As standard transactions of the same type from sales channel payouts are grouped together into one line item on the invoice sent to Xero/QuickBooks.
However if you want to breakdown your sales and refunds by Product Groups you can.
This can be especially useful if you sell products across multiple different VAT rates and need to account for their sales separately.
How to set up Product Groups when you sell a mixture of Standard, Zero or Reduced Rated Goods
Option 1 - For Amazon & Shopify accounts
If you have gone through the Accounts & Taxes wizard after 2nd May 2023 for your Amazon or Shopify account connected to Link My Books, then automatic product grouping is turned on automatically for you by default.
We'll use your Amazon Product Tax Codes or Shopify Products Tax Rates to correctly group your products into the following three product groups:
Standard Rated Products
Reduced Rated Products
Zero Rated Products
All you need to do is ensure that you have set up your products correctly on Amazon or Shopify using the correct product tax rates and we'll do the rest.
For accounts set up before 2nd May 2023, you will have had the choice to turn on product grouping and automated product grouping during the wizard. If you're unsure if you have set your account up correctly we suggest that you first go back through the Accounts & Taxes wizard (via the Accounts & Taxes menu), then contact support if you still have any questions.
Option 2 - For other sales channels
Step 1 - Turn on Product Groups
During the Accounts & Taxes setup wizard you will see this step:
Be sure to select the option "I sell some products that are Zero Rated or Reduced Rated for UK VAT" to turn on product grouping.
IMPORTANT: For non Amazon and Shopify accounts you must allocate products to product groups yourself via the Product Groups page (via the Inventory menu).
See step 2 below.
Step 2 - Assign products to product groups
On the Inventory > Product Groups page you will see two tabs, "Product SKUs" and "Product Groups".
On the Product Groups tab you will see the product groups that Link My Books created:
By default all your products will be assigned to the product group selected as your default group. The Standard Rated Products group is the default one when you first set up your account.
Any newly discovered SKUs and any SKUs that have not yet been assigned to a group will show in the default group.
On the Product SKUs tab you will see a list of all the products Link My Books has detected in your settlements.
Here you will assign each SKU to a Product Group using the dropdown menus shown below:
Select the correct group for each of you products.
That's it! 🎉
Once you have assigned each of your products to a group then the rules of that group will from then on be applied to it.
IMPORTANT
Only settlements that have not yet been sent to Xero or QuickBooks will be refreshed each time you make changes to product groups.
If you have already sent a settlement and need to change the product groups afterwards then you will need to firstly void the invoice in Xero or journal in QuickBooks and then refresh the settlement in Link My Books after you make your changes to the groups, then re-send it. (All of which can be done from the settlement action menu on the settlements page)
Option 3 - Bulk uploading product groups
If you have a large number of products and you are not using our automatic product grouping option for Amazon or Shopify accounts then you might want to bulk upload your product groupings.
Select Bulk Upload on the Product Groups page
Click Download to download your product file containing all your products
Enter the Product Group name for each of your products in Column D in the file
Save the updated file as a CSV
Upload to Link My Books
IMPORTANT
Do not make any changes to the SKU column in the file.
Always follow CSV best practices when opening the file in Excel.
Using Product Groups for other reasons
If you're not using product groups to separate out Standard, Zero and Reduced Rated goods then you should follow the below steps instead.
An example of this may be if you sell products from different brands and you want to account for the sales and refunds of these brands via separate accounts.
Step 1 - Turn on Product Grouping
Navigate to the Settlement Settings page and change your transaction grouping setting to Breakdown by Product Group and hit Save grouping settings as shown below:
Step 2 - Set up your Product Groups
Next you will need to set up your groups themselves on the Product Groups page.
Navigate to the Product Groups tab and click Add New Group
Give your new group a name and save
Step 3 - Group products as desired
Lastly, assign products to their correct group by navigating to the Product SKUs tab and selecting the desired group from the dropdown list on the right of each product, as shown below:
Step 4 – Set Tax Rates:
To set the tax rate for each type of transaction separately to apply different rates to different groups, choose "Set tax rate" from the action menu and then select the rate you want to use for all sales and refunds for that group from the dropdown menu.
Step 5 - Set Accounts:
To set different accounts for all sales and refund transactions for a product group, choose "Set Account" from the action menu and then select the account you want to use for all sales and refunds for that group from the drop down as shown below:
If you have any questions about this article or feedback on how we could make it better please reach out to the support team via the blue chat icon on the bottom right of the page or via email to [email protected].