In WooCommerce, enter the total product price when prices include tax; enter the price before tax when prices exclude it.
Key takeaways
- Confirm the store's tax setting before entering prices.
- Check the rate against your goods and region.
- Compare the product page, cart and checkout with your intended total.
Why tax-inclusive prices go wrong
Most shop owners think of a price as the number on the shelf label. In WooCommerce, the number you type into a product can mean one of two things: the price before tax, or the total the customer pays once tax is added. If you mix those up, the storefront shows a figure you did not intend, and nobody notices until a customer asks why the total looks off.
The WooCommerce guide to setting up taxes works through a simple example. Suppose you want a product to cost £9.99 including tax. The example store is in the UK, where the applicable rate is 20%. There are two ways to reach a £9.99 total, and each needs a different number in the product. Which number is right depends on a setting in your store, not on the product itself.
Staff errors are common here because the store does its own arithmetic after you type a number. The five checks below follow the order you would normally work through when adding or changing a price. Work through them on one product first, then apply them to a batch.
You do not need to write code or change files. You do need to know which tax setting your store uses, what rate applies to your goods, and how the storefront displays the result. If any of those is unclear, settle it before you enter anything. This post covers the entry step only. Questions about which rate applies to your business or how to handle returns depend on where you sell, so check them with your local tax authority or an accountant.
Confirm which way your store takes prices
Before you type a single price, find out whether your store expects prices inclusive or exclusive of tax. This choice decides what the number in the price box means. If you enter a number that fits one setting while the store uses the other, every saved price will be off by roughly the amount of the tax.
The guide sets the two options side by side. If you select yes, you enter prices inclusive of tax, and you type the total product price, which is £9.99 in the example. If you select no, you enter prices exclusive of tax but still want the same total, so you enter a lower product price of £8.325. Both routes reach the same £9.99 total, but only one is correct for a given setting.
Do not assume the setting from how the storefront looks today. A product may display correctly because someone entered it the right way earlier, and the next product may be entered the other way. Ask whoever set up the store, or check the tax settings yourself, and write the answer on the staff sheet beside your price list.
Test the setting on one product you can easily undo. Enter a known price, look at the total the customer will see, and compare it with what you intended. Only then start on the rest of the list. Fixing one product is far easier than correcting a whole category after customers have seen the wrong figure.
Enter the tax rate exactly as the field asks
The tax rate is a separate value from the product price, but it drives every calculation that depends on tax. The guide's example is clear: enter 20 for a tax rate of 20%. Enter the figure in that form, and check it against the rate that applies to your goods in your region.
Do not copy a rate from a forum post or an old spreadsheet without checking it. Rates change, and a rate that was correct for one region or product type may not apply to yours. If your goods fall under more than one rate, check each group, because one wrong entry affects every product in that group.
For related checks, see sales tax rate inputs.
A rate change needs its own check. Note the date you changed the rate, then recheck a sample on the storefront: one simple price, one unusual price, and one sale price if you run sales.
Keep the rate and the price in mind together. A correct price with the wrong rate gives a wrong total, and a correct rate with the wrong price does too. Good staff check both before they save.
When prices include tax, enter the total
Take the setting you confirmed earlier. If prices are inclusive of tax, type the total the customer should pay into the product price field. In the example, that is £9.99. Do not subtract the tax yourself. The store does that work.
The guide explains what happens next. WooCommerce works backward from that total and calculates that it includes a base product price of £8.325 and £1.665 in tax. The £9.99 you typed is split into a price before tax and a tax amount, and the two add back up to the total you wanted.
The common mistake is to work out the net price by hand and type it into a field that expects the total. Staff do this because they are used to finding the price before tax on an invoice. If the store is set to inclusive, that number is not the total, so the store treats it as one and takes tax out again. The customer then sees a lower total than you meant to charge. The store has done exactly what the setting tells it to do with the number you gave it.
After entering an inclusive price, check the product page. If the displayed price is different, do not adjust the number until you know why. Check the setting and the rate first, because one of those is usually the cause.
