What is in a sales tax report?
For a period, the taxable and non-taxable sales, the tax collected, and the refunds that reversed tax, grouped by jurisdiction. Each figure comes from the tax lines the store recorded on the order, so the report reflects what was actually charged rather than what a rate table says should have been charged.
Where the store recorded no tax line on a taxable order, the report shows it as an exception rather than filling it in, because a silently corrected figure would be the worst possible outcome on a filing document.
- Taxable and non-taxable sales for the period, grouped by jurisdiction.
- Tax collected, from the tax lines the store recorded on each order.
- Refunds that reversed tax, matched to the orders they came from.
- Exceptions: taxable orders with no tax line, shown rather than silently corrected.
- The reconciliation to net sales, with any variance shown against the orders that caused it.
How is the report reconciled to the cent?
The report reconciles to the period's net sales: the taxable base plus the exempt base equals net sales, and the tax collected equals the sum of the tax lines. Where a variance exists, it is shown with the orders that caused it, not absorbed into a rounding line.
That reconciliation is what makes the report usable. An accountant who can tie the tax figure back to the revenue figure in one step does not need a second reconciliation of their own.
Why export in the accountant's own columns?
The export is a spreadsheet laid out the way the brand's accountant asked for it, so the file can be used directly rather than re-keyed into another template. Re-keying is where filing errors are introduced, and removing that step is most of the value of the surface.
The export carries the period, the scope and the exceptions with it, so the person filing sees the same caveats the person reading the screen saw.
What are the filing view and the nexus watch?
The filing view groups the period by jurisdiction, in the order the filings are due, with the figures each one needs. The nexus watch tracks sales by state against the thresholds the brand has configured and flags the ones approaching, so a new obligation is noticed before it is missed.
The watch reports the brand's own sales against thresholds the brand entered. It does not interpret law, decide whether nexus exists, or advise on registration; those are questions for the brand's accountant.
What the engine will not do here
It does not give tax, legal or financial advice. It does not file anything. It does not change a tax line in the store. It produces a report from records that already exist and shows where those records are incomplete.
That restraint is deliberate. A product that quietly adjusted tax figures to make a report balance would be worse than useless; a product that shows the exception lets a professional fix the cause.
Who owns it on ftes.ai, and how does the month close?
The Controller FTE owns the period close and reads this surface alongside the net-sales bridge; the Landed Cost & Compliance FTE owns the charges on the cost side. The report is produced on schedule and the exceptions are raised in the Morning Brief so they are dealt with before the filing week, not during it.
For a brand that connects mid-month, the first report covers the range the backfill reached and says so. From the next full period, the report is complete.
What does the month-end rhythm look like?
The report is produced on schedule for the period, and the exceptions it found are raised on the Morning Brief as they appear rather than at the end. A taxable order without a tax line is worth fixing on the day it happens, not in the filing week.
When the period closes, the report is reconciled, exported in the accountant's layout, and kept. The next month's report starts from the same records, so a brand's filing history is one continuous, checkable series rather than a folder of spreadsheets.