Quick setup guide for

 EAS WooCommerce plugin

 

Release version 2.2 17.04.2023

Table of Contents

1 Before installation of EAS plug-in

1.1 Required access credentials for EAS plugin installation, minimal notifications to EAS team

1.2 Backup of tax settings before the Plugin installation

1.3 Backup of products settings before the Plugin installation

1.4 Required access credentials for EAS plugin installation

2 EAS system operational time

3 EAS plug-in installation and update

4 Plug-in initial configuration

5 Plug-in initial configuration

6 Example settings for different tax situations

1. Before installation of EAS plug-in

1.1 Required access credentials for EAS plugin installation, minimal notifications to EAS team

Before you start installation of EAS plug-in, please ensure that:

• You have full administrative access to your WooCommerce store.
• You have access to the EAS merchant dashboard. 

Access to the EAS merchant dashboard is provided via registration with EAS at www.easproject.com/reg after approval by EAS compliance team. 

You have to notify EAS on the settings in your store related to your pricing model: VAT inclusive or VAT Exclusive. Please send the notification before the installation begins to info@easproject.com with the name of your store from e-mail address registered with EAS.

Figure 1

1.2 Backup of tax settings before the Plugin installation

Before installation of the Plugin is performed, one should backup internal WooCommerce tax settings and deactivate other EU VAT related plugins.

Before making any changes to tax setting in your standard WooCommerce menu:

1. Choose “Standard rate”.
2. Save existing settings to a CSV file (to enable easy reinstall) to your chosen location.
3. Repeat above actions for “Reduced rate rates” and “Zero rate rates”.

Deactivate any third-party plugins that enable calculation of EU taxes in your “plug-in” options. Make sure to save any information/settings required for the installation/activation of these plugins. Some of the plugins automatically create rates for any country where the delivery is scheduled to.   

 

As a general rule, if it is required that prices in the storefront are to be presented VAT inclusive, your tax setting should be left in, while if it is required that prices are presented VAT exclusive VAT rates need to be removed. Practical application of the rules depends on the desired result.  Please refer to section 5 for examples of settings. 

 

1.3 Backup of products settings before the Plugin installation

Proper backup of your existing products setting is essential for ensuring safe installation of the Plugin and safety of your commercial data. We recommend that procedures described in this section are to be repeated also after the plugin installation as part of quality assurance and data safety internal procedures. To back up your merchandise data, please, follow the following steps:

1. Choose the “Products” menu option in the store operator menu view. And then press the “Export” button.

Figure 2

A new communication window will open (see Figure 3 below).

Figure 3

2. Tick the “Yes, export all customs meta” box and press the “Generate CSV” button.

When prompted, save the resulting CSV file to your local machine. Keep track of back-ups as part of your usual maintenance and backup routines. Data can be always restored to the WooCommerce store by uploading a saved CSV file by pressing the “Import” button (see Figure 3 above). 

 

1.4 Required access credentials for EAS plugin installation

Before you start installation of EAS plug-in, please ensure that:

• You have full administrative access to your WooCommerce store.
• You have access to the EAS dashboard. 

Access to the EAS dashboard is provided via registration with EAS at: https://easproject.com/reg

 

2. EAS system operational time

EAS solution uses UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) time as standard system time, and all transactions are recorded in accordance with UTC. Thus, order acceptance times and reporting periods may differ from local times set the WooCommerce store. To make sure that no such discrepancy is present for EAS reporting, a special setting is introduced in the EAS merchant dashboard. To set the time zone in EAS Merchant Dashboard, please, follow the below provided instructions:

 

1. Click the profile setting option of the Merchant dashboard is in the right upper corner of the main screen view under the profile logo. A drop-down list appears if the profile logo is pressed (Figure 4).

