It disappears from the pickers, but every purchase order that used it is untouched. You can Restore it anytime.
2. Set your defaults
Three settings in the same section control how tax applies:
Default tax rate - applied automatically to new purchase orders for taxable suppliers. Each order can still change or remove it.
Costs entered include tax - turn this on if the costs you type already include tax (common for VAT businesses). This is store-wide: your drafts and new purchase orders follow it.
Tax shipping and adjustments - whether order-level charges like freight are taxed too. This is a default; each order can change it.
3. Tax on a purchase order
In the Cost summary on any purchase order, a Tax dropdown holds your rates. Pick one (or No tax) and the tax amount updates live, right above the total.
Lines taxed differently? Once the order carries tax, every line gets its own Tax dropdown. Lines follow the order's rate by default - pick another rate for the exceptions, or No tax for untaxed goods. A Quebec order, for example, can run GST + QST as the order rate with a couple of GST-only lines.
Tax shipping and adjustments sits under the rate picker - tick it and your order-level charges are taxed at the order's rate.
The supplier PDF shows one row per tax - "GST + QST (14.975%)", "GST (5%)" - above the total, so your supplier sees exactly what you expect to pay.
Spotted a mistake later? The order's tax rate and the shipping toggle stay editable even after a purchase order is ordered or received - they only lock once the order is closed or archived. (Per-line tax choices lock together with the line items when you mark the order as ordered.)
4. Tax-inclusive pricing
If your supplier costs already include tax, turn on Costs entered include tax in Settings > Taxes. Stockroom then treats every cost you enter as tax-inclusive: your totals stay exactly what you typed, and the embedded tax is shown as an "Includes VAT (20%)" line under the total - on the order and on the PDF.
This setting is all-or-nothing for your store: every draft and every new purchase order follows it the moment you change it. Purchase orders you've already marked as ordered keep the way their costs were entered, so committed totals never change under you.
5. Suppliers that don't charge tax
Each supplier has a Charge tax checkbox on its details page. Untick it and new purchase orders for that supplier start without tax - you can still pick a rate manually on any order. The flag also rides along in the supplier CSV export and import as a taxable column, so you can update it in bulk. See Suppliers: automatic imports, details, and product rules.
6. Importing from Stocky?
The one-click Stocky import brings your tax setup along: your Stocky purchase tax rates become Stockroom tax rates, each imported purchase order carries its rates - including orders where lines were taxed differently - lines that weren't taxed in Stocky import as not taxable, and orders that taxed shipping keep taxing it here. Nothing to redo. See Switching from Stocky to Stockroom.
Good to know
Tax is calculated per line and per charge, then added up - so line amounts always match the order total exactly, with no rounding surprises.
Tax is always in the purchase order's currency, right alongside your costs.
The tax line is never spread into your landed costs - it's a totals row, not a charge, so allocation and cost updates work exactly as before.
Using QuickBooks? The tax rates and amounts on every purchase order - per line - are part of the data MyWorks Sync reads, so your books can reflect them - see Push purchase orders to QuickBooks.