How to Set Up Counties or Zones

Configure county or zone tax rates and assign them to your cemeteries for accurate, automatic tax calculations.

Written By Dennis Rodin

Last updated 10 days ago

Counties (also called Zones) let you assign different tax rates to different geographic areas. When a cemetery is tied to a county, MonuDesk uses that county's tax rate on every order for that cemetery automatically.

This is useful for two situations:

You operate across multiple counties and pay different sales tax rates depending on where the monument is installed.
You don't actually have county-based tax but you want to group cemeteries by area for reporting and installation planning.

Counties or Zones: pick the terminology

Go to Settings → Counties/Zones, listed under Cemeteries & Tax Zones in the Settings menu. At the top right, you'll see a dropdown to switch between Counties and Zones.

This dropdown is purely a label change. It renames the feature throughout the app to whichever word your business uses. The data and behavior stay identical. Some companies call them counties (county-based tax). Others call them zones (geographic groupings). Pick whichever matches how your team talks.

Adding a county or zone

Click + Add County (or + Add Zone) at the top right.

State: select the state your county is in. The list shown depends on your country. If your Company Profile is set to United States, you'll see U.S. states. If it's set to Canada, you'll see Canadian provinces. To switch between countries, go to Settings → Company Profile and update the country. Learn more: How to Manage Your Company Profile

County name: once you pick a state, type or pick the county name.

If you're using Counties mode, you'll be able to pick from the list of real counties for that state.
If you're using Zones mode, you can type any custom name, like "West Miami" or "North Side."

Tax rate: type the percentage. You can also enter 0% if this zone has no tax (still useful for grouping).

Click Save to add it.

Connecting counties to cemeteries

After adding a county, go to Settings → Cemeteries and edit each cemetery you want to assign to that county.

In the cemetery edit form, you'll see a County (or Zone) dropdown. Select the county and save. If the county is not there yet, click Add next to the dropdown to create it without leaving the cemetery form; after Save it comes back selected. The dropdown only shows entries that match your terminology toggle. If you're in Counties mode, it shows counties. If you're in Zones mode, it shows zones.

Tip: If you have many cemeteries, this part takes time the first time. After you do it once, every order for that cemetery will calculate tax automatically with the right rate.

How tax is calculated on orders

Once counties are set up and cemeteries are linked, MonuDesk works down these steps and uses the first one that has a rate:

A rate was typed by hand on the order → that rate is used, whatever the cemetery says.
Automatic Tax Calculation is on (Settings → Taxes) → a new quote takes the sales tax rate for the purchaser's ZIP code. If no rate is found for the ZIP code, MonuDesk carries on down this list.
Cemetery has a county assigned → MonuDesk uses the county's tax rate on every order for that cemetery.
Cemetery has no county assigned → MonuDesk uses the Default tax rate of the office location the order belongs to, set per location in Settings → Office Locations.
That location has no default either → MonuDesk falls back to the Sales Tax % in Settings → Company Profile.

You can still override the tax rate on an individual order in the Pricing Panel (with Automatic Tax Calculation on, once the quote has been saved). The auto-fill is just a starting point. Hover the question mark next to the rate and the tooltip names which step the rate came from. Once a quote is saved it keeps the rate it was saved with, so changing a county's rate later does not change quotes and orders you already saved. This order of preference only decides which rate is picked; it does not change how the tax is worked out.

Learn more:How the Pricing Panel Works

Where else counties show up

Counties and zones are also used by two Insights pages:

The Tax Report (Insights → Tax Report) lets you group tax collected by county, so you can see exactly how much sales tax came from each jurisdiction. How to Use the Tax Report
The Installations page (Insights → Installations) lets you group monument installs by county or zone, so you can route by area when planning install days. How to Use the Installations Page

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