2. After, the following setting table will appear (Figure 5). Applicable Time Zone can be changed by clicking the Pencil button nearby Time zone:

Figure 5

3. One can select the proper Time Zone (Figure 6) in this view.

The Merchant operator should set up the time zone which is equal to the time zone set in WooCommerce store. Actual WooCommerce setting is visible in the WooCommerce general store settings (see Figure 7 below).

4. To check/set the server time settings, go to Setting and choose the General submenu. In here the Time zone section is visible. By clicking on the Time Zone field, you can select desired Time Zone.

Figure 7

Make sure that you have set the appropriate matching time zones in the EAS plug-in and in the EAS merchant dashboard to avoid inconsistencies in reporting.\ before you take the plug-in into commercial operation.

 

 

3. EAS plug-in installation and update

3.1 Installation from WordPress marketplace

The Plugin is available for download from the WordPress marketplace: https://wordpress.org/plugins/eas-eu-compliance

 

1. Go to “Plugins”, choose “Add new”.
2. Enter search reference in search box “EAS EU”.
3. Press “Install now” button on the EAS EU compliance plugin and follow installation process.

Figure 8

Please, refer to the WordPress plugin installation documents to install the Plugin:

https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/step-by-step-guide-to-install-a-wordpress-plugin-for-beginners/

Installation is now finished. 

 

3.2 Manual update from WordPress marketplace

Normally EAS updates plugins automatically, but there is also a possibility for a manual update from WordPress marketplace: 

1. Go to “Plugins”, choose “Add new”.
2. Enter search reference in search box “EAS EU”.
3. Press “Update now” button on the EAS EU compliance plugin and follow installation process.
4. Activation may be required after update.

Figure 9

4. Plug-in initial configuration

This section provides only general information on the plug-in configuration. A number of specific business and technical issues may require further adjustments, changes and ultimately involvement of EAS team. EAS proposes that supported installation is performed to ensure that all settings are configured properly from the beginning.   

4.1 General EAS EU and UK compliance plug-in view

Upon enabling the Plugin, the “EAS EU compliance” settings page will be available in WooCommerce → Settings → EAS EU compliance tab:

Figure 10

Further description of all tabs will be provided in separate sections.  

 

4.2 General settings

Figure 11

1. To start using EAS, you will need to establish a connection between WooCommerce store and EAS. To do so, you need to:

2. Insert https://manager.easproject.com/api to “EAS API Base URL”. Log-in to your EAS Dashboard (https://dashboard.easproject.com) and find “EAS client ID” and “EAS client secret” under Profile tab. If you don’t have an account, write to your assisting manager or to support email (support@easproject.com).

Figure 12

Tick the box “Enable EAS EU compliance” and press “Save changes” at the bottom of the page to test connection with API. If wrong credentials are input, EAS plugin won’t activate, and an error message will be displayed.

If the test does not bring negative reply from the system, the connection is established properly.

3. Enable option “Process imported orders (post sale data)” only if you import orders from integrated sales channels, have subscription plugins etc.

 

Proper operation of this option requires that you consult the EAS team. Please, prepare a description of your business model before contacting EAS support (sales channels descriptions, installed subscription and other plugins affecting creation of manual orders etc.)

4. “Standard mode” option is for solutions when VAT is calculated on the WooCommerce level by internal engine or by third party solutions. Do not use this option if you are not sure about the requirements. 

5. “Log levels” option is for logging error events in case when it is needed to check the logs on persistent problems. Unless requested by EAS keep “Info” and “Error” as log search words.

Make sure to press “Save changes” at the bottom of the page after making any changes to the settings 

4.3 Taxation settings

Figure 13

Settings on this page enable specific business situations/options and allow full unimpeded operation of the store.

 

1. “Deduct domestic VAT ….” option allows in VAT inclusive situations to deduct the domestic VAT for sales made to countries where no taxation is enabled only for Union OSS special VAT scheme users.  

If you are not sure about the use of this option do not enable it.  

