The way that sales tax is calculated to customers in Washington state will change on July 1. I just read a blog post at ShipCompliant that called it a streamlined style. While the tax reporting may be streamlined, the rate calculation is anything but. It's a destination-based tax, where the tax rate is based on the location of the customer. OK so far, as several states do that. The complexity comes into play as the tax rates are not based on county or city boundaries, but must be determined based on ZIP Code plus 4. All e-commerce systems and other order processing systems must be revised to either require entry of ZIP+4 for Washington customers or determine the ZIP+4 based on the customer's address. We've prepared for this change by enhancing our sales tax calculation routines and loading over 30,000 records that correspond ZIP+4 ranges to sales tax location codes.

We're working with some new technology that allows us to take a web application and make it into a desktop application. There are a few tools out there for this, with Adobe AIR getting the most press. As we began developing our point-of-sale system for wineries, the idea of having more control over the application on the desktop was appealing. We began developing it in Flex, which uses Flash for the user interface, but we soon became overwhelmed by the amount of additional technologies and approaches that we'd need to learn.

About that time, we found Prism from Mozilla. They're the company that produces the Firefox browser. It's a similar concept, allowing you to take a web application and package it into a desktop application that can run under Windows, Mac OS and Linux. The cool thing is that you can still run the application from a browser, but for specific applications like a POS, you get some extra benefits. First off, it's faster since you don't have the overhead of a full-featured browser. You can also customize the user interface, give the application a desktop icon, and provide better access to devices connected to the PC.

This isn't for every web application, but it reverses the development approach. Now instead of developing a desktop application that can access the Internet, you develop an Internet application that can access the desktop.

No, this blog is not dead, although I could understand why you could get that impression as the last post was several months back. I recently read about someone complaining to a blogger that they should quit the "mouth work" and get back to "real work". I seem to have the opposite problem -- the real work always gets ahead of the blog. Maybe it's an issue of focus.

I reread Seth Godin's guide on starting a blog for inspiration. Maybe what I need to talk about in this blog are two of my favorite things: wine and technology. Sometimes combined, sometimes each on a separate tangent. I think there's a lot I could say on those topics that others would find interesting. So onward with that approach -- and maybe the mouth work will become easier.

WineWeb will be at all the major trade shows, so be sure to drop by our booth and say hello.

We'll be at:

• Tasting Room Profitability in San Rafael - Jan. 23-24
• Unified Symposium in Sacremento - Jan. 30-31
• Advanced Tasting Room Strategies in Rohnert Park - Feb. 5-6
• WAWGG in Kennewick, WA - Feb. 6-7
• OWIS in Eugene, OR - Feb 10-11
• Texas Wine & Grape in Houston, TX - Feb. 22
• Wineries Unlimited in King of Prussia, PA - Mar. 5-6

Just as wine direct shipment laws vary between states, so do the laws regarding expiration of gift certificates. Recent laws have lengthened the minimum expiration period to 5 years or more in some places. As a business owner, most of us would like to set an expiration date for gift certificates that we issue, to more easily allow any liability to be adjusted off our books.

Our experience has shown that most wine gift certificates are redeemed within 3 months of receipt, with another spike around the one year anniversary (likely due to the gift giver asking the recipient about last year's gift).

If you choose to sell wine gift certificates online using WineWeb's e-commerce service, you can set the expiration days, or choose that the certificates never expire. The system displays appropriate wording on the certificate so you're in compliance will all laws. You, as an administrator of the service, can redeem any gift certificate, regardless of the expiration date, which is useful if the gift recipient phones or walks into your tasting room.

Wine gift certificates are a great way to increase your business' cash flow around the holiday season. WineWeb makes it easy to sell, redeem and administer your gift certificates.

I always thought you could count on your elected representatives to promote a state's industries. Apparently not in Kansas. Last week Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius was quoted as saying “You should be thankful we don’t make wine in Kansas. If you ever see Kansas wine, don’t drink it.” Ouch.

WineWeb's winery directory lists 20 wineries in Kansas. If you're interested in exploring new wine regions, ignore the governor's advise and try some. Hmm, I bet her father-in-law (former congressman Keith Sebelius who served while I was growing up there) would have never said anything like that.

Can you accept online wine gift certificates in your shopping cart? I'm not thinking about a gift certificate that someone orders online, then you handwrite it and send it in the mail. I'm thinking about an online gift certificate that is generated when the online order is accepted. If you use the WineWeb's online ordering system, it's about 2 checkboxes and 4 input fields to setup this feature. This is the topic for our Nov. 20 Tuesday Talk at Ten, our weekly virtual conference where we discuss how to better use our services. It's open to all our customers and potential customers. More info at wineweb.com/conference. You might see a subtle reference to "T3" there (as in "T"uesday "T"alk at "T"en), but since that was the short term for the "Rise of the Machines" Terminator movie, we didn't want to scare off any technology-paranoid guests.

