It's a new financial year, and we're discussing GST - Goods & Services Tax. It’s basically calculated on every sale done in New Zealand retail. The current GST rate used is 15% and is the same across the whole country.
When investing in a Point of Sale system, its important to make sure that the POS has tax capability that is setup for New Zealand’s GST rate.
By default, GST is inclusive in every sale and pricing advertised is always displayed to consumers as GST inclusive. This ensures the user can make a confident buying decision knowing what they will pay at the till matches that on the price tag.
In a point of sale system, generally your product inventory is loaded in with a sell price (that is GST inclusive), as well as a cost price (that is generally GST exclusive).
So for example a cup of coffee:
- We sell this through the point of sale system for $5.00
- The cost of goods to make the coffee is $3.00
- This means the net margin on the product sold (less GST) is $1.35.
It's important that your point of sale system records this information so that you can easily calculate your GST duty owed to the Inland Revenue department. Whether you do GST monthly, bi-monthly or half yearly, you need to have easy access to see what GST you owe. If your point of sale system cannot do this, then ensuring it integrates with a quality accounting system (such as Xero) is key. That way the accounting system can take in all your sales data, as well as expenses and give you a true GST payment / refund value.
A point of sale system like Zulu ensures you are using a NZ made solution that is built for NZ businesses and with that, the GST system. Meaning you can focus on selling confidently, knowing GST contents of each and every sale is tracked accurately.
If you would like to learn more about GST you can do so on the IRD’s website here. If you would like a free trial of Zulu point of sale, please click here.