Join Rita Zarate, our Hero Support Manager here at Parlevel Systems, for 5 tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your Vending Management System. In particular, we’ll look at managing commissions, subsidies, and taxes.
1. Setting Up a Commission
Commissions are a portion of vending machine profits given to a location in exchange for exclusive rights to a specific vending location or entire account. Since commissions are associated with location, and locations with accounts, both must be established before setting up any commissions.
Create your account under Settings > Customers > Accounts. From the edit account page, you will be able to input two required fields: the Commission amount and the commission type. This can be a flat rate or percentage. All machines and locations under this account will have the commission applied to them once you save these changes.
If you need a specific location or machine under the account, you can apply them at those levels at either the edit location or edit machine page. To apply at the location level, navigate to settings > customers > locations > edit location and enter the commission under the general tab.
If you need the commission for a specific machine, navigate to the settings cogwheel > Vending > Machines > Edit Machine and navigate to the advanced settings tab. You can also access your machines under the Vending > All machines page.
As a note, commissions applied at Machine level will override commissions applied at Location level, and those applied at Location level override the commissions applied at Account level. The same fields (commission amount and type) are still required.
By default, commissions are calculated based on the collected revenue after consolidation. This means it’s especially important to consolidate routes properly. To do this, click the green money icon button under the service history page and enter all the collected amounts after every service.
2. Running a Commission Report
Now that you have your commissions set up, you can now run a commission report. To do this, navigate to Vending > Calculators > Commissions. Specify a date range, the accounts needed, and click the green Get Commissions button. If you want to run commissions for all accounts, you can leave the account field empty. Once the calculation has been generated, verify that the numbers are correct, and then scroll to the bottom of the page. Click the green Save Commissions button to save your report. The VMS will automatically redirect you to the reports.
In your Company Settings > Financial tab, you can click the green Edit button on the top right which will allow you to toggle, modify and view a number of settings that affect your commission reports, including credit card fees, two tier fees, and other factors. After you have made changes, click save. You will need to recalculate a report to include any changes made.
Once you have calculated and saved it, the report will now show up under Analytics > Customers > Commissions. From this page. you can mark the individual commission report as paid using the Status link or you can use Options button to print, print to a check, mark the reports as paid in bulk, or delete the report.
3. Setting up a Subsidy
Subsidized vending provides a way for companies to provide their employees either low prices or in some cases no charge for vended products. A good example of subsidized vending would be selling 12 oz cans of soda or coffee to the employees for .25 cents where the vending operator has determined the soda price to be .75 cents. The vending operator would then bill the company for the agreed-upon remainder of the price.
All subsidy groups must be associated with a location, which are tied with Accounts.
To set up a subsidy, navigate to Settings > Vending > Subsidy Groups
Click the Green New Subsidy Group button. From here you will need to add a group name and group description. Typically, names will designate the associate account, and descriptions are the subsidized item types – for example Airport Lounge, Drinks. Save your changes. Once the Subsidy group has been made click the edit pencil icon. From the edit subsidy group page you can select products to be associated with that subsidy group, either by location and all of it’s associated machines or by a specific machine. You can also add just specific products. You will first need to add a sub-group by clicking the green add sub-group button. Add the amount you are subsidizing in the subsidy field, and identify a name for the group for example .50 drinks and save your changes. Once the subgroup has been added, click on the group to highlight it – you will now be added products to this group. You can check off the products to be moved into the subgroup with the checkboxes or you can click the blue plus symbol. To add items to a second subgroup, you will need to be sure it is also highlighted when moving items.
As a note you can only have one sub-group per price point at a time.
Once created, machines or markets will need to also be assigned to the subsidy group. This can be done by going to the edit machine page > advanced settings tab > assign subsidy group dropdown. For a market navigate to the edit market page > general info tab and assign subsidy group dropdown box. Save your changes.
4. Running a Subsidy Report
Now that your subsidies are set up, it’s time to run a subsidy report. Navigate to Vending > Calculators > Subsidies. Specify a date range and account you would like to run, you can also leave the account field blank to run for all accounts and press the Green arrow button to run the report, to save your calculation, click the Green Save Report on the top right. The VMS will automatically redirect you to the saved reports or it can be accessed by going to Analytics > Customers > Subsidies.
