Filing your returns¶
Filing is where all of this ends up. The extension's job is to make sure that what TaxCloud holds at the end of a period is an accurate record of what you actually sold — everything else follows from that.
What TaxCloud holds¶
Over a period, your account accumulates:
- Every captured order — when it was placed, where it shipped, what was on it, and the tax charged. See Capture.
- Every refund and reversal — credit memos and cancelled unpaid orders, reducing what is owed. See Refunds and Cancellations.
- Every exemption applied — which order, under which certificate.
A return is built from that. Which is the whole reason the extension bothers to report orders at all, rather than just calculating a number at checkout.
What you do¶
Filing itself is a TaxCloud service, arranged with TaxCloud — it is not something you switch on in Magento. Depending on your plan you either:
- Have TaxCloud file for you, from the transactions in your account; or
- File yourself, using the reports in your TaxCloud dashboard.
Either way, the extension's part is the same: get the transactions in there correctly and on time.
Before the end of a period¶
A short check is worth the time:
Do the totals broadly match? Compare your TaxCloud transactions for the period against your Magento sales for the same period. They should not be far apart. A large gap means orders are not arriving.
Any failures in the log? Reading the log — look for failed captures and failed reversals. A failed capture is a sale missing from your filing; a failed reversal is a refund missing from it.
Any orders stuck before their capture trigger? With capture set to On payment or On shipment, orders that never got there were never reported. That is usually correct — but a batch of orders invoiced late, or shipments not recorded in Magento, will show up here as a gap.
Do the exemptions look right? An unexpected number of untaxed orders is worth understanding before you file, not after.
The extension cannot tell you what you failed to report
It reports what it is asked to and logs what fails. It does not reconcile your TaxCloud account against your Magento orders. If a capture failed silently three weeks ago, nothing will surface it at filing time unless you look. Build the check into your month-end.
Common causes of a gap¶
| Gap | Likely cause |
|---|---|
| Orders in Magento, not in TaxCloud | Failed captures, or a capture trigger they never reached |
| Refunds in Magento, not in TaxCloud | Failed reversals, or refunds issued outside Magento |
| Nothing in TaxCloud at all | Calculations-only mode, or TaxCloud not enabled on that store |
| Orders from one store only | Settings applied at the wrong scope — see Multi-store setups |
Questions about the return itself¶
What you owe, which states, whether you have nexus somewhere new — those are questions for TaxCloud, not for this extension. They are a compliance service with people who do this professionally; ask them.