Form Default only applies to first line

In sales quote form default, I set VAT at 20% because I sometimes need to quote an installation which don’t set the VAT. However today I needed to quote an inventory item and the installation was on the second line.

The form default VAT setting appears to only apply to the first line. Subsequent lines do not set the VAT rate. Naturally I don’t know whether I will have one or multiple lines in a quote in future. Could this be fixed so that it doesn’t matter if the quote is one line or multiple lines, the vat should always be set at whatever the form default says.

If you create the form default with multiple lines, you can set the tax code on each line. When you create a new transaction, multiple lines will appear and the tax code(s) will be in place. But you cannot set a default for a line that does not exist on the default form.

Imagine your most common sales invoice was for an inventory item subject to one tax code and installation service subject to another. You would not want both items to appear with the the tax code for the inventory item. Therefore, lines you add after creating a form do not replicate content from a single line on the default form. But if you create both lines with their individual tax codes on the default form, you will get both lines with their own tax codes on the next transaction.

The way to handle this is to set your VAT code on one line and add a second line on the default form with no VAT. Then, if you don’t include installation with no VAT, delete that line.

that is how Form Defaults are designed to work and in my opinion it stays true to its purpose.
if an inventory item is always taxed at the same rate, then you can edit the inventory item and set the tax code there which would automatically appear when the item is selected on any form.

maybe the below suggested idea would help in your use case if implemented.

My inventory items are all set with the correct tax code. I only want the form default to apply to lines where no default code is set (i.e. for anything that is not an inventory or non-inventory item).

What should happen is that the form default should set VAT as 20% as default and if you select an inventory item or anything else that is set for say 15% for that line it will overwrite the tax default of 20% to 15%

Why can’t it work like that - where if no default tax is set, then form default applies 20% regardless of how many lines there are in the sales quote. Otherwise what is the point of setting the VAT as default when it only applies to one line. Either you want the default to be 20% or you don’t.

The default is for a form (as per its title), not individual lines on a form. And certainly not for lines that don’t exist yet. It is a tool to save work in filling out a form, not a place to set default content for when new elements are added to a form. The default form can be virtually as complex as you want, but it isn’t going to make decisions for you on what to add when additional content is inserted.

And for every user who might, like you, appreciate the tax code from your single default line item being duplicated, there will be someone (or many someones) who finds that totally aggravating. It could easily lead to mistaken entries when a user neglects to change an entry that, at first glance, looks to be complete.

You want it to add a default tax code, which might seem obvious to you. Someone else might have a standard non-inventory item set for all sales invoices, such as a diagnosis fee for an auto mechanic. Would that person want every additional line added to a sales invoice to be for the same diagnosis fee? Probably not. But that is what would happen if content from one line on a default form were duplicated when new lines were added.

in my case, i export data first level inventory data into the manager and create the price list with common reference. Then copy to Sales Quote. (ABC reference is the common & unique id for for set of inventory list of a particular sales quote or order)
As in the screen below. if i can include the tax code also, then i dont have to type every single line item with its tax code. entering tax code on each line item becomes difficult when the quote has many items.

@ismail, what does this have to do with added lines in Form Defaults?

i meant if the added lines cannot retain form defaults, then it should be allowed on batch creation.
This is when the transaction start with the item creation ( be it inventory or non-inventory ), once done in entry level the tax code remain standard or can be overwritten on exceptional case at purchase/sale.