These reports include not only the products in sub-groups, but also products that may be sold in the machine that are not subsidized. These will be in their own category distinct from the subsidized items. From the Analytics > Subsidies page you can use the Options button to Email, Print or Print as a PDF.
5. Setting up Taxes
In order to properly utilize the tax module that your Parlevel VMS offers, you first need to understand a little bit of tax terminology, as well as understand the specific sales tax laws relevant to your geographical jurisdictions such as (states, cities, and counties) in which your business operates.
Tax Class – A tax class, or category, is applied to your products and used to categorize them for tax purposes. All items in your product catalog should have a tax class assigned to them.
Examples of Tax Classes include Packaged Food, Beverages, Prepared Food, and Non-food.
Tax Jurisdictions: A tax jurisdiction is a geographic location for which you need to report taxes, which could be a state, city, county, or other defined area. A jurisdiction contains all of the tax classes and their respective tax percentages that you are required to pay for each.
Examples of Tax Jurisdictions: Texas, California, San Antonio, Houston, Bexar County, etc.
Tax Groups: Your tax classes and jurisdictions are grouped together in Tax Groups, which are assigned to Locations. A Tax Group can hold one or many jurisdictions, which can hold one or many tax classes detailing the tax percentages charged in each jurisdiction.
By assigning tax groups to locations, you can keep track of how much tax is paid for each product depending on the geographic location in which it is sold.
First, you need to create your Tax Classes.
- Navigate to Settings > Tax Classes, then click New Tax Class. Enter the name desired for your tax class (typically describing the type of product taxed), and click Save Changes. You can create as many Tax Classes as needed.
- Once the Tax Classes are created, you can start adding products to these groups by navigating to Settings > Warehouse > Products, which details all of your active products in your catalog. Note that there is a column listing the Tax Classes to which a product is assigned.
You can update the tax for products in bulk using the Bulk Edit option from the Options menu. Click Save at the top right to enact these changes.
You can also change the Tax Class for an individual product by clicking the Edit icon to access the Product Edit screen. Below the product image will be a dropdown listing the available Tax Classes. After selecting the appropriate class, save changes.
Next you will need create your Tax Groups and Tax Jurisdictions.
To do this navigate to Settings > Taxes > Tax Groups. Click on New Tax Group.
Enter the Tax group name. For example, Bexar County Group.
We can create our first jurisdiction for the state of Texas by clicking on +Add Tax Jurisdiction. Enter, for example, Texas for the name and click OK.
After it is confirmed as created, the jurisdiction Texas is selected, and we can click on +Add Tax Class link to add a class to this jurisdiction.
In the following pop-up, you can select Non-food from the drop-down, and enter 8.25% in the sales tax field for the taxed non-food products in the state of Texas. You can also select how non food should be taxed for OCS and Micro Markets as well.
Following the same process, we can create two new jurisdictions, one for the city of San Antonio and one for Bexar county, with their sales taxes of 2.0% and 1.0%.
When creating a new Tax Group, notice that you can reuse the Tax Jurisdictions created previously; in this case, the Texas jurisdiction can be re-selected, and the Tax Class and tax percentage will auto-populate for you. It’s worth mentioning that if you edit this percentage here, then it will also affect any other Tax Group using the Texas Jurisdiction.
You should now have a Tax Group made. You can edit them at any time by clicking the edit icon on the right of the tax groups list.
Finally, you can assign your new Tax Groups to the correct locations in your business, this is done from the Tax Groups screen.
Section 1 lists all the locations assigned to a Tax Group, while Section 2 lists all other locations not currently assigned to any Tax Group.
You can assign a location to a Tax Group by pressing the green icon to the left of the location names, which will move that location from Section 2 to Section 1. If needed, you can also filter through the locations by name or geographical area.
To edit a location’s Tax Group assignment navigate to Settings > Customers > Locations. The Tax Group dropdown menu will display your current tax groups and will allow you to reassign the location. Save your changes.
We hope this video helps you better manage your commissions, subsidies, and taxes across your business! By focusing on these three areas, you’ll have a better relationship with your accounts, and a better picture of your company’s financials. If you have any questions on any of the tips presented or want more information, please reach out to your customer success representative or our hero support department. Once again, thank you for choosing Parlevel!
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