Tax integration overview

You can develop adapters based on the general guidelines and code samples explained in further topics to integrate Sterling™ Order Management System Software with an external tax system.

The idea is to provide integration points in Sterling Order Management System Software to communicate with any external tax system to perform certain operations. Some of the operations are as follows:
  • Retrieve tax amount for the line items in an order as and when the tax amount is added.
  • Recalculate the tax amount for all the items in the order to invoice it correctly.
  • Commit the tax collected on the order so that it is audited for tax reporting purposes.

Customers can build an integration solution for their Tax Provider system by following the general guidelines and design approach as proposed here. It also shares the integration patterns on a tax integration solution developed for a specific IBM project.

Important: These are a set of general guidelines and has not undergone any specific adapter testing. The code provided is a sample code and cannot be directly deployed into a production environment. Therefore, you must import the code samples into your development environment by following the Sterling Order Management System Software customization practices, and redeploy as your own custom code projects. It is up to your implementation team to apply the design concepts in their integration with the appropriate tax provider system. It is your responsibility to test the integration points and obtain proper accounts with your integration partner.

Depending on the tax laws for jurisdiction in which a retailer is conducting business, Sales Tax and Value Added Taxes, which are the key taxation models must be considered. Most of the tax provider systems support both types of taxation. The integration guidelines considers both the taxation types. In North America Sales, tax model is used for stores. However, it is possible to configure a store to use Value Added Taxes. In general, the interaction flow between an order management system and a tax provider system are similar either in the Sales Tax model or the Value Added Taxes model. The key difference is that with Value Added Taxes, the prices of both goods and shipping costs are expected to be loaded inclusive of tax.