The module is available for download here.

The installation instructions are below:

– INSTALLATION –

1) Register for a TaxCloud merchant account at https://taxcloud.net/account/register/. Information on using your TaxCloud account can be found in our user guide found here.

2) Register to obtain an USPS account ID at https://secure.shippingapis.com/registration
Follow the steps on the email you’ll receive to set this USPS account for production usage, or call USPS support. This module won’t work if your USPS account is not on production mode. This account is used to verify addresses.

3) With Ubercart installed, install the TaxCloud module as usual—see http://drupal.org/node/70151 for further information. This module requires the following modules (most of them required by Ubercart): Taxes, Store, Payment, Order, Rules, Entity tokens, Entity API, Views, Chaos tools, Product, Image, File, Field, and Field SQL storage.

– CONFIGURATION –

4) Configure the TIC Field for product classes:

a) Go to Structure > Content Types > Product > Manage Fields (admin/structure/types/manage/product/fields).

b) Add a TIC Code field. Machine name MUST be field_tic_code of type “Text” with “Text field” widget. Set as non-required, set default value to 00000, and set maximum length to 255.

c) Repeat steps a and b for each product class of your store. We suggest you use “Add existing field” for each class once you’ve added the field for the first time. You can set different default values for TIC codes on each class. See https://taxcloud.net/tic/ for more information.

5) Go to Store > Configuration > TaxCloud settings (admin/store/settings/uc_taxcloud).

a) Set the Default Taxability Information Code for the store. This is a global setting, just in case not every product has a TIC configured. See https://taxcloud.net/tic/ for more information.

b) Set the Shipping Taxability Information Code. This is the TIC applied to shipping. (The standard shipping TIC is 11010.) See https://taxcloud.net/tic/ for more information.

c) Set the TaxCloud API ID, API Key, and USPS ID from steps 1 and 2. See https://taxcloud.net/account/api/ for more information.

d) Set the “Delivered by seller” option (1= seller’s vehicle, 0 = other method—e.g., UPS, FedEx).

6) Configure “Store address”: Go to Store > Configuration > Store > Store Address (admin/store/settings/store) and set all the fields with valid information.

7) (Optional) Activate the TaxCloud cart pane at Store > Configuration > Cart (admin/store/settings/cart). This will let your users have pre-calculated taxes before checkout. Note: In the cart pane, shipping taxes are not calculated.

8) (Optional) Configure the TIC codes for your products: Edit your products. You’ll find the TIC code field you configured on step #4 on “Product Information” section where the SKU is. The text field interface will be replaced automatically with TaxCloud’s TIC code selector. (Must have Javascript enabled.)

9) Test your configuration by adding some products to the cart and setting real shipping addresses on checkout page. You’ll find a “Taxes” line item with sales tax lookup amount. It’s recommended that you enable error displaying on admin/config/development/logging for tests. That will show you valuable information if lookup cannot be done for some reason.

Important: On production sites, you must not show lookup errors to the user (admin/config/development/logging) as they may contain sensitive data.

You can download it for free from: https://rubygems.org/gems/TaxCloud or just install the gem into your project: “gem install TaxCloud”.

Update! Version 1.0.1 is now available, which includes bug fixes and enhanced TIC functionality.

More information is available on the X-Cart website.

The module is available for download here.

You can learn more about PrestoStore.com at http://www.prestostore.com.

The first step is to create a merchant account at TaxCloud.net. After you do that, we will send you a copy of the user guide, which describes how to set up your merchant account and create a test site. Once you have set up your test site, the system will generate your TaxCloud API ID and Key, which identifies you to our system. The guide also describes how to get a USPS ID, which is required for the address verification service.

The next step is to determine where to place the integration in your system. In a shopping cart application, it’s standard to make it part of the checkout process, after the user has entered a shipping address.

The basic process is as follows:

1. Verify the customer’s address using the VerifyAddress service. This will determine the 9-digit zip code for the shipping address, which is necessary to make an accurate tax calculation. If your system already verifies addresses you can skip this step.

2. Look up the taxes for the items in the shopping cart.

3. Once the order has been completed, you call the Authorized and Captured services to complete the transaction in TaxCloud and to record that payment has been made. This follows the standard pattern of a credit card transaction. It is also possible to combine these two calls into one, which is what will be shown in this example. You can determine which method to use based on the design of your system.

That’s it! The TaxCloud system needs to receive a tax identification code (TIC ID) for each product so it can determine the tax rate to use. You will have to store this information along with your product. There is some optional functionality that you may want to include. TaxCloud can also manage exemption certificates for customers and apply them to orders. You can also return part or all of an order. We are just covering the basics in this post.

