More tools: excise tax, government portals, catch-up, the policy engine, workflows and the trust badge

Interactive tutorial

Follow the course step by step in the interactive player.

Lessons

1. 1Find Excise Tax and read the pageThis lesson is for the tax manager and the accountant. Excise tax is a tax on goods such as tobacco, energy drinks, carbonated drinks, sweetened drinks and electronic smoking products. You will find the Excise Tax page, read the figures at the top, visit its five sections while they are still empty, and read the reference table of rates that the app applies.6 min
2. 2Register an excise product, field by fieldThis lesson is for the accountant, who keeps the excise records. Before any stock can be recorded, each excise product must be registered. You will register an energy drink and learn what every field of the Register Excise Product form is for: the product code, the name, the excise category, the retail sale price, the customs code, the imported tick box, the rate type, and the two optional reference numbers.7 min
3. 3Register products taxed per litre and per unitThis lesson is for the accountant. Not every excise product is taxed as a percentage of its price. You will register a sweetened drink taxed by volume, with its pack size, sugar content and sugar tier, and then a product taxed at a fixed amount per unit, and see how the two appear in the Products list.7 min
4. 4Edit a product, meet the duplicate check, and deactivate a productThis lesson is for the accountant. Prices change and product lines end. You will change the retail sale price of a registered product, see which fields are locked, see what the app does when a product code is used twice, and take a product out of use with Deactivate and bring it back with Activate.6 min
5. 5Bring in products from a spreadsheet, and export the listThis lesson is for the accountant. When there are many products, typing each one is slow. You will download the template, bring in a file of five products, read the result to see which rows were imported and why two were skipped, and then download the whole product list as a file.6 min
6. 6Add a designated zoneThis lesson is for the accountant. A designated zone is a warehouse or area approved by the tax authority where excise goods can be held before the tax on them is due. A transfer of stock into or out of such a zone can only be recorded once the zone is on the list. You will add one zone and learn its three fields.4 min
7. 7Record an import of excise goods, field by fieldThis lesson is for the accountant. Excise is worked out from stock movements: each import, production run, sale, transfer or disposal of excise goods is recorded as one movement. You will record an import of energy drinks and learn every field of the Record Stock Movement form, then read the excise the app worked out and see the stock on the product.7 min
8. 8Record a sale, a transfer to a designated zone and a production runThis lesson is for the accountant. Different movement types are treated differently. You will record a sale, see the app refuse a sale of more stock than you hold, record a transfer into a designated zone, which asks for the zone, and record a production run of a drink taxed per litre. Then you will compare the excise the app shows on each row.8 min
9. 9Bring in stock movements from a spreadsheetThis lesson is for the accountant. A month of movements usually comes out of the stock system as a spreadsheet. You will download the movements template, bring in a file of six movements, and read the result: which rows were saved, and why one was skipped.5 min
10. 10Reverse a stock movement recorded in errorThis lesson is for the accountant. A stock movement cannot be edited or deleted, because returns are built on it. A movement recorded in error is cancelled with a reversal: a second movement on the same date with a negative quantity, value and excise. You will enter a sale twice by mistake, see that the app accepts it, and reverse the extra one with a reason.5 min
11. 11Compute the excise return, read it and recompute itThis lesson is for the accountant, who prepares the return. You will have the app add up September's movements into an excise return, read its totals and its breakdown by category, add a movement that arrived late and compute the same period again, download the return as a PDF and the list of returns as a CSV file, compute a second period, and see that the accountant cannot file a return.8 min
12. 12File the excise return as the second personThis lesson is for the tax manager. The app does not send anything to the tax authority: you submit the return on the authority's portal, then record here that it was filed, with the reference the portal gave you. Filing needs the permission to approve excise returns, and it must be done by someone other than the person who computed the figures. You will review and file the two returns the accountant prepared, and see why a return with nothing in it cannot be filed.7 min
13. 13Correct a filed return: reopen it, reverse the wrong movement and recomputeThis lesson is for the accountant. A mistake is found in a return that has already been filed. You will reopen the August return for amendment with a reason, reverse the movement that was wrong, record the correct one, and recompute the return, ready for the tax manager to file the amendment.7 min
14. 14File the amendment and read the return's historyThis lesson is for the tax manager. After the accountant has corrected and recomputed a reopened return, you file the amendment, as the second person, once it has been submitted on the authority's portal. You will file it and read the return's history of filed versions.4 min
15. 15Government Portals: add the portals you file onThis lesson is for the tax manager and anyone who files with an authority. Government Portals is a register of the authority websites your company files on, and of every filing made there. The app does not sign in to any portal and does not file for you. You will add two portals, one without and one with a stored sign-in name, learn every field of the form, and see what Check connection and Activity really do.8 min
16. 16Record a filing and its receipt, edit a portal and remove its credentialsThis lesson is for the tax manager and anyone who files with an authority. After you file on a portal, you record the submission here with its receipt number, so that anyone can later find what was filed, when, and under which reference. You will record two submissions and learn every field, read the figures that show a missing receipt, rename a portal, and remove stored credentials.8 min
17. 17Catch-up bookkeeping: bring earlier months up to dateThis lesson is for the accountant. When a company starts using ComplianceOS part way through its life, earlier months have to be brought in. The Catch-up bookkeeping page shows every month since a starting year and whether it has data, still needs classifying, or is done. You will find the page, bring in a file of earlier transactions, classify them all with one button, and follow the months that now need review to the Sign-off cockpit.8 min
18. 18Sign off the AI's classifications and close the catch-upThis lesson is for the tax manager. The accountant has brought in earlier months and had the AI classify them, and every classification is waiting for a person. You will open the months from Catch-up bookkeeping, read why the AI chose each category, approve the AI's suggestions in the Sign-off cockpit, and see the months turn to Done.5 min
19. 19Policy Engine: write a rule in plain English and run itThis lesson is for the compliance officer. The Policy Engine lets you describe a check in an ordinary sentence, such as flag every purchase above a certain amount. The AI turns the sentence into a filter once, and from then on the filter is run against your records without AI. You will write a rule for tax transactions, read the filter the AI built from it, run it, and find the alerts it raised.8 min
20. 20Policy Engine: work the alerts, pause a rule and delete a ruleThis lesson is for the compliance officer. A rule is only useful if someone looks at what it finds. You will read the alerts raised by the rule from the previous lesson, open a matched record, mark the alerts as resolved and find them again under Resolved, then add a second rule, pause it, and delete it.8 min
21. 21Workflows: run an AI workflow and read what it didThis lesson is for the compliance officer. A workflow is a task the AI carries out in several steps on its own, in the background, using a fixed set of tools. The Workflows page starts a run and keeps a full trace of every run. You will start a Regulatory Impact Analysis on an invented regulatory change, watch it finish, and read its inputs, its steps and its result.7 min
22. 22Trust Badge: set up the public pageThis lesson is for the compliance officer. The Trust Badge, which the page itself calls the Public Integrity Portal, is a public web page that shows a few facts about your company's compliance, taken from its records in ComplianceOS. Customers and partners can open it without signing in. You will choose the address and the heading of the page, decide which items it shows, create it, and read what is published.7 min
23. 23Trust Badge: share the page, see who looked, change it and take it downThis lesson is for the compliance officer. You will copy the public address, open the public page as a customer sees it, see the visit counted, refresh the published values, change the settings, and unpublish and republish the badge.8 min
24. 24The Contributors page: who can add documents, and where access is managedThis lesson is for administrators. The Tools group of the left menu has a page named Contributors. It lists the people who can add documents and evidence on this entity, apart from the administrators, with the documents they have uploaded and the comments they have written. You will read the page, open a person's documents, and follow its link to Access control, where that right is granted.4 min
25. 25What a read-only auditor sees in these toolsThis lesson is for auditors, and for the people who give them access. The auditor role can read and export but cannot change anything. You will see what that means in Excise Tax: the auditor reads the products, movements and returns and downloads a return, the buttons for adding and changing records are not shown. You will also see which of the other tools in this course the auditor role cannot open at all.6 min
26. 26What you see without access to these toolsThis lesson is for everyone outside the tax and compliance teams, and for the people who support them. A member of staff with no tax or compliance role does not see these tools in the menu. You will see what the left menu looks like, and what each page says when a colleague sends you its address.4 min
27. 27How this connects: calendar, Evidence Vault, Filing Tracker and audit logThis lesson is for the compliance officer, and for anyone who wants to know where the work in this course shows up elsewhere. You will follow the excise returns into the Compliance Calendar, the Evidence Vault and the Filing Tracker, and find the excise work, the portal submissions and the policy rules in the audit log. You will also see which connections do not exist, so that you do not rely on them.9 min

