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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.arcuserp.com/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

The Sales Tax Liability report reads posted journal entries against the Sales Tax Payable GL account. Draft or pending entries do not appear until they are posted.

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Open the Sales Tax Liability report

Open Accounting, then Financial Reports, then click the Sales Tax Liability tab. Pick a preset (This Quarter, Last Month, Year to Date) or set a custom From and To date, choose how to group the rows (Jurisdiction, State, or Filing Period), then click Generate Report. The report can be printed or exported to CSV after it generates. Use the CSV export when entering totals into a state filing portal.

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Group by

  • Jurisdiction (default) — one row per tax jurisdiction per filing period (calendar month). Best when AvaTax is wired and the report carries city / county / state detail.
  • State — collapses every county and city inside a state to one row. Best for monthly state-level filings.
  • Filing Period (Month) — one row per month across every jurisdiction. Best for spotting trend changes month over month.

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Columns

  • Jurisdiction — the AvaTax jurisdiction name (state, county, city, or special district). Falls back to the shipping state when AvaTax is not wired, or “(unknown jurisdiction)” when neither is available.
  • Filing Period — the calendar month of the journal entry’s entry date (YYYY-MM).
  • Taxable Sales — the taxable subtotal that produced the tax. Only rows that have an order_tax_lines row contribute to this column.
  • Tax Collected — the credit posted to Sales Tax Payable when the order was fulfilled. This is what you collected from customers.
  • Tax Refunded — the debit posted back to Sales Tax Payable when a return was processed or a payment refunded. This reduces what you owe.
  • Tax Owed — Tax Collected minus Tax Refunded. This is the net liability for the period that you owe the jurisdiction.
  • Orders — count of distinct orders that contributed to the row.
  • AvaTax Codes — the AvaTax committed document codes for the orders in the row. Use these to drill back into AvaTax for audit support.

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Drill into AvaTax committed transactions

When AvaTax is the active tax connector, the AvaTax Codes column lists the document codes for every committed sales-tax transaction included in the row. Copy the code into the AvaTax admin to inspect the source document, line items, and jurisdiction detail behind the dollar amount. If the column is empty for every row, the entity does not have AvaTax wired, the orders pre-date AvaTax wiring, or the orders were never committed (typically because they were voided before fulfillment).

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Export to a state filing portal

  1. Set the date range to match the filing period your state expects (monthly, quarterly, or annual).
  2. Set Group by to Jurisdiction so the export carries the full city / county / state breakdown the portal asks for.
  3. Click Generate Report, then click CSV.
  4. Open the CSV. Each row is one jurisdiction in one filing period; the Tax Owed column is what you owe that jurisdiction.
The Sales Tax Liability report does not automatically file your returns. State portal integration (Avalara Returns, TaxJar) is on the roadmap; until then, use the CSV export and your state’s online filing portal.

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Reconcile against the Trial Balance

The total at the bottom of the Sales Tax Liability report should equal the Sales Tax Payable account balance on the Trial Balance for the same as-of date. If the two disagree:
  1. Run the Trial Balance for the same end date.
  2. Open the Account Ledger for the Sales Tax Payable account for the same date range.
  3. Look for journal entries with source_type other than TAX or REFUND posting to the Sales Tax Payable account. These are the entries that the Sales Tax Liability report intentionally excludes (e.g. manual journal entries adjusting prior-period liability).

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Limitations

  • Entities without AvaTax — per-jurisdiction breakdown rolls up to the shipping state when no order_tax_lines row is present. Add manual tax rates per jurisdiction (Settings -> Tax -> Tax Rates) to enable a richer breakdown without AvaTax.
  • Use Tax — consumer-side use tax accrual is not implemented in Arcus today. This report covers sales tax collected from customers only.
  • Period close — the report respects period close (a closed period is read-only; you cannot post new tax journal entries into it). It does not block report generation against a closed period — a state audit can require historical filing detail.

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Where the numbers come from

The report reads accounting.journal_entry_lines where the account is the entity’s sales_tax_payable GL account (canonical system_account_key lookup, falls back to the first liability account whose name contains “Sales Tax” for entities pre-dating the system-key migration). For each posting:
  • source_type = 'TAX' (the fulfillment tax post) credits the liability and appears under Tax Collected.
  • source_type = 'REFUND' (the return-refund tax reversal) debits the liability and appears under Tax Refunded.
Per-jurisdiction breakdown comes from the order_tax_lines table written by the AvaTax connector at order fulfillment time. The AvaTax committed document code is read from orders.avatax_transaction_code.