The example code can be downloaded here. The zip file contains three PHP files. The classes.php file contains standard TaxCloud class objects. The taxCloudConfig.php file is a configuration file. You will need to modify this file to include your TaxCloud merchant account information. You could, of course, store this information some other way in your application, such as in the database. The func.taxcloud.php file contains the methods that your application will call to integrate with TaxCloud. You will have to include these files in your PHP files so they can be referenced.

Example integration code:

Verify Address:

The method you will be calling is the func_taxcloud_verify_address() method in func.taxcloud.php. This method requires an Address parameter and an Error parameter.

// Create an Address object. You will of course have to populate the fields below with data from your system.
$destination = new Address();
$destination->setAddress1('The customer's street address');
$destination->setAddress2('The customer's street address, line 2 if available');
$destination->setCity('The customer's city');
$destination->setState('The customer's state'); // Two character state abbreviation
$destination->setZip5('The customer's 5 digit zip code');
$destination->setZip4('');

// Create an error Array
$err = Array();

// Call TaxCloud. You will receive a verified address in return.
// Note that this method will populate the error array with messages if there is a problem.
// You will have to write code to handle error conditions.
$verifiedAddress = func_taxcloud_verify_address($destination, $err);

Once you have a verified address you can look up taxes for the products in the shopping cart.

// Create your product Array (example)
$products = Array();

$product = Array();
$product['productid'] = 1; //Your system's product ID
$product['price'] = '19.99'. //product price
$product['qty'] = 1; //product quantity

$products[0] = $product; //repeat this for each item in the shopping cart

// Create the 'origin' address - your company's business address
$origin = new Address();
$origin->setAddress1('Your company's street address');
$origin->setAddress2('Your company's street address, line 2 if available');
$origin->setCity('Your company's city');
$origin->setState('Your company's state'); // Two character state abbreviation
$origin->setZip5('Your company's 5 digit zip code');
$origin->setZip4('');

// We also need to pass in the shipping charges
$shipping = 5; 

// Create an array to contain any error messages that may be returned
$errMsg = Array();

// Now call TaxCloud - $taxes will contain the total tax amount for the order
$taxes = func_taxcloud_lookup_tax($products, $origin, $destination, $shipping, errMsg);

At this point you can add the taxes to your cart’s total and proceed with the checkout. The above code assumes that you have a TaxCloud TIC ID configured for each product in your catalog. There is an example method called “func_taxcloud_get_tic()” in the example code. This method will have to be modified to retrieve the TIC ID for each product in your system. Another way to do this is to pass the TIC ID in with each product.

It also assumes that you already have a cart ID stored in the user’s session ($_SESSION['cartID']). This will be needed later on in the process. TaxCloud can generate a cart ID for you if needed. It also assumes that there is a customerID stored in the session ($_SESSION['customerID']).

Once the customer has entered payment information and is ready to complete the order, it is time to inform TaxCloud that the order has been completed. In this example we are assuming that payment has been made.

// Call TaxCloud Authorized() and Captured()
$orderID = 12345; // The order ID

$errMsg = Array(); // Container for any error messages

$result = func_taxcloud_authorized_with_capture($orderID, $errMsg);

// The result will be 0 if the call is successful or -1 if there is a problem

That is it! The transaction is complete.

The guide covers all the features of TaxCloud, including but not limited to:

- Real-time sales tax calculation
- Automatic merchant registration with all state agencies
- Automatic filing of sales tax returns
- Using Taxability Information Codes
- Managing exemption certificates
- Address verification
- And more!

You can download a copy of this guide by logging into your TaxCloud merchant account, going to the “API Instructions” area, and clicking on the “Operating Procedures and User Guide” link.

PHP version 5 is the minimum version that would meet these requirements. However, it appears that there are a few newer versions that are having issues with SSL. So far we have seen this issue with versions 5.2.13, 5.2.14, 5.2.15 and 5.2.17. The error received looks like the following:

Fatal error: Uncaught SoapFault exception: [WSDL] SOAP-ERROR: Parsing WSDL: Couldn’t load from ‘https://api.taxcloud.net/1.0/TaxCloud.asmx?WSDL’ : Start tag expected, ‘SoapClient(‘https://api.tax…’) #1 /home/wysecent/public_html/dsb/init.php(1314): require(‘/home/wysecent/…’) #2 /home/wysecent/public_html/dsb/preauth.php(69): include_once(‘/home/wysecent/…’) #3 /home/wysecent/public_html/dsb/auth.php(60): require(‘/home/wysecent/…’) #4 /home/wysecent/public_html/dsb/home.php(52): require(‘/home/wysecent/…’) #5 {main} thrown in /home/wysecent/public_html/dsb/modules/TaxCloud/taxCloudConfig.php on line 22

The solution to this issue is to upgrade to PHP 5.3. There may be other solutions but they have not been verified.