Company tax exemption

Tax exemption belongs to the branch being bought for, not to the person signed in. This is the whole rule, and it is worth reading twice:

Personal purchase   → the customer's own Tax exempt flag
Company purchase    → the company location's Tax exempt flag

The two never mix and there is no fallback between them in either direction.

The branch decides, including when it says no

On a company purchase, the branch’s Tax exempt switch is the only flag consulted. That holds even when the branch is explicitly not exempt and the person placing the order is.

Example. A charity buyer whose own customer record is marked tax exempt orders ₹18,000 of stationery for her employer’s Chennai branch, which is not exempt. The order books ₹3,240 GST. Her own ₹2,400 personal order the same afternoon books ₹0. Nothing is wrong — her exemption is hers, not her employer’s.

It works the other way too. A branch you have marked exempt stays exempt no matter who at that branch places the order, and a company’s exemption never reaches anyone’s personal shopping, not even the main contact’s.

Marking a branch exempt

1. Open the company under Companies, then the location.

2. Open Ordering, checkout and tax.

3. Turn on Tax exempt.

4. Record the branch’s Tax ID — its GSTIN, VAT number or equivalent.

5. Save policy.

From then on, orders placed for that branch are computed tax-free, and the tax ID is stamped on the order.

The setting is per branch. A company with an exempt warehouse and a taxable showroom is completely normal — each branch carries its own answer, including an explicit “not exempt”. There is no company-wide exemption to inherit from.

Example. Sharma Distributors resells from Hyderabad and is exempt there; Chennai is a showroom and is not. The same ₹2,14,500 order books ₹0 at Hyderabad and ₹38,610 GST at Chennai.

Note

On a tax-inclusive store, an exempt company order is stripped back to the net price. The total drops rather than the tax line reading zero — so an exempt branch pays less than the shelf price, not the same amount with the tax relabelled.

Each order snapshots the exemption decision in force when it was placed. Changing the switch later affects future orders only; it never re-taxes or un-taxes an existing order or its refunds. Every change is recorded in the company’s audit trail — who changed it, from what, to what.

Changing it mid-session stops the order

If you change a branch’s exemption or Tax ID while one of its buyers is in checkout, that checkout refuses rather than minting an order on the old assumption. The buyer is told “the company location’s tax exemption or tax ID changed after this checkout was prepared” and starts checkout again, which picks up the new setting.

Example. You revoke Hyderabad’s exemption at 3:02pm. A buyer who opened checkout at 2:58pm is stopped instead of slipping one last zero-tax order through. They reload, see the GST, and pay the correct total.

This is a safety feature rather than a bug, but it does mean a buyer on the phone may be interrupted. If you can, make exemption changes outside your customer’s ordering hours.

Nothing enforces a certificate’s expiry

The exemption switch stays on until a person turns it off. There is no expiry field that acts, no reminder email and no block when a resale certificate lapses. Diarising it is your job.

The practical workaround is to keep the paperwork on the company record:

1. Go to Settings → Custom data → Companies.

2. Define Resale certificate as a file field and Certificate valid until as a date field.

3. Fill both on the company page’s Custom data panel.

Any of your staff can then check the date before approving a large order, and you can run your own diary reminder from it.

Caution

Custom fields for company locations can be defined but cannot be filled in today. Keep branch paperwork on the company record, or in the branch’s Tax ID field, until that changes.

What this does not do yet

• No certificate expiry enforcement and no reminder — the exemption stays on until a human turns it off.
• No certificate collection or verification. The platform applies your decision; the compliance judgment is yours, so confirm exempt status with your tax advisor before you set the flag.
• Custom fields on company locations can be defined but not filled in.
• Exemption is a branch-level switch only — there is no per-order override on a company order, and no company-wide exemption.

Related

• Taxes & GST — zones, classes, rates and the customer-level flag.
• Companies & locations — where the Ordering, checkout and tax panel lives.
• B2B / B2C isolation FAQ — what else never crosses between retail and wholesale.
• Current limits — everything B2B does not do yet, in one list.

POS orders keep their own one-cart exemption override, independent of both flags.