1. Overview of taxes, reconciliation, and the settlement process
1.1 Introduction
This document is designed to help the business and financial contacts at partners of Coda Payments to understand the Coda Payments rate card and relevant services charges and taxes, the steps involved in the reconciliation, invoicing, and settlement process; and what types of content each payment channel can be used to collect payments for.
2. Other Taxes
Singapore Withholding Tax: Coda is a Singapore company, and in accordance with the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore, “Payments for software or digitised goods that do not involve the transfer of the copyright rights embedded in the goods will be considered as payments for copyrighted articles and are not subject to withholding tax.” As such, Coda does not apply any withholding tax on its payouts to publishers, regardless of which country they are based in.
Singapore GST:
For publishers domiciled in Singapore
For publishers domiciled outside Singapore
Due to changes in GST law in Singapore, Coda will be required to determine, charge and remit 7% GST to the appropriate tax authority on transactions processed in Singapore. In this case, Coda will deduct the GST amount from the settlement payment and remit to the appropriate tax authority. You don’t need to calculate and send GST separately for purchases made by customers in Singapore.
Sales Tax: Depending on the local tax law, Publisher may be required to include sales tax in the price offered to customers for digital content purchases in some countries. If you offer content in tax-inclusive countries, the amount that we charge to customers will include the applicable taxes (i.e. when publisher’s charge request submitted to Coda via API for Rp.100.000, we will charge the customer Rp. 100.000, of which Rp. 9.091 will be deducted as sales tax (in the case of Indonesia as illustration) to be remitted to the appropriate tax authority by either the payment channel, Coda or Publisher.
Currently, Coda supports the transmission of sales taxes to the responsible tax authority on Publisher’s behalf for selected channels. Please refer to our “Country-specific guidelines on sales tax” for more details.
Please note that Singapore's GST rate is 8% with effect from 1st January 2023.
3. Reconciliation, Invoicing, and Settlement.
3.1 Terms & Conditions
There are four steps in the payment cycle that finance teams should understand when working with Coda: (1) transactions are processed during a particular month (the “Transaction Period”), and then (2) a sales report is generated by Coda (the “Sales Report” or “S.R.”) and sent by email to the Publisher, and then (3) an invoice (“the Invoice” or “Inv.”) is sent from Coda to the Publisher or from the Publisher to Coda, depending on the payment channel (as illustrated below), and then (4) Coda makes payment to the Publisher (“Pay”). The table below illustrates this flow and when each of these steps take place:
The table below illustrates this flow and when each of these steps take place:
Why are invoices sent from Coda to Publisher for certain payment channels and from Publisher to Coda for others?
a. When the Annex or E-annex for a payment channel indicates that sales made by Publishers are to Coda, Publisher agrees to sell to Coda content that is accessed by End Users at a discount. Publisher will invoice Coda each settlement cycle for the Transaction Value of all Successful Transactions made during the month when transactions were processed less the agreed-upon discount.
b. When the Annex or E-annex for a payment channel indicates that sales made by Publisher are to End Users, Coda shall provide transaction-processing services to Publisher and invoice Publisher each settlement cycle for the fees described in the Annex or E-annex.
Why are invoices sent from Coda to Publisher for certain payment channels and from Publisher to Coda for others?
Scenario A: a payment channel where the Publisher sends invoice to Coda (i.e. where Publisher agrees to sell content to Coda at a discount). Suppose a publisher processes transactions in the month of January. The Sales Report would be automatically generated by Coda and sent by email to the Publisher on 1 February. For channels with settlement period of 60 days, the Publisher would then be responsible for sending an invoice to Coda’s finance team no later than the 25th of March. Provided the invoice is in order, the payment would then be sent by Coda to the Publisher before 31 March.
b. When the Annex or E-annex for a payment channel indicates that sales made by Publisher are to End Users, Coda shall provide transaction-processing services to Publisher and invoice Publisher each settlement cycle for the fees described in the Annex or E-annex.
