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For the Eastern Caribbean
Six countries share the Eastern Caribbean dollar and charge four different standard rates — and each draws the line around tourism in a different place. Operate on one island and none of this matters. Operate on two and your price list is wrong somewhere, with no exchange rate to warn you.
The six, by standard rate
Read the right-hand column rather than the middle one. The rates differ, which is easy to plan for once you know. **What is harder is that each country draws the line around tourism in a different place** — and one of them decided not to draw it at all.
Antigua & Barbuda
17%
No reduced band at all — it abolished the one it had
St Kitts & Nevis
17%
Accommodation and restaurants — the widest band here
St Vincent & the Grenadines
16%
Accommodation only — the narrowest
Dominica
15%
Accommodation and diving
Grenada
15%
Accommodation and dive operations
St Lucia
12.5%
Three rates, and “hotel” is a bedroom count
Every figure here is read at the statute or the authority and dated in our own provenance file with a source. That is not an invitation to rely on it — it is the reason we can tell you to check. Confirm with your adviser before you configure anything, ours included, and read the answer below about why one of these authorities is not the place to check.
What this costs today
Each is what an invisible border looks like a year later. Nothing here fails on the day it happens, which is exactly why it survives.
The list was built where the business started. It goes out unchanged to the other islands because nothing about the transaction suggests it should not — same currency, same language, same group. The rate embedded in it is right in one country and wrong in the others, and no conversion happens to make anybody check.
A group billing accommodation on one island and restaurant covers on another has an invoice whose lines belong to different treatments. Where the rate is a property of the document, that fact is lost at the moment of capture and every later reconstruction is an estimate.
Whether a property counts as a hotel can turn on how many bedrooms it lets for reward. Nobody records bedroom counts in a finance system, so the attribute that decides the treatment lives in whoever knows the estate — and it changes when a property is extended.
One of the six still publishes a standard rate and an accommodation rate on its own live site that were both repealed at the end of 2023. A business that configured its system from that page has been charging the wrong figure ever since, correctly, from an official source.
Operations across the islands
In every other multi-country operation, the currency is the tripwire. Prices are quoted in something different, a conversion happens, somebody notices they are dealing with another jurisdiction. Here the currency is identical across all six, so nothing in the transaction announces that the treatment has changed — and the treatment has changed, because each of the six draws the line around tourism in a different place. What follows is about running an operation where the border is invisible in the data.
Sales documents
Held per line, so one invoice can serve two islands
Net, tax and gross split at the point of capture on every line rather than applied per document. A group billing across islands has a mix, and the mix is a property of the lines — reconstructing it later from a document total does not work, because the total is the thing that lost the information.
Property records
Attributes of a building, where a building decides the treatment
In one of the six, whether you are a hotel at all turns on how many bedrooms you let. So a fact about a property is an operational fact with consequences, and it belongs on a record with a date rather than in somebody's knowledge of the estate.
Inventory
Every island its own position, and the sea between them
Each location holds its own stock with governed transfers confirmed on arrival, so goods moving between islands are an owned position rather than a gap. What makes it different here: that movement crosses a jurisdiction without crossing a currency, so nothing in the numbers marks the change.
Documents
The evidence that a supply was what you said it was
Where a reduced band attaches to a named activity — accommodation, a dive, a tour, a restaurant bill — the qualifying evidence is what a later question is about. Held against the transaction and retrievable by it, rather than gathered from a period when somebody asks.
Reporting
By island, because a group total hides six answers
The same records queried per location and per entity. A consolidated figure across islands that share a currency looks trustworthy precisely because no conversion happened in it, which is the reason to be able to break it apart.
Offline operations
Capture at a site the network has not reached
Stock issues and returns, transfers, check-in and check-out and asset movements recorded on mobile with no signal and synced on return. Counting, receiving a purchase order and dispatch each need a connection — four operations, named, rather than a claim about mobile support.
One limit belongs beside the first two cards rather than in the small print: we hold the rate you set and the attributes you record. We do not decide which band a supply falls into. Six jurisdictions, several bands, and definitions that turn on bedroom counts and on whether transport inside a tour was direct or indirect — that is an adviser's question about your specific business, and a vendor answering it in a sales meeting has told you something about how they sell.
Scope, in three parts rather than two
Three columns, because “no” means two different things. The middle is work with a price on it. The right-hand column is where we stop deliberately — and its third item applies to this page as much as to any other vendor’s, which is why it is worth reading before the other two.
Running in the product today
On the roadmap — and commissionable now
Not ours, by choice — and this column is the reason to believe the other two
The middle column is work with a price on it, not a ceiling. A per-jurisdiction rate dimension is the obvious first ask and it is ordinary work — a field, a resolution rule, a migration for existing records. Kenya's eTIMS transmission and its maintained statutory payroll engine both exist because clients needed them and commissioned them, which is the evidence rather than the promise. Tell us which island and which band and we will come back with a written specification, a timeline and a price before you commit to anything. There is no date on this page because nobody has paid for one.
Read the last column as different in kind from the middle one. The middle is unbuilt work. The last is where we stop deliberately — and the third item there is the one to weigh, because it applies to this page as much as to any other vendor's.
How this starts
Write down the rate you actually charge on each. If the two figures are the same, that is either correct or the finding — and establishing which costs you one conversation with your adviser rather than a demonstration from us.
