How to Set Up Tax and Retentions in Mastt

Tax and retentions in Mastt are configured separately to give you control over contract-level GST settings and payment-specific retention amounts. Tax applies to entire contracts, while retentions are calculated payment by payment for cash flow management.

Before you start:

• Contract must be created with a contract standard set
• All figures entered in Mastt should be before tax
• Tax is only applied on exports (payment certificates, schedules, variation letters)

Steps

Set up contract-level tax

1. Navigate to your contract setup page
2. Complete the contract standard configuration
3. Click the Setup and Configuration tab (appears after contract standard is set)
4. Enter the Tax percentage for this contract
   • For Tax-free contracts: Set to 0%
   • For standard contracts: Set to 10% (or your sales tax rate)

Configure payment retentions

1. Open the payment you want to add retention to
2. Scroll to the bottom of the payment page
3. Click the Retention accordion to expand retention options
4. Choose your retention method:
   • Retained this payment: Enter the exact dollar amount to be retained
   • Percentage: Enter the percentage of contract line items to be retained

Important retention rules

• Percentage retentions only calculate on the contract line items (not Variations)
• To retain funds on variations, enter the actual dollar figure in Retained this payment
• Cash retentions are calculated individually for each payment

How tax and retentions work together

When you export payment certificates or schedules, Mastt calculates amounts in this order:

1. Calculates Tax percentage for the entire payment
2. Removes retention amounts
3. Applies Tax to the total after retentions are deducted