I’m just wondering whether there is a way to have item taxes on purchase invoices (with just an “Item Name”, without an actual “Item” reference). Item-wise tax usage is possible for a Purchase Invoice or a Sales Invoice that uses pre-defined items, as described in the user guide.
However, the mechanism that makes it work relies on the tax rate to be defined in the item definition.
Would there be a way to achieve something similar (per-item tax rates) without creating a type of item for each item in the list?
I agree it makes sense to create item types as much as possible, but there are situations where it seems it could be going into too much detail.
Let’s just say you’ve purchased a couple of black pens, a red pen and a box of paper clips for internal use (i.e. you’re never going to resell them, and you’re not in the stationery business) and you want to enter that invoice. Having to create a new type of item for that particular type of black pen, another one for that type of red pen and another one for that box of paper clips can be rather cumbersome. Next time you purchase a different black pen, from a different make and model, you could also have to create another item in the interface. In addition, all these item types will then appear in the auto-suggestion box when you try to enter an item’s name. Such a degree of detail can become clutter and counter-productive.
I guess one workaround for this is to create broader item types, without a specific list price, for example “pen” or even “stationery” and fill in the details in each invoice if required (since the description field allows for that).