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: small tables that describe, in your accounting system's terms, how VAT works for that client.

You will find them under Master data → VAT codes. The page has six tabs, and a seventh when Business Central is connected. This is bookkeeping configuration for the office: client-side users cannot reach it at all.

Two different things are called "VAT group". The VAT groups entry in the sidebar is Hungarian group VAT registration, where several companies share one tax number: see VAT Groups. The Partner VAT group below is one of the five elements of a VAT code, and has nothing to do with it.

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. (That last one describes a supplier who is exempt. Your own client's exemption is a different thing, covered in Small business VAT exemption.)
  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.
  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.

Four of those have their own tab. Direction has no table, which is why the tab count does not match the element count: it comes from the invoice.

The VAT codes tab combines the five elements into the codes your accounting system expects. When a line's elements match a code's combination, and the invoice's VAT date falls in that code's validity period, the code is assigned.

There is no turnkey country code list: the code table is yours to author, because every firm and every target system names codes differently. The one exception is the small-business exemption template, which writes its own codes for you.

When the elements do not resolve

You can set one default VAT code per direction. A line whose factors cannot be fully determined gets that code, marked for review, as long as nothing identified actually contradicts it. On the VAT codes tab a Default badge next to the code marks them. Set as default in the row's ⋯ menu assigns one, and Clear default in the same menu removes it.

Setting a default does not touch invoices you already have. For those, the invoice list has a Re-run VAT coding action, which only fills in lines whose code is missing and never touches coded lines, manual work or categories.

The Four Element Tabs

Each holds one dimension, and they all work the same way: a name, a code, a description, an AI explanation, country hints, an Active flag, and a validity range.

Two things to know about them:

  • Only the Rates tab shows the validity dates as columns. They exist on all four, in the edit drawer.
  • On the product/service tab, watch for the duplicate-code warning. When two groups share a code, the app tells you plainly that it shows the AI both and asks it to choose, so its classification of those lines is effectively arbitrary. Fix the duplicate rather than living with it.

The VAT Codes Tab

Which code leads the first column depends on a setting. Under Settings → VAT settings you choose whether accounting-system codes or AIFT codes must be unique among active codes.

  • Leave it on accounting codes, the default, and the first column shows the Accounting code, required.
  • Switch it to AIFT codes and the first column shows the AIFT code on top, required, with the accounting code under it, now optional. Use this when several AIFT-side distinctions deliberately map to one accounting code.

A code is never cut off: when the column is narrow, it breaks onto a second line after a /. Partner group and product or service group share one column, the partner group on top. Click a row to edit it; Deactivate is in the ⋯ menu at the end of the row.

Hungarian workspaces have a third field, the NAV mapping code, which is the NAV Online VAT classification used for inbound mapping.

That settings page has a second half the rest of this article does not cover: VAT export settings, which decides how non-deductible VAT is handled in the export files.

Validity Periods

Rates and rules change over time, and a rate change does not rewrite history. Every row carries an optional Effective from / Effective to range. When something changes, do not edit the old row: add a new one with the new period. Resolution always picks the row in force on the invoice's VAT date.

Rows Cannot Be Deleted

There is no delete, anywhere in VAT master data. A row you no longer want is deactivated, which does more than the hint suggests: an inactive row leaves the pickers and stops taking part in resolution. Activating it again restores both.

What A New Workspace Ships With

Unlike accounting categories, which now start completely empty, VAT master data is still seeded. A new workspace gets:

  • five partner VAT groups,
  • four product/service groups: products, services, fixed assets and prepayments,
  • the three calculation methods,
  • and VAT rates, but only for Hungary, Germany and Austria. Every other country starts with a zero rate and nothing else.

The VAT codes tab starts empty.

A fifth product/service group for your own company's exemption, and the exempt and out-of-scope rate elements a Hungarian workspace needs, are not seeded at creation: they arrive when the exemption template runs or when you import them.

Seeded rows behave like other system defaults

  • Their names display in the workspace's language, whatever your own interface language is. A Hungarian workspace shows "Belföldi", a German one "Inländisch".
  • Renaming a default row makes it a custom row, and the name you typed is shown verbatim from then on. Editing its description or dates, or deactivating it, does not detach it.

Teaching The AI What It Cannot Read

Some VAT questions cannot be settled from the invoice text. A bottle of whisky bought by a bar is stock and its VAT 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 line reads the same either way.

Three places answer that, and none of them is on this page.

Business activity, on the company's Tax & VAT tab under Master data → Companies. 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 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.

The partner's VAT group and Always sells, both on the partner's Rules tab. Always sells sets the product/service VAT group applied to every line from that supplier, and deliberately sets only that one field: the rate and the calculation method, including reverse charge on EU purchases, still come from the invoice, 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, you are warned before saving.

The Examples tab, the sixth tab on this page, is the fourth place the product learns from corrections. What you correct there is the product/service group, because that is what the system replays before resolving the code again; the resolved code itself is shown as read-only provenance. The tab also lets you add examples by hand, but a hand-added VAT example currently has no effect: it is stored and listed, and the AI never reads it. Correcting a learned example works. We are fixing the hand-added case. It is accountant-side only, and it shares the workspace's AI learning limit with the other learning surfaces: see How AIFT Learns Your Categories.

Who Can See And Change This

The page is office-side: a client-side user has no way in, and the Examples tab turns them away outright.

Among accountants it is a permission, not a job title. Creating, editing and deactivating rows on the four element tabs needs "Edit master data", which accountants and accountant admins hold by default but which a custom role or a per-member exception can grant or withhold. A firm-side member without it sees View instead of Edit, a read-only drawer and a Close button, with a notice saying so.

Export is available to every member who can see the page; import and copy are firm-side.

See Roles and Permissions.