Expenses and tax

Two pages that decide whether your profit figure means anything. Expenses is the money going out that nobody bills you for through TribeNest. Tax is how much is added at checkout, and how much of what you have taken is not actually yours.

Expenses

Go to Finance then Expenses.

Revenue is only half a business. Until your costs are recorded, "net profit" on the overview is only counting fees and refunds, so it is flattering you. Every expense you add lands straight in the profit and loss walk.

The list

The table shows each cost with:

• Expense, its title, with your notes underneath.
• Category, as a badge.
• Vendor, or None.
• Amount, in the currency you entered it in.
• Date it was incurred.
• Receipt, a View link when there is a file attached.
• Edit and delete buttons.

A date range selector sits next to the Add expense button, with the same choices as everywhere else in Finance: last 30 days, last 90 days, last 12 months, this year, all time, or a custom range. This page opens on all time.

Adding an expense

1. Click Add expense.
2. Enter a Title, such as "Mailing list software".
3. Enter the Amount and pick its Currency. The currency defaults to your account currency, but you can record a cost in whatever you actually paid in.
4. Choose a Category: Software, Marketing, Fees, Contractors or Other.
5. Set the Date the cost was incurred. It defaults to today.
6. Add a Vendor if it helps you find it later.
7. Add Notes, which is the right place for anything your accountant would want to know.
8. Attach a Receipt with Upload receipt. Images and PDFs are accepted. Once attached you can View it, Replace receipt, or Remove it.
9. Click Add expense.

The expense appears in the table immediately and in your profit and loss straight away.

Editing and deleting

Use the pencil icon on any row to change it, and the bin icon to remove it. Deleting asks you to confirm first and tells you plainly that the expense will be removed from your books and your profit and loss.

Getting it right

• Enter costs as they happen, not once a quarter. A profit figure built on last quarter's costs is not a profit figure.
• Always attach the receipt. Filing season is not the moment to go hunting through your email.
• Use categories consistently. They only become useful once the same kind of cost always lands in the same bucket.
• Record the fee-like costs you pay outside TribeNest too, such as a distributor's cut, so the picture is complete.

Tax

Go to Finance then Tax. Three cards, top to bottom: how tax is calculated, where you are registered, and what you have collected.

Tax settings

Tax calculation decides how much tax is added when someone checks out. There are three options:

• None: do not collect tax at all.
• Manual rates: use the per-country table you fill in below.
• Automatic: your connected payment account works out the correct rate for each buyer's jurisdiction. This is the recommended setting if you sell across borders in volume.

Prices include tax is a switch with two positions, and it changes what your buyers see:

• Inclusive: the price you display already contains tax. Every buyer pays exactly the price on the listing, and your share varies with their local rate. This is the normal way to sell to consumers in the EU and UK.
• Exclusive: tax is added on top at checkout. Your share is always the sticker price, and the buyer's total varies with their rate. This is standard in the US.

A ? next to the switch opens a full worked example of both, side by side, with the same product sold to the same buyer.

Neither mode is more correct than the other. What matters is that collected tax is never treated as income either way, and the mode is recorded on each purchase as it happens, so past receipts stay accurate if you change it later.

The manual rate table

Choose Manual rates and a table appears.

• Default rate (%) applies when the buyer's country has no row of its own. Leave it empty for zero.
• Under Per-country rates, click Add country, pick a country and type its percentage. Add a row for each destination country you sell into, since VAT follows the buyer, not you. The bin icon removes a row.

Rates must be between 0 and 100, and each country can only appear once. Click Save settings.

Manual rates are the right choice for a single market, or where automatic calculation is not available to you. They apply the rate you typed and nothing more: they do not register you anywhere or file anything.

Automatic tax

Choose Automatic and one extra field appears: a Default product tax code used to classify products that do not set their own. It is optional, and your accountant or payment provider can tell you whether you need it.

Where you are registered

The middle card lists the places you are registered to collect tax, with the country, whether the registration is active, and the date it took effect.

Registrations are held in your connected payment account rather than in TribeNest, so they are managed there. Use the manage button at the top right of the card to open your payment account and register in the places you have obligations. New registrations appear here after the next sync.

Tax collected by jurisdiction

The bottom card is the number you actually need at filing time: what you have collected, broken down by jurisdiction, with a transaction count for each.

It has its own date range selector, and it opens on This year. The total sits above the table with a reminder that it is held for remittance.

If a period holds transactions that could not be converted into your main currency, a notice appears listing them separately.

How the two fit together

Expenses reduce your profit. Collected tax never touched it. Both feed the same two places:

• The overview, where expenses appear in the profit and loss walk and by category, and tax collected sits deliberately outside it.
• The year-end summary, which pulls a whole year of both into one filing-ready view.

Where to go next

• See the effect on your bottom line → overview
• Pull the year together for your accountant → year-end
• Reversed tax on money you gave back → payouts and refunds
• Your business address, which affects tax and shipping → business address