VAT
Under Business settings, in the account menu. VAT is set once, for your business. Not per shop, not per integration, and not per connection to your accounting system. One place, and everything that raises a number reads it from there.
Are you registered?
Section titled “Are you registered?”If you are not registered, Bottle charges no VAT on anything, whatever rate sits on a product. Nothing needs turning off one bottle at a time. A business that is not registered must not charge VAT, so Bottle leaves it out of sight as well: no VAT column or rate on products, one price that is what the customer pays, no VAT line on invoices, and no “including VAT” in the emails customers get.
If you are, give your VAT number. It belongs on an invoice, and your accounting system will want it.
You can register later without going back through your products: it is one setting, and every rate you have already recorded starts applying. Each product keeps a rate even while you are not registered, and when you switch VAT on Bottle asks you to check them before the next invoice goes out.
Rates only matter once you are VAT registered: until then nothing is charged, 5% products included. Each product carries the rate it attracts. HMRC’s guidance (VAT Notice 701/19) treats LPG in cylinders under 50kg as domestic fuel at 5%, whoever buys it, unless it is bought to resell. Gas sold as road fuel (autogas) is 20%, and so is beer gas, which is not a fuel. A distributor selling both is charging both, which is why the rate sits on the bottle rather than on the business. Check anything unusual with your accountant.
There is no default rate: you choose the rate on each product as you add it. A product pulled in from your online shop, or made through the API without a rate, starts at the standard 20%; change it on the product if it should be something else.
Prices from your shop
Section titled “Prices from your shop”Prices in Bottle never include VAT. If you pull a catalogue from WooCommerce or Shopify, Bottle asks the shop whether its prices have VAT in them, and takes it off as it pulls where they do, at the standard 20% that new products from a shop start on. There is nothing to set here: see Connecting your shop.