INBOX : Ready for GST day?

The GST rate increase from 12.5% to 15% on 1 October, is posing some challenges for office software systems.
James Page, Microsoft Dynamics AX service line lead for Intergen, New Zealand’s Microsoft partner, says some common questions are emerging which companies should be addressing:
• Which systems handle GST calculations? Organisations must carry out checks to ensure all systems are set up to cater for the new rate.
• Can you easily change the GST rate? Older, legacy applications can have hard coded GST rate calculations which require changing and rigorous testing.
• Can you change the GST rate retrospectively? In the transition period after 1 October, how will you deal with situations involving both rates?
• Will open purchase and sales order lines be updated by the GST rate? There is likely to be an impact on GST calculations for un-invoiced sales and purchase orders. This has implications for maintaining systems.
• Does your system manage credits for purchase and sales? Will your system be able to credit back at the 12.5% GST rate for credits to orders raised prior to the GST rate change?
• Will your systems require updates to existing, recurring customer orders, laybys and deposits? In some cases, systems can manage these changes automatically; however other systems and manually-managed spreadsheets will require scripts and/or manual manipulation.