 

2. This option is for non UK based online merchants only. EAS supports tax calculation and filing in the UK (and a in future in other non-EU European countries - Switzerland and Norway). If you have received via EAS or have your own issued UK VAT number, please, enable this option, otherwise leave infilled.     

3. This option is only for specific integrations with EAS postal solutions. Leave blank. 

4. “Default product type” option defines the product type (physical goods or virtual/downloadable merchandise) if it is not set/defined in the store. May be left blank. 

5. “Paid order status” option is used to define which order status (including customs statuses) identify the order as paid. Usually, such statuses include: “Processing”, “Complete”.

Some plug-ins create customs statuses for completed and paid orders which may denote order status for internal reasons.  

 

6. Identify gift card plug-ins that you use for selling multi-purpose gift cards

EAS plug-in supports only those gift card solutions that use standard WooCommerce methods for creating and selling gift cards. 

 

4.4 Mapping of merchandise additional attributes

Straight after the Plugin installation, the EAS system will create additional attributes for Merchant’s products. The Merchant shall ensure mapping of existing attributes to additional attributes created by the Plugin. Mapping procedures depend on the number of merchandise attributes existing in the Merchant’s WooCommerce shop settings.

The initial settings of EAS EU compliance system special attributes are presented in the figure below:

Figure 14

The merchant shall analyse existing merchandise attributes that exist in the Merchant’s store to identify if currently existing attributes already contain the data that is needed for the operation of the EAS system. 

 

Identification and analysis start by checking the existing attributes:

Go to the “Products” and then “Attributes” menu option in the main view (see Figure 20 below). All existing attributes with “Name”, “Slug”, “Order by” “Terms” columns are displayed. Slugs for EAS system created attributes always start with the “easproj_” prefix and are identified as “Name” in the “Order by” column. The “Terms” column defines applicable values for attributes to be chosen from.

In the example Figure 20 below, all EAS system attributes are circled in red (6 attributes: “Act as disclosed agent”, “HSCODE”, “Originating country”, “Seller registration country”, “Warehouse country”), while other merchandise attributes have been created by the Merchant before the Plugin installation (“Color”, “Country of manufacture”, “HS6 code”, “Place of storage”, “New entry”, “Size”).

Figure 15

Attribute analysis shall be made by the authorized and fully capable E-store administrator. 

Analysis of the existing attributes is provided in the table below:

Table 1

Further actions based on the performed analysis are as follows:

• Assigned to EAS system attribute “HSCODE” the Merchant attribute “HS6 code”;
• Assigned to EAS system attribute “Originating Country” the Merchant attribute “Country of manufacture”;
• Assigned to EAS system attribute “Warehouse country” the Merchant attribute “Place of storage”;
• No assignment for the following EAS system attributes is to be done: “Act as disclosed agent”, “Reduced VAT for TBE” and “Seller registration country” and the attributes created by the EAS system will be used.  

Mapping is performed in the respective section or EAS EU compliance Plugin view. Compare to the settings shown at the beginning of Step 4 (see below Figure 16).

Figure 16

Don’t forget to press the “Save changes” button after mapping is complete!

The final step in the mapping procedure involves the deletion of EAS attributes that were created by the Plugin but mapped to preexisting Merchant attributes. In our example, it is the following attributes that needed to be removed: “HSCODE”, “Originating Country”, “Warehouse country”.

Deletion is done in the product attribute view. Go to the “Products” and then “Attributes” menu option in the main view (see figure below), choose the attribute (“HSCODE” in the example) and press “Delete” to remove the attribute.

Figure 17

Note that mapped Merchant’s attributes retain “terms” or the values that can be assigned to the attribute as they were defined by the Merchant (in the example “Country of manufacture” can only be set to Australia, Belgium, China, France, USA).

The final view of merchandise attributes after deletion of over mapped EAS attributes looks as follows:

Figure 18

Note the difference with Figure 18 above.

