Hi- I am experiencing a problem and was helping someone could help point me in the right direct in regard to reporting on our VAT from shopify. We sell equipment and the VAT reports on this are straight forward. But we also sell experiences where the customer will visit our website and choose an experience and then pay a deposit, and then the balance maybe 6-7 months later. There is no transaction report for sales that I can see which will easily give me the data to ensure we only pay vat on the transactions we have recieved and not the total sales value of the order (where we have not recieved the balance yet). Does anyone else have this problem and if yes how do you get around it? I have spoken with shopify support and they have said even through the data is inside shopify there is no report that i can create which will give me the information
Topic summary
Main issue: Reporting VAT (Value Added Tax) on orders with deposits and later balances, ensuring VAT is only paid on amounts actually received, not the full order value when the balance is outstanding.
Context: Equipment sales VAT is straightforward. For “experiences,” customers pay a deposit at booking and the remaining balance 6–7 months later.
Limitation: Shopify’s sales/transaction reports do not readily provide a view that separates payments received from total order value for these staged payments. Shopify support confirmed the necessary data exists in Shopify but stated there is no built-in report the user can create to obtain this information.
Ask: Seeking whether others face the same challenge and practical workarounds to report VAT based on cash received for deposits and balances.
Status: No solution or action decided yet. The thread remains open with the key question unanswered; no attachments or code are central to understanding.
@JasonIngamells , Shopify, by default, calculates tax based on the total order amount rather than the transaction amount. To calculate tax on the paid amount, you need to create a sales level report, add the fields shown in the screenshot below, export the report, and compute it manually. If you want to avoid manual work, you can try Report Pundit, where tax is automatically calculated based on the transaction amount.
