Tax handling

This page covers how the tax on a Shopify order reaches Acumatica, and is for anyone whose orders fail to sync with a tax or jurisdiction error, or whose totals do not match between the two systems.

Deciding which system calculates the tax

Shopify calculates tax at checkout through Shopify Tax, Avalara, or another tax app. InSyncer for Acumatica carries that order into Acumatica. What happens to the tax figure in between depends on one setting.

	Acumatica calculates	Tax Amount Override
Who decides the tax	Acumatica, from the tax IDs and rates you configure	Shopify, at checkout
What InSyncer sends	The order lines and their tax categories	The exact Shopify tax amount
Risk	The two totals can disagree	None. Only one system does the arithmetic
Setup	A tax ID and rate per jurisdiction	One setting, one Tax ID

By default InSyncer passes the order through and Acumatica works out the tax itself, matching against the tax IDs and rates configured in your instance. That is the right choice when Acumatica already holds a complete tax configuration for everywhere you sell.

It stops working the moment Acumatica’s tax setup is less complete than Shopify’s. Acumatica can only apply a tax it already knows about, so an order carrying a jurisdiction you have not configured has nothing to match against, and the order stops there.

Why this hits US merchants hardest

One national rate is a small amount of setup. United States sales tax varies by state, county, city and special district, so every new place you sell into is another tax ID to create and maintain. Acumatica’s own guidance on this is direct: if you do not want to pay for an automatic tax engine, you must set up the taxes with the correct tax IDs and rates in Acumatica.

Sending Shopify’s tax amount to Acumatica

Turning on Tax Amount Override tells InSyncer to send the exact tax amount from the Shopify order, and tells Acumatica not to recalculate it.

In the InSyncer app, open Settings and find Tax Amount Override:

1. Tick Pass exact Shopify tax amount to Acumatica.
2. Choose an Acumatica Tax ID. This field is required.
3. Select Save.

The tax on the Acumatica sales order will now match the Shopify order exactly. Acumatica stops deriving tax for these orders, so it no longer needs a configured jurisdiction for every place you ship to.

When to turn this on

Use it if you see tax rounding differences, order total mismatches between Shopify and Acumatica, or orders failing to sync because Acumatica does not recognise a tax jurisdiction.

Choosing the Acumatica Tax ID

The Tax ID is the Acumatica tax record the order’s tax is booked against. It does not change the amount, which comes from Shopify. It determines where the tax lands in your Acumatica reporting.

Two patterns are common:

• No Avalara. Nominate an ordinary Acumatica tax ID for online orders. One US merchant uses a tax ID named SHOPIFY, which keeps online sales tax separate in reporting.
• Avalara installed in Acumatica. Nominate the Avalara tax ID, commonly AVATAX.

Tenants name these differently, so treat both as illustrations rather than values to copy. What matters is that the Tax ID exists in your Acumatica and reports where your finance team expects it to. If you are unsure which to use, your Acumatica partner or accountant is the right person to ask. This is a chart of accounts decision rather than an integration one.

Running Avalara alongside InSyncer for Acumatica

Avalara may sit in Shopify or Acumatica; either way it is optional. InSyncer for Acumatica doesn’t require, replace, or integrate with it, so there is nothing Avalara-specific to configure.

Merchants run Avalara in one of two places, and Tax Amount Override handles both:

• Avalara calculating in Shopify. Shopify returns the Avalara-calculated tax on the order and the override passes that exact amount through. Nothing extra to configure.
• Avalara installed in Acumatica. Avalara appears in Acumatica as a tax ID. Select it as your Acumatica Tax ID and the Shopify tax amount is recorded against it.

If you do not run Avalara at all, nothing here changes: nominate an ordinary tax ID and the override works the same way.

Handling tax on refunds

Refunds use the same mechanism, and it is on by default. When a refund syncs, the Shopify refund tax total is written onto the Acumatica refund document rather than recalculated.

The exception is a store whose Shopify refund line items report zero tax. There the behaviour needs to be switched off, so the tax-inclusive Shopify amounts pass through unchanged and Acumatica derives the tax from the lines instead.

This one is not in your settings

The refund tax behaviour is configured on our side rather than in the Refund Sync card. If your refund totals look wrong in Acumatica, get in touch and we will check it.

Checking the other settings that affect tax

These apply whether or not the override is on:

Setting	What it controls
Tax category mapping	Maps Acumatica tax categories to taxable status and rate, used by price sync, variant taxable status and order push
Line item tax category	The Acumatica tax category applied to every order line
Freight tax category	The tax category applied to shipping, with a separate one for overseas orders
Rounding line tax category	The tax category on the rounding line, when rounding is enabled
Price sync tax handling	Whether synced prices have tax added, removed or left alone

Confirming this applies to your connector

Tax Amount Override is available in InSyncer for Acumatica and InSyncer for MYOB Acumatica: the same feature against both editions of the same ERP.

It is not part of InSyncer for MYOB Exo, which handles tax differently.