I use the Finance summary report to get my daily totals. It does not break down the taxes collected into total, vat and net under the various rates of tax. This information is available on an old fashioned till Z read and yet is not available on Shopify. Their only suggestion was to download an app but our auditors will not permit this. They want our figures taken directly from source in accordance with normal accounting procedures. I have to manually calculate the net figures from the Shopify taxes breakdown. Doing this every single day is an absolute pain. Can the developers please supply us with this vital information. Does anyone have any other suggestions please
A Financial Summary is typically a rollup and will not show the “Z-read style” breakdown of net/VAT/gross by specific tax rate.
Here are the two auditor-friendly options (no apps):
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Use Shopify’s built-in Tax reports (not Finance Summary): go to Analytics → Reports → Taxes (or the Taxes finance report). Set the date to Today/Yesterday and export CSV—this is the cleanest “from source” tax view Shopify provides.
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Export order/transaction detail from Shopify and use an Excel pivot to total net + tax by rate. It’s still Shopify-sourced, but you avoid daily manual calculations.
You can check this video to build custom reports in Shopify Analytics, which might help you get closer to the data granularity your auditors require.
You’re right — Shopify’s built-in finance reports don’t provide a proper VAT breakdown, and doing it manually every day is frustrating. Since your auditors won’t allow apps, the only practical workaround is exporting the Orders → Taxes CSV and creating a simple spreadsheet formula to auto-calculate net/VAT totals. It’s not ideal, but at least it removes the daily manual math. If you are looking for a quick reference tool for VAT calculations, you can also use Maltese VAT Calculator for Standard and Reduced Rates, which includes clear VAT breakdowns you can mirror in your own sheet.