How this connects to the rest of ComplianceOS

• Compliance Calendar

  Sync Deadlines on the calendar adds one entry for each excise return, due 15 days after the end of its period. The entry is Pending while the return is a draft and Completed once the return is marked as filed or amended.

• Approvals (maker and checker)

  Filing an excise return goes through the approval rule File an excise return: the person who computed or recomputed the figures cannot file them, and the approver needs the excise approve permission. When the tax manager files a return the accountant computed, her filing is the approval and the return is filed at once.

• Workflows and the Compliance Calendar

  A workflow can act on what it finds. In this example the Regulatory Impact Analysis added a deadline to the Compliance Calendar and recorded a risk insight; the Result of the run lists each action taken and any error.

• Evidence Vault

  Each filing of an excise return, including the filing of an amendment, writes a sealed record named Excise Return Filed, with the period, the excise due, the status and the filing reference, under the seven year tax retention.

• Filing Tracker

  The Filing Tracker lists each excise return deadline and follows the return: filing it in Excise Tax marks the entry Filed with its reference, and a return reopened for amendment keeps its deadline met.

• Entity dashboard

  The entity dashboard shows the next deadline from the Compliance Calendar under Upcoming Deadlines. Once the calendar is synced, an excise return that is still a draft can be that next deadline.

• Audit log

  Every excise product, stock movement and reversal, designated zone and return computation, reopening and filing, every government portal and portal submission, and each Policy Engine rule is written to the audit log with the date, the time and the person. A filing also appears as an approval request approved.

• Tax Intelligence

  Catch-up bookkeeping reads the tax transactions of Tax Intelligence month by month, and Classify all pending runs the same classifier. Its AI suggestions wait in the Sign-off cockpit of Tax Intelligence until someone with the approve permission, here the tax manager, signs them off; only then is a month Done. Policy Engine rules with the target Tax Transactions are applied to the same transactions, and View on an alert opens Tax Intelligence.

• Trust Badge sources

  The public trust page takes its values from the entity's own records: the tax registration number on the entity profile, the latest corporate tax return, the latest compliance report, the sanctions screening checks and the workforce records. An item with no data behind it reads Unavailable.

• Access control

  Excise Tax needs the excise permissions; its buttons are shown only to people who may use them, and filing a return needs the excise approve permission held by someone other than the person who computed it (in this company the tax manager and the compliance officer). Government Portals needs the filing permissions, the Trust Badge and Workflows the compliance task permissions, the Policy Engine the policies permissions, and Catch-up bookkeeping the tax permissions. Without the view permission a page shows Module access required.