FAQ

What does it actually do?

It reads the orders already in your Shopify store. Then it groups them by EU country for one quarter, and shows the taxable base and the VAT collected for each.

That is the shape of an OSS return. The app prepares the numbers. It does not file them.

Does it file or pay anything for me?

No. Nothing about VAT Guard touches a tax authority.

It asks Shopify for one permission, read_orders, and it has no write access at all. It cannot change a product, an order, a tax setting or a price. Every number it prints is advisory, and it needs a qualified accountant to confirm it before you file.

Which orders does it count?

It asks Shopify for the orders created since 1 January of the current year, including cancelled and unfulfilled ones. From each order it takes five things: the order number, the date, the shipping country, the current subtotal, and the current tax total.

Two consequences worth knowing. The shipping address decides the country, so an order with no shipping address is not counted anywhere. And an order shipped outside the EU-27 is counted only as a non-EU order, never in a country row.

How far back does it really reach?

Check this before you file. It is the one limit on this page that can cost you money.

VAT Guard asks for the whole year, but what comes back is Shopify's decision. Shopify's developer documentation says the read_orders permission covers "orders created within the last 60 days". Older orders need a second permission that Shopify grants app by app. VAT Guard does not hold it.

So a quarter that started more than 60 days ago can come back short. Since 5 October 2026 the dashboard says so. Pick a quarter that began before the 60-day line and a red notice names the date the read starts from. What it can't tell is whether you had orders before that date, because a missing July looks the same as a quiet one.

You can see it for yourself in one minute. Download the order list for the quarter and find its earliest order. Then find the first order of that quarter in your Shopify admin. If the two match, the quarter is whole. If Q3 starts on 1 July in your admin and the file starts in August, July is missing from every total on the screen. Don't file from them, and write to support with the earliest date you see.

Which quarters can I look at?

The Period menu above the table offers each quarter of the current calendar year, up to the one you are in. Offering a quarter is not the same as holding all of it, so read the answer above first.

Last year is not offered at all. The app does not ask for orders before 1 January.

What is in the OSS CSV?

One row per EU country, with six columns: quarter, country, orders, taxable_base, vat_collected, standard_rate_pct.

The button is Download OSS CSV on the dashboard. It needs the Standard plan.

Your own country gets a row like any other. Those are domestic sales, and they do not go on an OSS return. The file also has no split by VAT rate, so a country where you sell at a reduced rate still needs your own breakdown.

My prices include VAT. Is the taxable base a net figure?

Check one order before you rely on it.

The app takes Shopify's order subtotal as the taxable base and does not adjust it. Shopify's API reference says that subtotal includes tax on a store whose prices include tax. So open one order from the order list in Shopify admin and compare. If net in the file matches the price with VAT, then taxable_base is a gross figure on your store.

Two things follow if it is. The return wants the value without VAT, so the column cannot go in as it stands. And the gap findings will flag every country, because VAT divided by a gross price always comes out below the standard rate.

Can I get a PDF instead?

Yes. Download OSS PDF, next to the CSV button, on Standard and Pro.

The Period and Country selectors apply to it, so oss-2026-Q2-SE.pdf is the second quarter filtered to Sweden. It contains the same figures as the CSV, in the same order, formatted the same way. You can put the two files side by side and check them line by line.

The PDF is in English even though the app itself speaks 11 languages. It is written for an accountant or a return, not for the admin screen. An English file that is correct beats a translated one that sets as question marks in four of those languages.

My accountant asked which orders are behind a country's total. Can I show them?

Yes, since 4 October 2026. Download order list (CSV) sits next to the other two buttons, on Standard and Pro.

It is one row per EU order, with five columns: order, date, country, net, tax. The order column is the number you see in Shopify admin, such as #1001. The amounts are in your store's currency. Add up the net column for one country and you get that country's taxable_base in the OSS CSV, because both files are built from the same orders.

It follows the Period and Country menus like the other two, so orders-2026-Q3-DE.csv is the third quarter, Germany only. Orders shipped outside the EU are not in it.

Why does it sometimes refuse to tell me about the €10,000 threshold?

The union OSS threshold is €10,000 of cross-border sales per calendar year. There are four situations where the tile shows a dash and a sentence in place of a percentage.

Your totals are not in euro. If the store's currency is not EUR, the app has no honest way to compare them, so it says it cannot answer. A Danish store selling in DKK was once told "OSS registration required" at roughly €1,340 of real sales. Converting would fix the arithmetic and hide the problem, because an exchange rate has a source, a date and a legal basis that nobody has picked yet.

The store's country could not be read. Without it the app cannot separate a domestic sale from a distance sale, and domestic sales never count toward the threshold.

The store is established outside the EU. The union threshold does not apply to it at all.

The orders could not be read. The next answer covers that one.

What do the dashes mean?

A dash means "not known". It never means zero.

If Shopify returns no order data, a banner at the top says so. Since 4 October 2026 the four tiles then show dashes, and the threshold tile reads "Can't be checked — your orders couldn't be read". The table and the gap list say the figures are not shown. Before that date the same screen printed 0.00 under the banner, which read as "you owe nothing".

All three downloads refuse in that state. The button answers "Download failed — reload the app and try again" and no file arrives, because an empty file with a clean name is worse than no file.

Reopen the app after a few minutes. If the banner is still there, write to support.

What are the gap findings?

For each country the app works out the rate you actually collected, then compares it to that country's standard rate. Anything more than 1.5 percentage points off is flagged.

That usually means one of three things: 0% was charged where it should not have been, an old rate is still in place, or orders landed under the wrong country. Gap findings are on the Pro plan.

They are a prompt to go and look. They are not a statement that you owe money.

I have a lot of orders. Is the report still complete?

The app walks every page of orders Shopify hands it, up to 25,000.

Above that, orders arrive newest first, so the oldest are the ones dropped. The quarter stays intact as long as the walk reached past its first day. If it did not, the files are named oss-2026-Q2-INCOMPLETE.csv and orders-2026-Q2-INCOMPLETE.csv, each carries a warning row, and the dashboard says the same thing on screen.

The 60-day limit described near the top of this page marks the files the same way. The warning row says which of the two it is.

What plans are there?

Free shows the quarter totals and the OSS threshold watch. Standard, $12.90 a month, adds the per-country breakdown and the three downloads. Pro, $29.90 a month, adds the gap findings.

Both paid plans carry a 7-day trial, and Shopify handles the billing.

What data does it keep?

No orders and no customer details. Orders are read live from Shopify each time you open a screen or export a file, and are not written to a database.

What is stored: the Shopify session that keeps the app installed, and anonymous counters for which screens were opened and which downloads were used. The support page has the full list, along with what happens when you uninstall.

Something is wrong and this page did not answer it

Write to theagentgarage@gmail.com. Include your .myshopify.com domain, the quarter you were looking at, and a screenshot of the screen.

Your store's numbers cannot be looked up from outside it, because the app stores none of them. The screenshot is the difference between an answer in the first reply and three rounds of questions.

VAT Guard is a Shopify app that turns your orders into an EU VAT and OSS report, quarter by country, for merchants who sell into the EU and file OSS themselves.