Reminders and Taxes

There have been several new features added in recent updates to StudioCloud products. Two of those updates are for appointment reminders and invoice taxes.

As you all know you can have StudioCloud send out automatic email messages to your customers to remind them of upcoming appointments. You can now have StudioCloud send your studio a summary of all the reminders that were sent out each day. If you go into the Calendar section of the Basic or Professional Suite there is a tab labeled "Calendar Settings". On that tab is a checkbox that reads "Send a summary of email reminders to my studio email address" If you click that checkbox and then click the button that reads "Update Calendar Settings" you have enabled this feature. This means that every day any appointment reminders are sent to your customers, you will receive an email with a summary of the customers that were contacted that night.

Another of the latest features is a change to invoice taxes. There are some states and many countries around the world that have complicated tax systems. As such, StudioCloud has given you the ability to define three different taxes and customize the name and percentage rate for each. These three taxes are additive, meaning that each one is added to each invoice. If you only use one tax then there aren’t any changes that you need to make. You can continue using StudioCloud products the way you have in the past. However, if you have a more complex tax system, then StudioCloud’s advanced taxes are for you.

Another change related to the invoice tax system is the "Tax Status" of products and services. You can now classify each product and service as either "Tax Exempt" or "Standard". Standard is just a way of saying that the product or service should be taxed normally. If you specify an item as Tax Exempt then each time it is added to an invoice its amount will not be included when calculating the taxes.

On the Settings tab in the Point of Sale section for the Basic/Professional suites you can update your invoice tax settings. If you click the checkbox that is labeled "Enable Tax Status Option" then you can change the "Tax Status" of a product or service in an invoice as you are creating or editing. One of the most important features related to "Tax Status" is reporting. A new report has been added that prints out all of the products and services that you have sold that have been categorized as "Tax Exempt".

One thing to note about "Tax Status" is that there is a third category called "Zero Tax". For all intents and purposes, this is the same as "Tax Exempt"; however, some places do have two different classifications. If you are not familiar with "Zero Tax" then you probably do not need to worry about it.