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VAT Check: VIES

The export of goods to other countries within the EC (Intra-Community supply) is subject to 0% VAT, since the purchaser pays the VAT locally in their own country. A supplier is responsible for checking the VAT number before they ship goods with a 0% VAT rate.

The European VAT number validator can automatically check the validity of a VAT number of a VIES country during the registration process. This will reduce the time spent on registering business customers because the VAT check is automated.

The European VAT number validator is only available in the new registration form (V2) and needs to be configured in the CloudSuite App.

Configuration per Country​

  1. In the CloudSuite App, open the country details and go to the eCommerce tab. (Alternatively, you can open the shop details and in the Shop Access tab, open the country from the Allowed Countries list).
  2. Choose VIES VAT number validation as the desired VAT validation web-service to initiate VAT number checks using the web service (at http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/vatRequest.html)
  3. Each country has a regular expression (regex) used to validate VAT numbers, which is included in the Country settings field. Regular expressions defining the VAT numbers for all VIES countries (see below) have already been added, so there is no need to add new ones. This is used to validate the VAT number in the front-end of your webshop, pre-empting the need to use the web service (which has a daily maximum number of uses).

Adding VAT to the Registration Forms​

Registration forms for the webshop must ask the user for their VAT number. In the CloudSuite App, open the form details and make sure a VAT field is required. (Alternatively, you can open the shop details and in the Shop Access tab, open the form from the Registration Forms list).

Local Configuration​

The new registration form should be active in the webshop Localconf settings.

LOCALIZED_REGISTRATION_FORM = True

Front-end​

  • In the Mosaic Templates theme, you can find a LOCALIZED_REGISTRATION_FORM variable that controls the visibility of the registration form.
{%- if LOCALIZED_REGISTRATION_FORM %}
    {% include template('components/account/registration/layout.html') %}
{%- else %}
  • The fieldset can be found in the following file: @cloudsuite/mosaic-templates/templates/components/account/registration/fieldsets/company.html
{{ form_input_localized(form.company.fields.vat) }}
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