Most cafés and restaurants run two VAT rates simultaneously — standard for in-house consumption, reduced for takeaway food. nouz handles this with per-product overrides: set each product's rate once and it just works at every close-out.
01 The two-rate rule
In most European countries, hospitality has two VAT bands: the standard rate (20% Austria, 19% Germany) for drinks consumed in-house, and a reduced rate (10% Austria, 7% Germany) for takeaway food. Mixed cafés need both.
The standard rate is your business default (set once on your profile). The reduced rate gets applied per-product to whichever items qualify. nouz's formatter and P&L math handle the mix without any extra configuration.
02 A worked example
A Vienna café with a small food menu:
Same drink, two products — one in-house, one takeaway — each with its own tax rate.
When the customer asks "in or out", the till staff pick the right product on the entry. The VAT is right by construction. At month-end, the P&L tax line shows the sum of tax computed correctly per entry — even though the rates vary.
03 Manual revenue entries
Manual entries (no product reference) use the default rate from your profile. If a single day has a mix of rates and you're entering manually, your options are: (a) split the day into two manual entries (one at each rate), (b) live with a small averaged-rate inaccuracy, or (c) move that day to product-based entries.
For most owners with a meaningful split between standard and reduced revenue, option (c) is the right answer — set up products for the reduced-rate items so the math is automatic.
04 When you have more than two rates
Some businesses carry three or more rates — say, standard VAT on most items, reduced VAT on takeaway food, and zero VAT on certain books or exports. nouz handles this the same way: each product's tax rate is a field on the product, with no limit on how many distinct rates you use across your catalogue.
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