Any attribute deletion step is recoverable. If some attribute was deleted erroneously it is enough to come back to the mapping view and choose the “(add new)-easproj_hs6p_received” option (see Figure 17 below), followed by “Save changes”. The attribute will be recreated and will again be visible in the products’ attributes view.

Figure 19

4.5 Standard setting of WooCommerce Tax options

Only basic settings that are required for the EAS plug-in operations are discussed in his section.  

In the Section 0 we will provide typical settings for some standard situations. 

Enable the WooCommerce tax engine and coupon use:

Figure 20

Tax management and visualization of taxation is handled via tax options. Provided example present only one possible variants for the settings. Optimal settings depend on the store location and intended destination markets. Please, see more on these settings in the Section 0.

Figure 21

1. Prices entered with tax: Choose how taxes should be treated. E-merchant has to match this setting with settings within the EAS system, therefore EAS should be notify on the use of the pricing method use. Please, contact EAS via info@easproject.com stating your shop name and the pricing model. 
2. “Calculate tax based on” option should be set to “customer shipping address”
3. Set Display prices during cart and checkout to the desired value. Please, see more in the Section 0 for setting variations. 
4. Disregard the WooCommerce notification in this section if you get one during the set-up process.

Please, follow the guidelines and examples provided in the Section 0 for desired settings of your shop.

 

4.6 Enabling of shipping to the EU countries

Choose the “Shipping” menu option and add either the whole Europe (as an identified region in WooCommerce) as the allowed destination region or all individual countries where you deliver to. EAS solution will be operational in all 27 countries of the EU. Make sure that all other regions where you deliver your products are displayed (see Figure 22 below).

Figure 22

In this case, the whole European region is chosen.

Practical settings are very much dependent on the delivery solution and applications that you use. 

If and when the IOSS special scheme is applied to your order, or the shipment is DDP the shipping rate is to be levied by VAT. To ensure that, please, make your shipping rates taxable as shown below.

Figure 23

All shipping rates applicable to deliveries to the EU countries should be made taxable.

4.7 Ensuring of existing of EU compliance tax settings 

Check that the EAS EU compliance tax setting is present in the “Standard rate” window view:

Figure 24

If at that stage your settings for non-EU countries are missing or you will want to use WooCommerce tax engine for storefront/cart for EU countries (see Section 0), you can easily import the settings saved previously into the CSV file.

Ensure that the “Shipping” button is ticked for all entered VAT zones/countries, as shown in Figure 24.

 

5. Plug-in initial configuration

5.1 Third party plugins and taxability of products. 

 Some plugins automatically update tax settings. To ensure proper operation of EAS plug-in such plugins should be disabled. The most common plugin of this type is “WooCommerce shipping and tax”. Presence of this plugin is evident from the tax setting in the “Tax” tab:

Figure 25

Choose “Disable automatic taxes” (see above) or better completely deactivate the plugin (see below). 

Figure 26

If as part of the configuration settings you elect to use WooCommerce tax engine for showing taxes in the storefront/cart, please, ensure that all products are taxable (see 1 below), and the chosen tax class (see 2 below) is populated with the EU/UK tax rates applicable to the product (Figure 27).

Figure 27

Figure 28

5.2 Geolocation

It is advisable that geolocation key is installed to enable customer location based on IP. You can see it in the picture below how to install the MaxMind geolocation key. It is free and can be procured here: GeoLite2 Free Geolocation Data | MaxMind Developer Portal. Follow the link “Generate a license key” on the page). Registration with the service is required for the key generation.

The key is to be installed into your shop:  

Figure 29

Enable default customer location based on geolocation:

Figure 30

 

6. Example settings for different tax situations

We further provide typical examples for tax settings configuration.

Please, note, that provided list is not exhaustive and EAS can propose other configuration options depending on special needs. 

 

In all examples we used one and the same item:

Figure 31

6.1 Settings for US and some UK and CH based stores (if VAT is not collected in UK/CH). Variant 1

Settings provided in this section will fit any store when the following tax settings are required:

Merchandise is shown in the store front/cart without tax;

• VAT for deliveries to EU are added on top of the base catalog price. 