Illustrative example: check an inclusive entry
Suppose your intended total is 100 and your illustrative tax rate is 20%. With prices set to include tax, enter 100. Save the product, then compare the displayed total with 100. If it differs, check the setting and rate before changing the entry.
When prices exclude tax, enter the net price for the total you want
Some stores take prices exclusive of tax. The product price field then expects the price before tax, and the store adds tax when the customer sees the page. The number you type is not the number the customer pays, so you need to work out the net figure from the total you want.
The guide covers this case directly. If you select no, you enter prices exclusive of tax but still want the same total. In the example, you enter £8.325 as the product price. WooCommerce adds 20% tax and displays the same rounded total of £9.99. The customer sees £9.99, the same as the inclusive example, but the number in your editor is different. This is the most confusing part of the process, so give it extra attention.
Do not round £8.325 yourself. The guide uses the exact figure, with its three decimal places, to reach the total. Type the figure as the guide shows it, then check the result on the storefront.
The displayed total is rounded, so the net figure you typed will not look like the price the customer pays. This is normal, and it is why you cannot judge the result by the editor alone. Judge it by what the customer sees.
Before you save, write down three figures: the total you want, the net figure you plan to type, and the total you expect the storefront to show. After saving, compare the storefront with your note. If they match, move on. If not, your note shows which step went wrong.
Make sure staff know the difference between the two settings. Someone who has learned the inclusive method and then moves to an exclusive store will enter the total instead of the net price, and every product will show a wrong figure. A reminder at the top of the price list, saying which setting the store uses, prevents this.
Test the storefront and cart after every change
The last check is the one most people skip. After you save a product, do not assume it is right. Open the product page as a customer would and read the price. Add the product to the cart and check the total. Then go to the checkout or cart summary and confirm the figure matches what you intended. If a customer could buy several units, check the line total too.
The cart is where a customer first sees a running total, and a wrong price is most likely to cause a complaint there. If the cart shows an unexpected figure, go back through the setting, the rate, and the product entry, in that order. The cart only repeats what the earlier steps produced.
Compare what you see with the target you wrote down. In the guide's example, the target is £9.99 with 20% tax. If all three places show that figure, the entry is probably right. If any shows a different figure, stop and find out why before changing the product again.
Test a sample rather than a single product. Choose a simple product, a product you have just changed, and a product you entered in a different way from the others. Each can reveal a different kind of error. Record what you checked so you can repeat the test after the next change.
After bulk edits, spot-check the first few products, then a random selection from the rest. One mistake in a source list can be copied across the store. If the sample shows a problem, pause the batch and fix the cause before going further.
Common mistakes to avoid
A second group comes from changes elsewhere in the store. A new rate, a new product type, or a new staff member can introduce a difference that is not obvious from the price list. If you change any of these, repeat the checks that cover them, because an earlier test may no longer hold.
For rate updates, see local sales tax changes.
A correct display is also not proof of a correct setup. A product can look right on one page and behave differently in the cart or at checkout, so test all three every time.
Working through the checks as a team
If more than one person enters prices, agree who checks whom. One person enters prices and a second person checks the storefront. The person entering should not be the only one who knows the setting. Keep the staff sheet, with the setting and rate on it, up to date whenever either changes.
Name an owner for the setting and the rate. If nobody is named, a change can happen without the people entering prices knowing, and the staff sheet goes out of date unnoticed.
Set a short routine. Before a batch, confirm the setting and the rate. During the batch, enter prices using the rule for that setting, and note any product that surprises you. After the batch, run the storefront test on a sample and record the result. This takes a little extra time, but it is far quicker than correcting wrong prices after customers have seen them.
Your next step today
Run them on a few products before relying on them for the whole catalogue. A short test now saves a long correction later, and it gives you a clear record if a customer or colleague asks how a price was set.
Common questions
What price should I enter when prices include tax?
Enter the total product price you want the customer to pay.
What does the tax rate field take?
Enter 20 for a tax rate of 20%.
What should I do if the displayed total differs?
Check the tax setting, rate and product entry before changing the price.