Sales tax in Puree is simple once you understand two things: you choose inclusive or exclusive in your settings, and Puree calculates the tax once on the order subtotal — not on each line item. That second point is what trips most new users up.
Set It Once in Settings
In Settings → Account you set three things: whether your prices are inclusive or exclusive of tax, your tax rate, and the name of the tax (e.g. GST, VAT, Sales Tax). That's it. Every new quote you create from then on uses those settings.
Don't Bake Tax Into Your Line Item Prices
The biggest mistake new users make is trying to do the tax maths themselves on each item — entering an item price like $6.56 or $9.31 because they've back-calculated it from a target inclusive price. You don't need to do this. Enter clean, round prices on your items — $7.50, $10.00, whatever the figure actually is — and let Puree handle the tax at the bottom of the order.
If your prices are exclusive, the line price is the pre-tax price and tax gets added at the bottom of the quote. If your prices are inclusive, the line price already contains tax, and Puree shows the tax component as part of the total. Either way, the tax line on the quote is calculated against the subtotal — not summed up from each item.
Each Order Remembers Its Own Tax Settings
When you create a new order, it copies your current tax rate and inclusive/exclusive setting from your account — and then it keeps them. If you later change your tax rate in Settings → Account, or switch from exclusive to inclusive, existing orders are unaffected. Only new orders pick up the new settings. This means a quote you sent six months ago will always show the same tax figure it showed when you sent it.
It's worth knowing this cuts both ways. If you switch the setting today, every quote created before today still carries the old one — and that old setting is what gets sent to your accounting software.
How Tax Gets Sent to Xero
If you've connected the Xero integration, Puree creates a draft invoice with one line per master category — Menu, Beverages, Equipment, Staff, Delivery, and so on — each coded to the income account you mapped in your Xero settings.
Two separate things decide the tax on that invoice, and it helps to keep them apart:
- Puree decides inclusive or exclusive. Your quote's setting sets the "Amounts are" field at the top of the Xero invoice — either Tax Inclusive or Tax Exclusive.
- Xero decides the rate. Puree doesn't put a tax rate on the lines. Xero applies the default tax rate on each income account in your chart of accounts, normally GST on Income.
So if your prices include tax, the invoice arrives as Tax Inclusive and Xero works the tax out from within the totals. If your prices exclude tax, it arrives as Tax Exclusive and Xero adds the tax on top — matching what your customer saw on the quote either way.
One thing that surprises people: because Puree sets "Amounts are" on every invoice it creates, it overrides the tax-inclusive default in your Xero organisation settings. That Xero default only governs invoices you type up by hand inside Xero.
When Xero Looks Like It's Charging Tax Twice
The usual symptom: your prices include GST, the quote totals look right, but the Xero invoice comes out about 10% higher. That means the invoice was created as Tax Exclusive and Xero added GST a second time.
Open the invoice in Xero and check the "Amounts are" dropdown. If it says Tax Exclusive while your prices include tax, go to Settings → Account Details → Tax in Puree and confirm Prices include tax is ticked. Then remember the point above: quotes created before you ticked that box still carry the old setting, so those are the ones that will keep going across as Tax Exclusive. Invoices already sitting in Xero need to be corrected there — changing the Puree setting doesn't rewrite them.
Questions? Reach out to us at email@puree.app.