Meal expense and CRA GST are being skewed by the tip and Quickbooks will not accept a change in the GST amount. Anyone have a solution?

Hello ggdean, 

Thanks for reaching out to us here. It's important you're able to enter your expenses with ease and I'd be happy to help. QuickBooks is a powerful program that helps you streamline your work with ease. This allows you to save time for the things you love. 

I'd like to make sure I'm on the same page as you. What happens when you try entering the GST amount? Are you getting an error message? Feel free to send screenshots for visual reference. You're more than welcome to cover any personal information in the screenshot. 

Don't hesitate to reach back to me in the comments below, I'll be one message away. :) 

I scan or upload a receipt and if it is a meal receipt, QB will put the 2.5% into the GST field. There is usually a tip paid after the bill which has no GST on it. This throws the GST out of whack and my problem is that I can't adjust it. I can change the GST in the field, but when I click save, it always reverts back to the incorrect amount. I am overstating by GST because of this

Hi ggdean

Under Taxes -> Manage Sales Tax create a new Custom Rate (I called mine HST ON -Meals) and set it for 6.5% (the 50% claimable amount of the 13%).

When you enter your pre-tip meal amount, specify that taxes are included, and select this new tax code.

Then create a second line for your tip marking it zero-rated.

Balances like a beaut.

Hi, yes, that works but if I upload a receipt I don't get a second line, or i sure can't see how to add one in that screen. So the practice would be to not upload those receipts?

Thanks Leith. I will report it to Feedback. It seems more efficient to just manually enter the receipt and scan it to my computer to drag into the attachments space. Then I only enter it once and done. Still learning all the good and bad things about QB. 

Hi ggdean,

I appreciate you taking the time to explain what's happening when you try to manually adjust the sales tax amount on your snapped receipts in QuickBooks Online. I want to make sure you're able to get this sorted out and get back on track with entering your expenses.

It sounds to me like you're using the Receipts feature in the program, which can be a great asset for easily entering your expenses. The program aims to pull the details from the receipt image so it means less manual entry for you, but I can see how a tip amount would throw off your balances. What @Leith mentions about making sure you have a sales tax code set up for your meals and entertainment expenses is a good start, and you can learn more about that here if you'd like: How to set up a sales tax rate for Meals and Entertainment

Whether you have that set up or not, however, the program should allow you to manually change the amount in the sales tax calculated field so that you can make sure it's right. I've just gone into a test account to verify this myself and I was able to modify the sales tax amount and save without it reverting back to the original amount.

Since you're not seeing that behaviour, I recommend starting with some troubleshooting, namely clearing the cache, trying a private browser, and trying a different browser window entirely. With QuickBooks Online being a cloud software, it can be impacted by things like temporary files in the cache, browser type, and even the Internet connection itself. Resetting the Internet is another step you can try.

If you're still seeing that the program is reverting the amount for you, I suggest connecting with a member of our support team outside of the QuickBooks Community forum so that we can take a closer look at this with you. Here are the ways you can get in touch.

Schedule a Callback or start a Chat: click (?)Help in the upper right in QuickBooks Online > type and enter "Contact support" into the QB Assistant > click Contact Us > explain your situation > click Let's Talk > choose Get a callback or Start a Chat.

Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Support hours are from Monday to Friday between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. ET.

Wishing you the best!

I agree this is a big problem and needs to be addressed by Quickbooks (the response below doesn't work for me). Personally I categorize and add my expenses from the banking screen and there should be a way to customize the amount of GST/HST without changing the total. This would be used frequently since many expense receipts have tax values that are not on the entire subtotal. Some common ones that come to mind are meals, Uber rides, airline tickets, hotel bills... my input tax credits are probably way off. Sure hope I don't get audited!