Applying tax to existing vehicles

Your existing vehicles and costs were entered before tax was set up, so the first time you turn tax on you choose how to handle them.

The two choices

• Going forward only: existing vehicles, costs, and shipments stay exactly as they are. Only what you add from now on is tax-aware. Pick this if you would rather not touch historical data, or want to come back to it later.
• Backfill, then review: apply sensible default treatments to your existing data so their margins reflect tax, then check each vehicle. The prompt shows how many vehicles and cost lines this affects.

If you chose going forward only, you can still run the backfill at any time from Settings → Tax with the Backfill existing vehicles button.

What the backfill does

It fills in the default tax treatment for each existing cost line by type (for example purchase as no tax, transport as zero-rated, parts as tax-included) and puts the affected vehicles into a quick review state. It never overwrites a treatment you set yourself.

Reviewing assumed treatments

After a backfill, each affected vehicle shows a review and confirm note on its page, and the vehicles list shows a Review tag so you can find them. Open a vehicle, check the treatments, change any that are not right, and confirm. Once confirmed, the vehicle looks and behaves exactly like a vehicle added after tax was turned on, with no lasting marker.

You do not have to do them all at once. Until you confirm a vehicle, it still shows its indicative margin using the assumed defaults.

Sales-tax regions (for example the US)

This prompt does not appear where tax on costs is not reclaimable, because applying treatments would not change your margins. There is nothing to backfill.