If you sell your goods via Amazon, you can conveniently use the VAT Calculation Service (VCS) to create invoices and calculate VAT. We are now in the process of making the functions easier and better for you. You can find out exactly what we are planning in this developer diary.
VCS is short for Amazon’s “VAT Calculation Service” (VAT stands for Valued Added Tax). The VCS offers merchants the option of delegating the VAT calculation to Amazon. There are two versions of this service: VCS and VCS Lite.
With VCS, Amazon handles the entire VAT calculation for the retailer. This includes not only the calculation itself, but also the issuing of invoices and credit notes. The corresponding documents are then provided in the form of reports and can be viewed by customers and retailers as PDFs in Seller Central.
The VCS Lite version only provides the VAT calculation. The retailer is responsible for creating their own invoices based on this calculation. They then upload these to the Amazon platform via the API interface. You can find more information on this in the JTL guide.
There is also the IDU (Invoice Data Upload) option, where the retailer does not use Amazon’s VAT calculation service. Instead, the retailer uploads their own invoices directly and takes care of the VAT processing themselves.
VCS and JTL-Wawi rethought
To make the functions even more stable and user-friendly, we have opted for a clearer presentation of actions and status in a user-friendly interface.
Based on our experience since the introduction of the VCS functionality and taking into account the changes made by Amazon in recent years, we have completely redesigned the VCS project “under the hood”.
These changes await you:
Current status of the Amazon VCS redesign
The redesign of VCS in JTL-Wawi is currently undergoing internal quality assurance (QA). At this stage, extensive internal checks and tests are carried out to ensure that all aspects of the project meet our standards and requirements.
We will then obtain initial external feedback from technology partners. This partnership will enable us to gain practical insights, identify potential challenges and receive constructive suggestions for upcoming improvements.
A look into the future
We are aiming to introduce the new VCS next year after a successful QA phase with an update of JTL-Wawi. The open pilot phase will then start with the beta phase of JTL-Wawi 1.10. With the release of the stable version of JTL-Wawi 1.10, this will become the mandatory version for the use of VCS. Older versions will no longer be supported. If you use VCS, please plan an update for next year. Until then, we will of course keep you up to date on further development steps, e.g. in our newsletter:
Update: JTL-Wawi 1.10 with the new Amazon VCS integration was released on 16.04.2025. All information about the stable version of JTL-Wawi 1.10 can be found in the blog post.
