Here you can specify the list of countries to be used in creating customer accounts and, subsequently, for product delivery and payment purposes.

Purpose of control elements:

Upper button "Search" allows to search for countries that meet the selected criteria.
If a value is specified for the text field above the "Country" column, then the country name should have the same prefix. This also applies to the "ISO Code (2)" and "ISO Code (3)" columns. If a value is selected in the pull-down list above the "Address Format" column, only the countries with the same value will be displayed.
The "Address Format" value is used for specifying the address display format. There are 5 predefined formats. Each contains Firstname, Lastname, Street / Street_Suburb fields at the beginning of the address and Country field at the end of the address.

Besides:

The main portion of the page is a table, with rows that contain information about the countries in the database. The "Edit" and "Delete" buttons, and the "New Country" form with the "Insert" button have the usual function.

Here you can divide any country into zones, e.g. states in the USA. The list of such zones may be subsequently used for specifying Tax Zones.

The purpose of control elements is similar to that described in the "Countries" section above.

Here you can specify Tax Zones.
A tax zone is a llist of above-mentioned (usually, geographic) areas ( "Zones"). Tax is only imposed on the product or service ordered by the customer, if the tax class for this product or service (product or service may belong to one tax class only) inlcudes one or more tax rates, for which the tax zone covers the customer's location.

One of the important control elements is the "Details" button available for each tax zone. It allows to switch to editing the list of corresponding geographic areas. Each area may be represented by one of the three combinations:

• All Countries - All Zones
• Country Name - All Zones
• Country Name - Zone Name

If you specify "All Countries" or "All Zones", the area will cover all countries and/or all zones in respective countries.

Here you can create a list of tax classes. As described above, each product can belong to one tax class only. The content of each class may be filled using the "Tax Rates" window.

Here you can create any an unlimited number of tax rates for each "Tax Class" and "Tax Zone" pair. In some cases, several tax rates can correspond to one tax class. Then, if such rates have the same priority, the rate values will be summed up, otherwise they will be multiplied.

In brief, the algorithm for determining the total tax rate for a product ordered by a customer will look as follows:

Input parameters:

• delivery address (customer's address if he or she has logged into the system, otherwise the system will use the store's address): country and area.
• tax class: to be determined as a property of an individual product.

The system retrieves from the database all tax rates corresponding to this address and this tax class. (For instance, if some tax has a matching class tax, and the country and area are defined as "All", then this tax will be applied). Then all tax rates with the same priority will be summed up. Finally, the obtained results (with different priorities) will be multiplied. Eg. if we have 3 tax rates that match the country and tax class criteria:

• 5% with priority 1
• 25% with priority 1
• 7% with priority 2,

then the resultant rate will be (1,070) * (1,000 + 0,050 + 0,250) = 1,391 = 39,1%