We'll explain the setup, how your customers can use them both online and offline, and some of the security features that are built-in. Good topic, good timing before the holiday season -- please join us for the conference.

Wine clubs make great gifts, especially at this time of year. How easy is it for your winery or wine shop to accept gift wine club subscriptions? Do your current wine club members realize that it's an option for them to give a gift subscription? Your club members should be talking about your club and wanting to share their experience with their friends.

We've just added some enhancements to the WineWeb's wine club system to make wine club gift subscriptions easier. When a club member logs into their account, we prominently display a link for them to click to give a gift subscription. Once they are aware of giving a gift and decide to start the gift process, we pre-fill all appropriate data so they don't have to type much. If the wine club offers prepaid 3, 6 or 12 month subscriptions, that makes the gift setup easy. But what if the wine club is a variable cost per shipment, where you don't want to setup any prepaid amounts (or if it's even more complex, like Club WineWeb, where a different winery processes the credit card each month for a different amount)? Again it's easy for the customer to specify an end date for the gift, and we charge the credit card for each shipment that happens before that date. Once the gift is confirmed, we even provide the customer with a gift card that they can print -- ready to write a personal note and place under the tree.

I mentioned "customer". So who is the customer, the person who gets the gift or who gives the gift? We think they are both customers and give them both access to login to the club member's area. While they can both login to the member's area, they don't have the same level of access, for security reasons. "Simple for the customer, robust under-the-hood" -- hmm... maybe that could be our new motto.

We noticed that another wine e-commerce service launched a few days back, and maybe because it's getting close to Halloween, their take on sales tax spooked us a bit. They state that :...we ask which states you must charge sales tax. This is usually only the state(s) in which your winery holds a physical presence."

Here's the WineWeb's take on sales tax and how we've built it into our e-commerce service.

• Over 20 states require a winery to collect sales tax on direct shipments. In some states this rate is different from the tax rate that a customer would pay at their local wine shop on purchases.
• Some states have a flat sales tax rate, other states have varying tax rates based on the county and/or city.
• All states charge tax on the handling portion of the shipping cost. Some states (11) charge tax on the entire shipping cost.
• Some states (18) require sales tax on non-wine items that that winery ships into the state.

Here's how it works for a winery using the WineWeb's e-commerce service:

• The winery selects each state where they are allowed to ship. If that state requires sales tax to be collected, and the rate varies by destination, the winery can have the system determine the rate based on the customer's location. The winery could also elect to collect a flat rate in that state, mindful that all taxes collected must be remitted. If the state requires a flat rate, the system proposes the appropriate rate.
• The system computes the sales tax amount for all items that are taxable in that state, including shipping, handling and merchandise items. The winery does not need to remember or define these rules.
• When a customer places an order, the system uses the shipping ZIP Code not to directly determine the sales tax, but to determine the taxing jurisdiction (county or city). The sales tax rate is then retrieved based on the taxing jurisdiction. We believe that a ZIP Code match to a sales tax rate is error-prone as about 20% of all ZIP Codes in the country cross a county line. If the system senses that the ZIP Code crosses a county line, and if the tax rate or deliverability varies across those counties, the system prompts the customer to select their county, to ensure that the correct tax rate is applied. The county is then stored with the order data for compliance reporting.

We maintain the sales tax rates, ZIP Codes and dry area so you don't need to spend time and effort to understand them. We also use a compliance company to help ensure that our information is accurate and up-to-date. Nothing spooky about that.

It's not about WHAT you know about wine, it's about WHO you know.

Introducing Club WineWeb, an exclusive club offering wines direct from small-production wineries. Each month members receive two bottles of handcrafted wine, direct from the winery. The winery selects their wines, sets the discounted price, processes your payment and ships the wine. Their incentive is to offer you wines that reflect their winemaking style, in the hopes that you'll order additional wines from them. The wines in the club shipment are priced at a discount, something these wineries rarely do. In addition, you'll receive a page of details on these wines, which will include a promotion code that you can use for a limited-time discount on additional wines from this winery.

This is an exclusive invitation-only club. You must have received an invitation code from a current wine club member or been given the invitation code at a WineWeb-sponsored event. More details about the club is at clubwineweb.com.

As an incentive for club members to invite their friends into this club, we'll highlight the members with the most referral members (including referrals of referrals), and send our top club members cool stuff.