How to create automatic tax for multiple states?

[kkirk]

I have a unique situation. I own a landscape & Garden Center on the border of IL & IA. If we deliver something to IL we tax the plant but not the labor. If we deliver to IA we tax both the plant and labor. IA & IL have different tax rates as well.  I had it all set up on my Square POS app on my android phone. I set up dining options and if they used the dining option "Iowa Delivery" it would change the tax rate for the plant to Iowa Tax (our physical store is in Illinois so IL tax is default).  I just got my Ipad and installed the Square for Retail app. I did not realize that dining options are not used on the Sq for retail app. I cannot figure out how to automatically change the tax rate to IA rate for an IA delivery. I do have a product item called "IA D&P" and that is where I enter the labor charge. I thought maybe there would be a way that if I added that in my cart that it would change the rest of the items in my cart to IA tax rate but I can't figure out how to do that. We can manually change the tax rate but I'm trying to make it easier on my employees so they don't make mistakes.

The title of this thread has been edited from the original by a Community Moderator to help with searching threads. 

[TheRealChipA]

Hey @kkirk.  Question.  If you are successfully using the dining options for this on sPOS (Standard POS) is there a reason that you can’t also use the standard POS app on your iPad?  Otherwise, I can’t think of a way to force that same behavior on the Retail POS app.  Dining options, as you have found out, are not supported on RetailPOS because they would just confuse things.  Anyway, is there a compelling reason to use the Retail POS on your iPad?

[kkirk]

I did think about just using the POS app instead of the Retail App. I do really like that the Retail app has the picture icons at checkout. That would greatly help speed things up on our busy days. I have the picture icons on my Android phone POS but it doesn't seem that the picture icons work on the POS app on the Ipad which is really frustrating. I'm new to Square and find all these little features that work with one device but not the other extremely annoying.

[TheRealChipA]

@kkirk I understand that frustration.  I can tell you that this has probably occurred because Retail (and Restaurants) POS were both created with item images in mind.  The original Square POS was not.  I’d imagine that this will rectified some day, but I’m sure it is not a priority, yet.

Having said that, you CAN attach photos to each button on sPOS.  You just have to do it manually from the POS app.  Long press on any tile to enter edit mode, then for each tile edit its image and change it to another in your image library.  It’s not ideal, but if you don’t have hundreds of items it might be ok for you.  At least you could keep the dining option work-around that you are using for taxes, which I assume is the most important part.

[RobynR]

Thank you, @TheRealChipA, for chiming in. I had the same question.

@kkirk, along with the follow-up questions mentioned earlier, I'd like to suggest a possible workaround.

As mentioned before, the Retail POS app doesn't support dining options.

However, if you wish to persist with using the Retail POS app, you can implement automatic taxes based on specific items.

For instance, you can create duplicate entries for the same items and designate the respective state taxes for each. For example, you might have "Lawn Care IL" and "Lawn Care IA" to appropriately apply tax to a selected group of taxable items.

Learn how to Create and Manage Your Sales Tax Settings here.

I hope this helps!