Value-Added Tax (VAT)
Overview
For better transaction organization purposes, account admins, card admins, and bookkeepers can enable the separate tracking of Value-Added Tax (VAT) on transactions and have that information exported to your ERP or via Custom Accounting. Please reach out to Brex Support to get started.
How VAT tracking works
Once you’ve enabled and configured VAT tracking in Brex, users can capture the tax portion of an expense separate from the total tax inclusive amount, where applicable. The tax amount for transactions can then be recorded separately in your ERP. Proper tracking of VAT can help with tax compliance and streamline your accounting and reclamation processes.
Add VAT information to a card expense
Step 1: Click on the expense you want to edit. Step 2: Go to Details.
Step 3: Upload a valid tax reclamation document (typically an invoice) the same way you typically upload a receipt. Step 4: Select a tax rate from the Tax rate dropdown. You can choose Custom if you need to manually enter the tax amount—which can be useful if your transaction has multiple items with different tax rates applied. Note: The options available in the tax rate drop down are configured by your Brex admin.
Submit a reimbursement with VAT information
Step 1: Go to Expenses and click Request reimbursement.
Step 2: Upload a valid tax reclamation document (typically an invoice) the same way you typically upload a receipt. Step 3: Submit the required information for the reimbursement and update the Tax code field.
Step 4: Complete your reimbursement and click Submit.
Tracking taxes in Canada
Due to the nature of Canadian taxes, the set up for tracking taxes in Canada is slightly different. Instead of importing tax codes from Netsuite for your Canadian entity, we’ll prepopulate the relevant taxes (GST, PST, HST, QST) as available options in Brex. You can also assign a separate GL account for each tax. Similar to tax codes we import, you can toggle each of these on/off as needed.
For Canadian expenses that require VAT, users can input the relevant tax amounts for each type of tax applicable to their expense.
For custom accounting users
Step 1: In your dashboard, go to Accounting > Integrations settings > Entity settings. Step 2: Click on the entity you want to set up VAT tracking on and click Tax codes. Step 3: In the Tax codes section, click Create your first tax code. Step 4: Here you can create, delete, enable, and disable tax codes. For each transaction, employees can only select from enabled tax codes.
Require VAT information for expenses
Required VAT documentation typically consists of an invoice and a tax rate. Once you’ve set up VAT tracking, your employees will have a new tax rate field on relevant expenses. Admins can improve compliance by requiring VAT documentation for employees at the policy level under Additional documentation controls > Require VAT documentation.
Troubleshooting
Follow the instructions below to resolve some of the most common issues. If the errors persist after following the steps, contact Brex for assistance.
NetSuite VAT permissions issues
If VAT data (such as tax codes, tax rates, or VAT-related fields) isn’t syncing correctly between NetSuite and Brex, your NetSuite custom role permissions may not be fully configured.
Brex requires specific permissions in NetSuite to access VAT-related records. If these permissions are missing, you may see incomplete tax data, failed syncs, or missing fields in your dashboard.
For full instructions on configuring custom roles for VAT, please see the NetSuite Help Center overview article here.
Users not seeing the tax rate field on their expenses
Step 1: Refresh your ERP connection (e.g., NetSuite) via ERP settings in Brex. Step 2: Go to Accounting > ERP Settings > Entity settings. Set up and enable tax codes for the relevant entity by following the steps in the Set up VAT tracking section.
Users don’t see a specific tax code for a given entity
Step 1: Refresh your ERP connection (e.g., NetSuite) via the ERP settings page in Brex. Step 2: Go to Accounting > ERP settings > Entity settings and select the entity for which a given tax code is not showing up. Step 3: Under Tax codes, enable the relevant tax codes you want visible.
Employees receive “Missing tax code” notifications for non-VAT-enabled policies
Step 1: Confirm that VAT documentation is not required for policies tied to U.S.-based employees.