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VAT and Service Charge: Set It Up Once, Applied Everywhere

Ordering & Payments

By menu-MENA Team

Published on September 6, 2026

Egypt's 14 percent VAT isn't optional and it isn't new, but the way a restaurant actually applies it to a bill is where things get messy. A spreadsheet gets one branch's rate right and another's wrong. A printed menu says one number and the register rings up another. A WhatsApp order confirms a subtotal that doesn't match what the guest ends up paying. None of that is a big problem on any single order, until it's the third guest this week asking why the total on their phone doesn't match the total on the receipt.

menu-MENA has a VAT / sales tax section under Settings that handles this with one rate, applied everywhere the number shows up.

Where it lives

Open Settings > Restaurant Info and scroll to the section labeled VAT / sales tax. It starts with a single switch, Charge VAT on orders, off by default. Nothing about your prices changes until you flip it and save, so turning this on for the first time doesn't retroactively touch anything a guest has already seen.

Flip it on and two preset buttons appear: Egypt 14% and Saudi Arabia 15%. Click one and it fills in both the rate and a label ("VAT" in English, "ضريبة القيمة المضافة" in Arabic). It's a shortcut, not a lock. The Rate field underneath takes any number from 0 to 100, so a rate that matches neither preset, a flat 12 percent fee, say, works exactly the same way.

Included in the price, or added at checkout

The next field, How prices are shown, is the decision that actually matters: Menu prices include VAT or VAT added at checkout. This isn't a display preference, it changes what the guest sees. With inclusive pricing, a short line appears under the public menu ("Prices include 14% VAT") and the order total is exactly the number printed next to each item, no surprise at checkout. With exclusive pricing, that note disappears and VAT shows up as its own row in the order drawer and the review sheet, added on top of the subtotal. Pick whichever matches how your kitchen actually prices its menu. The setting doesn't take a position on which is correct for your business, it just needs to match your receipts.

What happens to the piastres

Below that sits Piastres, with four rounding modes: keep them (12.37), drop them entirely (12), round to the nearest 5 (12.35), or the nearest 25 (12.25). This only touches the final order total, never the price printed next to an item, so a line item at 33.33 still reads 33.33 even if the total three of them produce gets rounded to a cleaner number. A live preview sits right under these fields: type a rate, pick a rounding mode, and it shows subtotal, VAT, and total for a sample 100 EGP order before you save anything.

One number, four screens

What's worth trusting is what happens after you save. The same calculation that built that preview runs again everywhere the total shows up: the note under the public menu, the order drawer a guest opens before checking out, the review sheet they confirm before sending, and the text of the WhatsApp message that lands with the order. All four read from one shared summary, so a guest never sees 142 EGP on their screen and then watches a WhatsApp message say 140. That consistency is the actual point of "set up once."

Renaming the line

The rate field has a custom label option too, up to 100 characters, set separately in Arabic and English. If what you actually charge isn't VAT, a flat service charge instead, say, you can rename the line to say exactly that rather than leaving it labeled "VAT" on a percentage that isn't VAT. It's worth being clear about the limit here: this is one configurable line, not two. If your business genuinely runs VAT and a separate service charge as two distinct rows on the receipt, today's settings handle one of them well and the other has to get folded into your menu prices some other way.

Every branch keeps its own copy

Run more than one location, and VAT settings live per branch, not once for the whole account, since a second location can genuinely need a different rate or a different rounding rule. That doesn't mean typing it in six times. The tool that copies a menu from one branch to another has a restaurant-info checkbox that carries VAT settings along with it, so opening branch two usually means pushing branch one's settings over and adjusting only what's actually different.

Every save here goes through the same server-side check no matter which screen you used to make it: the rate has to be a real number between 0 and 100, the rounding mode has to be one of the four listed, or the save gets rejected outright rather than quietly storing something wrong. It also lands in your account's audit log with a before-and-after diff, so a rate that changed three weeks ago isn't a mystery.

Frequently Asked Questions

Egypt's standard rate is 14 percent. Click the Egypt 14% preset in the VAT / sales tax section and it fills in both the rate and the VAT label in English and Arabic. You still need to flip the Charge VAT on orders switch and save before it applies to anything.

It's off by default. Nothing about your prices or your order totals changes until you enable it and save, so setting this up for the first time doesn't retroactively affect any order a guest has already placed.

That's a business decision, not a technical one. Menu prices include VAT shows guests one clean price and a short note under the menu. VAT added at checkout keeps menu prices lower and shows VAT as its own line in the order drawer and review sheet. Pick whichever matches what your receipts actually charge.

Not as two separate lines today. The settings handle one configurable rate with a custom label, so if you only add one line to a bill, whether you call it VAT or a service charge, this covers it. Running both as distinct rows on the same receipt needs to be baked into your menu prices another way.

Yes, each branch keeps its own VAT settings, since two locations can legitimately need different rates. You don't have to retype it though: the tool that copies a menu from one branch to another has a restaurant-info option that carries VAT settings along with everything else.

No. Rounding is applied once, to the final order total, never to the price printed next to an item on the menu. Choosing No piastres turns a total like 100.40 into 100 on the receipt without touching any of the line prices that added up to it.