Knowledge center

For certain countries, I would like to make sure we are selling only to VAT-registered businesses, by requiring input of VAT number and validating it.

My use case is that for some countries (e.g. Russia), you need to register with them for VAT on the first B2C purchase (there is no revenue threshold). I would rather not sell to customers based in these countries than go through the extra loops of registering there and sending quarterly reports.

Still, I don't want to make VAT number mandatory for customers in EU. Can I achieve this using Checkout pages?

Hello Artur,

Thank you for writing in.

You can enable VAT validation from the Tax settings option from your Chargebee site. However, this setting cannot be enabled/disabled for select countries. 

However, you can choose for the VAT number field to be Shown/Hidden and set as a Mandatory field or not for your customers. Please follow the steps below to make these changes on your Chargebee site.

For HP V2

Navigate to Settings >> Configure Chargebee >> Checkout & Self-Serve Portal >> Field configurations >> Tax Information >> VAT Number.

For Checkout V3

Navigate to Settings >> Configure Chargebee >> Checkout & Self-Serve Portal >> Fields >> Billing >> VAT Number. 

With regards to your use case, you can choose to hide select countries from the drop-down list of countries for billing/shipping address from your Checkout Page. This way customers from those countries would not be able to complete their billing process and hence you don't have to sell to them.  

Hope this answers your question.

Hello Boney,

Thank you for your response. My summary:

1. I can define, for what countries I collect the tax registration number. I can do this for every country without a tax profile, or turn it on for selected tax regions. This will show the VAT number input field e.g. for EU and Russia.

2. However, if I make the VAT number mandatory, it will make it so for every tax region. It doesn't work for me, because it would block off the B2C sales in EU.

3. Finally, I can disable selected countries, but this is also not what I want, because it will block B2B sales.

I think I have two options:

1. Create my own checkout page, where I add this logic.

2. Disable selected countries all together in Chargebee (as in point 3) and ask the customers to 'contact us directly if your country is not listed'.

Hi Artur,

Thank you for getting back to us. You have surmised it correctly. However, I would like to clarify a few of points just to be sure.

1. If you set your VAT number field settings to "Show" and "Not Mandatory", the field for VAT number would be visible to your customers during checkout, but not a mandatory field. So they can checkout without entering their VAT numbers.

2. If however, you set the VAT number field settings to "Show" and "Mandatory", it would be a mandatory field for your customers. Hence, they would have to fill in their VAT number to proceed further in the checkout process.

3. The VAT number validation setting would just validate the authenticity of the entered VAT number IF it has been entered by the customer. If VAT number is not entered by the customer, this setting would do nothing.

Regarding the solution options that you have suggested, the second option would work well with Chargebee. For this, Chargebee would still be taking care of the VAT validation process. If this is not suitable for you, the option to create your own checkout page would also work. You can choose what suits you best. 

Hope this clarifies it for you.

Hi,

I'm in a similar situation. I sell B2B SaaS from a EU country:

1. I must collect (mandatory) VAT numbers from customers that are located in a EU country

2. I do not need to collect VAT numbers from customers outside of the EU

So, I would like:

1. Make VAT mandatory field when the country is a EU member

2. Make VAT optional when the country is not a EU member