Thinkific is a powerful course-building platform that comes packed with features to help you start and run your course business. However, it doesn’t have any built-in tools to assist with tax collection and management, two crucial aspects of running any business.
To remain tax compliant, you’ll need a separate solution to manage your taxes, and many creators turn to Quaderno for handling EU VAT (value-added tax) and other sales taxes for their Thinkific schools.
But how do these two platforms work together? What steps are necessary to enable the integration between Quaderno and Thinkific?
To answer these questions, we’ve prepared this guide on how Quaderno can assist with tax management and the process of connecting the two platforms.
Let’s get started!
Why Use Quaderno?
As a creator, being tax compliant can be a challenging task.
First, there are various sales taxes to consider. For instance, you have separate sales taxes for the European Union, India, Australia, etc. Additionally, in some countries (e.g., the United States), tax rates differ from one state or province to another.
Second, each country has its own rules and regulations regarding who needs to collect sales taxes and at what rates. For example, in many US states, you need to collect taxes only if your annual sales exceed $100,000.
It would certainly be easier if you could manage all tax-related tasks within Thinkific. However, since the platform lacks these features, a third-party solution such as Quaderno is necessary.
Quaderno can assist with tax compliance in several ways:
- It tracks your tax obligations in different jurisdictions and lets you know where you need to collect taxes.
- It can automatically determine tax rates and calculate taxes based on each customer’s location.
- It allows you to collect taxes on top of your standard pricing.
- Quaderno lets you create tax-compliant invoices for your customers.
- It can generate detailed reports that you can use to file your tax returns.
Before we move forward, we want to emphasize that the purpose of this guide isn’t to give you tax advice but to show you how to connect Quaderno with Thinkific to handle your taxes.
And if you want to learn more about sales taxes for online courses, we recommend reading Quaderno’s in-depth guide on the topic. Alternatively, you can consult with your advisor.
Now, let’s explore the various options for Quaderno-Thinkific integration.
Option 1: Use Quaderno With Thinkific Checkout
The first option is to use Quaderno to assist with tax reporting while continuing to use Thinkific’s checkout function.
In this scenario, the prices of your courses will include sales tax. Therefore, when a student reaches the checkout page, they will only see the total amount due, which will be the same for all students.
Consequently, you’ll need to subtract the sales tax amount from your income, and Quaderno can assist you with this task. It will track your students’ locations and calculate the correct tax based on their location. Additionally, it will produce tax-compliant invoices and generate tax reports for you.
Now, let’s go over the steps required to enable the integration between Quaderno and Thinkific.
The first step is to create an account on Quaderno with its free trial.
Upon creating an account with Quaderno, go to your dashboard, and from the left menu, select Integrations.
Depending on the payment processor you use, choose Stripe or PayPal from the right side of the screen. For this integration to work, you should use the same Stripe or PayPal account you’ve connected with your Thinkific site.
To connect your Stripe account, you need to sign in to your Stripe account from Quaderno’s page. Similarly, for PayPal, grant access to your PayPal account on Quaderno.
Now, you’ll need to set up custom fields in Thinkific for passing user information to Quaderno. To do that, log in to your Thinkific account, and go to Settings → Orders and Accounts.
Scroll down to the Custom Sign Up Fields section, where you’ll add custom fields.
In order to provide Quaderno with the necessary information, you should create the following fields and make sure they have exactly the same names as below:
- Country: Select the “country” field type and check the box next to “Check this custom field as required.”
- Postal code: This should be a text field that should also be marked as required.
And depending on your requirements, you may want to collect additional fields, such as tax ID and billing address.
That’s it! Quaderno will now receive the data from these fields via Stripe/PayPal. It will then use the data to calculate taxes and send an invoice with a breakdown of the price and tax amount.
The limitation of this approach is that you can’t add taxes on top of your course pricing, which means the taxes have to be paid from your revenue.
Option 2: Use Quaderno Checkout
Another way to use Quaderno with Thinkific is by transferring your checkout process to Quaderno. This eliminates the need for you to charge customers first and then deduct the tax amount from your earnings. Your checkout page will display both pricing and sales taxes.
In this case, your sales pages will be hosted on Thinkific, while your checkout will happen through Quaderno. And you’ll use Zapier to automatically enroll your customers in Thinkific courses upon successful payments.
So, the first thing you should do is go to your Quaderno dashboard and select the Checkout tab from the left menu. Then, navigate to Links and click Create Link.
This will open a new page where you can add your course or other product, select the payment method, decide if you want to collect billing details or coupons, and more.
Once you’re done, click on Create Link and copy it.
Your next step is to go to your dashboard in Thinkific. Then from the Manage Learning Products tab, select Courses and click on the one that you want to add the checkout link to.
Then, in the top-right corner of the page, click on the Build Landing Page button to enter Thinkific’s site builder.
This will open a new page where you can add your course, select the payment method, decide if you want to collect billing details or coupons, and more.
The only thing left to do is to set up a Zapier automation to add students to the course once they buy it through the Quaderno checkout. In this case, your trigger will be New Sale in Quaderno, and the action will be Enroll User in Thinkific. You’ll be able to select your Quaderno products and Thinkific course.
However, keep in mind that you’ll need to be subscribed to the Grow plan in Thinkific to enable enrollment automation through Zapier.
Exploring Alternatives for Handling EU VAT & GST
So far, we have discussed two options for managing your taxes, both of which are through Quaderno. However, if you intend to use this platform solely for tax calculations and reporting, the cost may be a bit high. Additionally, Quaderno’s checkout features can’t compare to those of specialized e-commerce solutions.
As a result, you may want to explore other options.
If you want a full-fledged shopping cart, you may consider using Shopify with Thinkific. Shopify integrates with Thinkific and has powerful tax-management capabilities.
Otherwise, you can use a checkout page builder like SamCart with Thinkific. The platform has powerful checkout and conversion features, including support for tax handling.
Meanwhile, if your budget doesn’t allow you to invest in any of these solutions, you can always calculate your taxes manually.
To do that, you can export your sales reports from Thinkific and do manual tax calculations in a spreadsheet. And if your Thinkific plan supports Zapier, you can even automate this process.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that manually calculating taxes using a spreadsheet will require more time and effort on your end, and you should weigh the cost against time before deciding on this option.
Conclusion
Thanks to Quaderno-Thinkific integration, you can easily manage your taxes while using the #1 course platform to create and sell your online courses.
You can use Quaderno to just calculate taxes and generate reports. Or you can also move your payments to Quaderno checkout to collect taxes on top of product pricing.
Either way, by integrating these two platforms, you’ll be one step closer to being tax compliant.
Try Quaderno for free to start better managing taxes for your course business. You can start a free trial by clicking the button below.
If you’re not using Thinkific yet, you can get a free trial for Thinkific as well.
We hope you found this article useful! Do you collect taxes? How are you handling taxes for your courses? Let us know in the comments section.
