Sage 100

Sage 100 v2017. Accounts Receivable Options, History tab, Sales History, ""Include Sales Tax and Freight"". Why would anyone have this checked? What is the purpose? If this option is checked, invoiced freight and sales tax are included in the sales field in customer inquiry / maintenance, History tab. This option will also affect the Profit% on the History tab. What accountant / company / decision maker would include sales tax and freight in gross profit and sales? Including freight in sales would make sense if the freight cost was also included in cost of goods sold, but it is not. Including sales tax in sales revenue is incorrect. Sales tax is a liability, not sales.

It's been like this since, I think, version 1.01, which was long before the History tab. We had only a few fields back then for any kind of customer history data and it was limited to current (and one future) period, year-to-date and prior year. Including sales tax and freight tied out to the 'history' for the customer and 'invoice history' as an option. Do understand back then we didn't even have invoice history files, at all. Yes, now the feature seems outdated/not well intentioned but at the time it was what we had.

Thank you for your comments @MoiraGoggin I appreciate the history of this mistake that you mentioned. V1.0 was 30+ years ago. It is about time to fix it.

I don't get the sales tax part however I once had a customer where freight was a profit making component of their sales and they considered it strategic to their operations. I'm not sure they had this enabled but one possible reason. Overall I agree. Most customers exclude freight and sales tax from any type of analysis.

I think many companies mark up freight when they add it to the invoice. I have several where we have added a UDF to the invoice to track actual freight cost. They often charge a flat rate or NC the freight if over a certain dollar amount. Unless you can get the freight cost on the invoice as well, it the margin is skewed a bit.

@WayneSchulz and @JeffSchwenk There is no question about the sales tax.... just plain wrong. Freight is valid only if the associated cost is included in the cost of goods sold, otherwise the gross profit is incorrect.