Scenario B: a payment channel where Coda sends invoice to Publisher (i.e. where Coda agrees to provide transaction-processing services to Publisher). Suppose a publisher processes transactions in the month of January. The Sales Report would be automatically generated by Coda and sent by email to the Publisher on 1 February. For channels with settlement period of 60 days, Coda would then be responsible for sending an invoice to the Publisher’s finance team no later than the 25th of March. The payment would then be sent by Coda to the Publisher before 31 March.
Cut-off date:
The table below illustrates the timeline for transactions that occurred in January depending on Payment Channel's settlement period:
How to prepare and format a Publisher invoice to Coda:
Here are some tips to ensure the invoice that you send to Coda is correct (in cases where the Publisher is obligated to send an invoice to Coda):
1. The invoice should be prepared only after the Publisher has reviewed the Sales Report sent by Coda and has verified that the data is correct.
2. The amount specified on the invoice shall be for the value of transactions processed during the Transaction Period, net of Coda’s fees. Taking Indonesia carrier billing as an example, if Rp. 1.000.000 was processed in a transaction month (exclusive of VAT) and Coda’s fee is 30%, then the amount that should be specified on the invoice is Rp. 700.000.
3. The Publisher can use any format for the invoice desired, so long as it includes the following information: (1) payment channel(s) for which the invoice applies, (2) the Transaction Period, and (3) the net amount.A sample invoice can be found in Annex A.
How to interpret an invoice from Coda to the Publisher:
Here are some tips to ensure that you correctly interpret the invoice from Coda to the Publisher (in cases where Coda is obligated to send an invoice to the Publisher):
The amount specified on the invoice shall be for the value of Coda’s fees. Taking Indonesia bank transfers as an example, if Rp. 1.000.000 was processed in a transaction month and Coda’s fee is 10%, then the amount specified on the invoice will be Rp. 100.000.
Other notes:
1. Settlement currency: transactions are always processed in the country’s local currency (i.e. Indonesian Rupiah, Singapore Dollars, Malaysian Ringgit, Thai Baht, Philippine Peso, or New Taiwan Dollars). Payouts to publishers are always made in USD at the exchange rate used by the bank (or non-bank payment service provider where applicable) when the exchange from local currency to USD is made, less the international transfer fee specified in Publisher’s agreement with Coda.
2. Deferment of payment: to minimize the remittance fees that publishers bear, if a payment would be less than US$500, Coda will, unless the publisher instructs Coda otherwise in writing, defer making it until the current month’s payment and deferred payments from prior months total US$500 or more.
3. Settlement bank account: The payee bank account must be a corporate account in the name of the Publisher. Personal bank accounts will not be accepted.
4. Accessing transaction data: finance contacts at Publishers can access transaction records in two ways:
4.1 Via Automatically Generated “Sales Reports’: On the first day of each
month, Coda’s system will automatically generate a sales report for the
previous month (i.e. on February 1, the report will summarize transactions
processed in the month of January), and deliver it to email accounts that have
been provisioned with Finance access in the Publisher Portal. If you’re not
sure who has Finance access in your organization, please contact Coda and
we can help.
4.2 Manually (i.e. “self-serve”): Transaction data can be manually generated
by any user that has Finance access in the Publisher Portal anytime by visiting
the Transactions tab.
4.2.1 The user can select the filters such as payment channels and date
range as desired
4.2.2 Then press “Show results”
4.2.3 Finally, the user can click “Export CSV” or “Email CSV” to extract the
transaction data in CSV format. For Email CSV function, iIf you don’t
receive the CSV within a few minutes, please check your spam/junk folder.
4.2.4This process is illustrated below:
4. Sample Forms
Invoice forms
The signature must be included in all requests. The signature for a request is a hash of the following fields, in correct sequence: id + jsonrpc + method + serviceProvider + txnId + orderId + userId + zoneId + currency + amount + sku + quantity + paymentChannelId + isForTest (+ roleId)