How a line adds up, to the cent

Every product on a quotation, a sell order or a purchase order is a line: a price, a quantity, maybe a discount, the taxes, and a total. This guide explains how Control Total works those figures out, so a product priced to land on a round amount lands on it, and a discount of one cent takes off one cent.

The setting that decides it

In Settings, on the General Configuration tab, Decimals for Productos says how many decimal places your prices carry. It starts at 2 and goes up to 6.

That number is used everywhere a line is worked out, not only in the price field:

• the price, the subtotal (price × quantity), the discount and the taxes of a line keep those decimals all the way through;
• the taxes are worked out on the subtotal minus the discount as it is, without rounding it to cents first;
• only the line Total is rounded to cents.

Money is still shown with two decimals on every screen, ticket and PDF. The extra decimals are what the line is calculated with, not what you read.

With 2 decimals, every figure comes out exactly as it always did.

Why you would want more decimals

Say you sell a product for $5,000.00 with VAT included, at 16%.

With two decimals there is no price before tax that lands on $5,000.00: one cent less gives $4,999.99, one cent more gives $5,000.01. With four, the price can be precise enough for the line to total exactly what you meant to charge.

You do not have to work that price out yourself. Two options do it for you:

• Sell at a price with taxes included, when the product always sells at the same final price;
• Capture a line by its total, when you want one line of one document to come to a given amount.

A fixed discount comes off exactly

The percent icon at the end of a line opens Discount for this product. Enter a Percentage discount or a Fixed discount; the other one updates on its own.

For a fixed discount, Which price should the fixed discount apply to? offers:

• Before tax — the amount comes off the price before taxes, and the taxes are worked out on what is left.
• Final price with tax — the amount comes off what the client pays. A discount of $0.01 takes the line from $5,000.00 to $4,999.99: exactly one cent, never two.

The Price detail in the window shows the Previous price and the New price, and what you see there is what is saved, for a percentage and for a fixed amount, on either price.

A percentage discount still applies to the price before tax, as it always has.

When you open the window again on a line whose fixed discount was saved with more than two decimals, it shows the amount in cents you entered on the final price whenever that amount gives the same discount, so you find the figure you typed and not a converted one. Saving without touching it keeps the discount as it was.

The document total

The Total of a quotation, a sell order or a purchase order is the sum of the totals of its lines, each one already in cents. What the client sees on each line adds up to what they are asked to pay.

The Subtotal and the tax rows of the document are shown in cents too, worked out from the lines' precise figures. Adding up those rows by eye can be a cent away from the total; the total itself is never off.

On a fiscal invoice

When you invoice a document whose lines carry more decimals, each concept keeps its unit value with up to six decimals and states its subtotal, discount, taxes and total in cents, and its total is the total of the line it came from. Editing the concept's quantity, price, discount or taxes in the invoice editor works it out in cents again.

What does not change

• Documents you already saved, and invoices already issued or stamped, keep their amounts. The new calculation applies to what you add or edit from now on.
• Quantities still take up to three decimals.