VAT Master Data

AI Finance Team resolves the correct VAT code for every invoice line automatically. To make that possible, each workspace carries its own VAT master data: five small tables that describe, in your accounting system's terms, how VAT works for that client. You'll find them under Master data → VAT, organised as five tabs.

How a VAT Code Is Composed

A VAT code is not picked from a flat list — it is resolved from five elements:

  1. Partner VAT Group — who the trading partner is, VAT-wise: domestic, EU, third country, a cash-method partner, or a small-business-exempt supplier.
  2. Product / Service VAT Group — what is being supplied: products, services, fixed assets, prepayments. Groups can carry a default non-deductible % (for example 50% for passenger-car costs).
  3. VAT Rate — the percentage, with its validity period (27%, 18%, 5%, zero…).
  4. Direction — income (you are the seller) or expense (you are the buyer).
  5. Calculation Method — how the entry is constructed: normal, reverse charge, or VAT only.

The VAT Codes tab combines these five elements into the codes your accounting system expects. When an invoice line's five elements match a VAT code's combination (and the invoice date falls in the code's validity period), that code is assigned automatically. There is deliberately no turnkey country code list — the code table is yours to author, because every accounting firm and every target system names codes differently.

Two Code Columns — and the Uniqueness Setting

Each VAT code row has two identifiers:

  • Accounting code — the code exactly as your accounting system expects it on import. Always required.
  • AIFT code — an optional internal code, useful when several AIFT-side distinctions map to a single accounting-system code.

A workspace-level setting (Workspace settings → VAT) decides which of the two must be unique among active codes. Most workspaces leave it on accounting-system codes; switch it to AIFT codes when you deliberately want several AIFT codes pointing at one accounting code.

What Your Client Does Changes the Answer

Some VAT questions cannot be settled from the invoice text at all. A bottle of whisky bought by a bar is stock — the VAT on it is deductible, because the bar resells it. The same bottle bought by a consultancy is representation, and its VAT is not deductible at all. The invoice line reads the same either way.

So AI Finance Team asks you, once per company: open Master data → Entities, pick the entity, and fill in Business activity. Both fields are optional:

  • an activity code (TEÁOR, NACE or your local equivalent), and
  • one or two sentences describing what the business actually does.

The sentence is the part that does the work. Mention anything the company buys in order to resell, serve or build into what it sells — "Restaurant and bar. Buys food and drink to prepare and serve to guests." is enough to stop every beverage invoice being read as entertainment.

Leave both blank and nothing changes: classification behaves exactly as it did before.

When a Supplier Always Sells the Same Thing

For a supplier whose invoices are always the same kind of thing — a drinks wholesaler, a stationery supplier — you can skip the guessing entirely. On the partner's page, Always sells sets the product/service VAT group applied to every line from that supplier.

It deliberately sets only that one field. The VAT rate and the calculation method — including reverse charge on EU purchases — still come from the invoice itself, because a supplier's identity does not determine them: the same wholesaler can invoice a 27% spirit and a 5% item on one document.

If you pick a group that is wholly or partly non-deductible, AI Finance Team warns you before saving, because every line from that supplier will inherit it.

Validity Periods

Rates and codes change over time — a VAT rate change doesn't rewrite history. Every row carries an optional Effective from / Effective to range. When a rate or rule changes, don't edit the old row: add a new row with the new validity period. Resolution always picks the row that was in force on the invoice's VAT date.

Default Rows

New workspaces are seeded with a sensible scaffold: universal partner groups and product/service groups, the country's current VAT rates, and the three calculation methods. The VAT Codes tab starts empty — the code table is authored per workspace.

Seeded rows behave like other system defaults in AI Finance Team:

  • Their names display in the workspace's language (a Hungarian workspace shows "Belföldi", a German one "Inland") regardless of your own interface language.
  • If you rename a default row, it becomes a custom row: the name you typed is shown verbatim from then on. Editing its description, dates, or archiving it does not detach it.

Who Sees What

All workspace members — including client roles — can view the five VAT tables. Creating, editing, archiving, importing and copying are restricted to members with the Accountant or Accountant admin role.