This option can be used by stores in the USA and those UK stores that are either not registered for VAT (have not reached the VAT threshold of 85 K GBP) or sell exclusively 0 VAT items (books, food , children clothes). 

VAT in this variant is only added at checkout.

 

Configuration:

Tax rates: 

Figure 32

Tax options:

Figure 33

Storefront view (UK, US, EU):

Figure 34

Cart view (UK, US, EU):

Figure 35

Checkout view (Delivery to Belgium, 21 % VAT):

Figure 36

 

Please, notify EAS that settings for your store are VAT exclusive for this variant.

 

6.2 Settings for US and some UK and CH based stores (if VAT is not collected in UK/CH). Variant 2

Settings provided in this section will fit any store when the following tax settings are required:

• Merchandise is shown in the store front/cart wit tax.
• VAT for deliveries to EU are added on top of the base catalog price. 

This option can be used by stores in the USA and those UK stores that are either not registered for VAT (have not reached the VAT threshold of 85 K GBP) or sell exclusively 0 VAT items (books, food, children’s clothes). 

 

VAT in this variant is shown in storefront and checkout for countries where taxation is enabled.

Configuration:

Tax rates are installed: 

Figure 37

Tax options:

Figure 38

Storefront view (EU, Belgium):

Figure 39

Storefront view (USA – no taxation) :                                          

Figure 40

 

Cart view (Belgium):

Figure 41

 

Checkout view (Delivery to Belgium, 21 % VAT):

Figure 42

Please, notify EAS that settings for your store are VAT inclusive for this variant.

6.3 Settings for UK based stores (UK store collects VAT in the UK). Variant 3

Settings provided in this section will fit any store when the following tax settings are required:

• Merchandise is shown in the store front/cart with tax.
• VAT for deliveries to EU are calculated inclusively. 

This option can be used by stores in the UK, New-Zealand, Canada, Switzerland, and Australia that collect VAT on their sales in home countries and normally use price inclusive model. 

VAT in this variant is shown in storefront and checkout for countries where taxation is enabled.

Configuration:

Tax rates are installed:

Figure 43

Taxation for the country of residence should be enabled by installation of the respective tax rates. So, if the store is in the UK, the tax rate line GB with 20 percent for standard tax rate should be in place.

Tax options: 

Figure 44

Storefront view (EU, Finland, VAT 24 %):

Figure 45

 

Storefront view (UK , Vat 20 %):

Figure 46

The price for Finland is: 

15/1.2 (UK VAT deducted) * 1.24 (Finnish VAT added) = 15.5 EUR 

Cart view (Finland):

Figure 47

Checkout view (Delivery to Finland, 24 % VAT):

Figure 48

Please, notify EAS that settings for your store are VAT inclusive for this variant.

If you use this Variant, sales to countries where you do not collect taxes will be done without VAT. So, the price for the item for USA (no tax collected there) will be 12.5 on the storefront, in the cart and in the checkout.

6.4 Tax rate csv files and reduced VAT settings

For Variants 2 and 3 you may need to upload tax rates as CSV files. We are attaching template CSV files for EU standard rates and EU reduced rates.

You may need to use reduced rates for some products. Examples of such products are food, books, printed periodicals, children’s clothes etc.

If you sell both reduced rate products and standard rate products, you need to upload both csv files and apply proper tax class (standard or reduced):

Figure 49

6.5 HS codes and reduced rates

You have to assign proper HS codes to your items to ensure that reduced rates are applied.

Here is the list of HS codes for some products that are sold with reduced rate in selected EU counters:

• Books – 4901 99
• Magazines – 4902 90
• Other printed material – 4911 91
• Pdf, audio books – 4901 99
• Children clothes – 6506 99 77
• Food – various HS numbers, please, contact EAS for setting VAT rates to food items.