Invoice ec_status valid values

Documentation
1

Hi there,

I’ve been investigating a problem with our long running FreeAgent integration and noticed that in some cases our code passes a value of “Non-EC” to the endpoint when creating a new Invoice.

According to the documentation (https://dev.freeagent.com/docs/invoices), valid values are:

  • UK/Non-EC
  • EC Goods
  • EC Services
  • EC VAT MOSS

Has the value for “Non-EC” changed recently? I can’t seem to find any mention of the change in the support forums and I’m wondering if this could be an explanation for the problems we’re seeing.

If it has changed, what would happen to invoices created with an “ec_status” of “Non-EC” - they don’t seem to fail, would they just be created with other VAT rules?

Our code surrounding this part of the integration hasn’t changed in a Looong time, so I’m just exploring all avenues. Thanks!

Andrew

2

Hi Andrew,

From a brief look at the code from our end, it doesn’t look like there’ve been any recent changes to the ec_status for invoices – could you give me a bit more context about what issue you’re seeing so I can understand what’s going wrong and hopefully help you investigate?

Best wishes,

Ewa

3

Hey thanks,

We’re seeing a fair few cases where we’re creating invoices that shouldn’t have VAT applied to them, but in FreeAgent they have VAT. I’m currently looking to see if I can pin down when this started happening.

Looking at our code, we don’t pass any VAT / tax information for these particular invoices which lead me to think maybe a default or account level setting had changed without us realising.

For these invoices in particular, the only interesting (tax related) fields we pass are ec_status with value “Non-EC” and item_type “Services” (as part of the invoice items).

At this point though I’m fumbling about in the dark a little - it’s possible either this is the way it’s always been and I’ve only just noticed, or that something else has changed at our end that I’ve yet to realise is important!

Cheers,

Andrew

4

I’ve found a change in our code on the 17th April 2019 with the incredible commit message of “FreeAgent new option required” that sets the invoice_items sales_tax_rate to zero.

I wonder - are you able to tell me whether there was a change at your end around that time - something along the lines of invoice items sales_tax_rate not being zero by default?

5

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for these details – I’ll check with the team regarding your questions above and get back to you as soon as I can.

Best wishes,

Ewa

6

Hi Andrew,

We’re still investigating the issue you’ve reported, but from what I’ve found out so far sales_tax_rate is likely to default to “Auto” if it’s not explicitly passed for an invoice item, causing FreeAgent to take a best guess rather than set it to zero. It would be safest to specify the sales_tax_rate for every invoice item you’re creating (in fact, our Sales Tax documentation states you should always include it).

Best wishes,

Ewa