On the line, on the document, on the customer, or in a price list somebody maintains by hand. The answer tells you whether your mix is a record or an annual reconstruction, and it is the same answer for every island you add.
Not a band rule and not a filing route. The ability to record what you charged and why, keep the evidence against it, and answer a question about one island in one period without rebuilding a year.
Read before you shortlist
Six independent countries share the East Caribbean dollar and charge four different rates of VAT. No conversion, no revaluation, one price list — so nothing in a finance system signals that a second market exists, and the safeguard that stops it adding unlike currencies is exactly what hides six separate tax positions.
Saint Lucia charges 12.5%, 10% or 7% depending on what is sold and who sells it — and "who" is settled by counting bedrooms. Five or more and you are a hotel. Four and you are not, on the same street, selling the same night. A hotel guest's folio carries three rates before breakfast.
The list was built where the business started, and it goes out unchanged to the other islands because nothing in the transaction suggests otherwise — same currency, same language, same group. Everything else has changed.
For an exporter the tax balance is a receivable rather than a liability — often a large one, managed with less rigour than a debtor a tenth of its size.
You win the export contract on a Tuesday. From that Tuesday the distinction is a property of your invoice lines — and a system holding a rate per document has already lost it.
Every system provisions a tax rate from a country, because almost everywhere the country is the unit. Where it is a sector instead, a correct-looking configuration is wrong for your whole business.
Asked across the islands
Whichever you set, and that is the honest shape rather than a dodge. Your organization holds one default rate per tax type, and each sales and purchase line carries its own rate split net, tax and gross at capture — so a group operating across islands records what it actually charged, line by line. What the product does not have is a per-jurisdiction rate table: nothing resolves a rate from the island a supply happened on, and nothing knows that four standard rates exist across these six countries. That dimension is on the roadmap rather than a boundary, and it is commissionable now — a field, a resolution rule and a migration for existing records, which is ordinary work. It is also the same build the Jamaica page needs for a sector dimension, so if you operate in both places it is one piece of work rather than two. Say which islands and we will come back with a written specification, a timeline and a price.
No, and this is the answer to weigh hardest on this page. Each of the six draws the line differently — one has no reduced band at all, one extends it to restaurants as well as accommodation, two include diving, one runs three separate rates and defines a hotel by how many bedrooms it lets. Nothing in our product encodes any of that, and nothing infers a rate from what you sold or from a property attribute. This is a boundary rather than a backlog and it protects you specifically: the failure mode of band logic that is nearly right is a finance team that stops checking with their accountant, and being wrong here is charging the wrong figure to every customer for a year. What we do is hold the rate you set on the line, and the evidence that the supply was what you recorded it as.
The attribute, yes. The conclusion, no — and the split matters. A property can be held as an asset record with attributes, custody, dates and documents, so how many bedrooms a property lets for reward is a field with a history rather than something the operations manager knows. That is genuinely useful, because the number changes when a property is extended and the change has consequences. What we will not do is turn that field into a treatment: deciding what a property counts as under a statutory definition is your adviser's judgement, and a threshold that a system evaluates silently is a threshold nobody re-checks after the building work. A boundary rather than a backlog, deliberately.
No — nothing in the product watches a calendar. Scheduled single days on which approved businesses charge a reduced rate are a real thing in one of these six, and a rate that is correct on 364 days a year is not a rate problem: it is a diary problem. Our position is that a date in a field which nothing acts on is worse than no field, because it looks like automation. So the honest arrangement is that somebody owns the date, changes the rate that morning, and changes it back — and the audit trail records who did both. Prompting on a scheduled change is on the roadmap and commissionable, and it is the same missing mechanism the Fiji page records for a rate moving under an open document. Until it exists, it is a person with a diary, and we would rather write that down than let you assume otherwise.
Because on at least one of these islands the authority's own live page is out of date, and this is the single most useful thing on this page. One of the six still publishes a standard rate and a reduced accommodation rate on a document linked from its current site; both figures were repealed by an Act gazetted at the end of December 2023, and the country now has one rate and no reduced band — the opposite of every neighbour. Our rows for all six are read at the statute or the authority and dated in our own provenance file with a source for each. And you should still confirm with your adviser rather than trusting us, for exactly the reason this answer exists: we have been wrong about a rate before and published the correction. A vendor's country list is not evidence. Ask any vendor where their figure for your island came from and when they last read it; the ones who have never been asked will point at a rate page.
One, and this is the part that fits well. Every island is its own location or entity with its own stock, its own numbering and its own approvals, with one place to ask a question across all of them. Transfers between them are confirmed at the receiving end, so goods on the sea leg are an owned position rather than a gap both ends assume the other is carrying. Reporting runs per location as well as consolidated, which matters more here than usual: a group total across a shared currency looks trustworthy precisely because no conversion appears in it, and that is the reason to be able to break it apart. What we do not do is consolidate statutory accounts or eliminate intercompany balances — we make the underlying records agree, which is the part that is usually wrong before anybody gets that far.
It is the shortest working-day overlap of any market in this directory — about two hours — and you should weigh that before anything else on the page. There is no office and no implementation partner on any of the islands and we are not going to imply otherwise. What is genuinely in your favour: language is not a constraint, three of your neighbours already have written guides in this corpus so the region is not new to us, and implementation runs as guided sessions on your own data rather than a fly-in project, which is what makes a two-hour window workable rather than merely survivable. What you should test is the thing distance actually breaks — not the demo, but the fourth support request in month three. Ask us what happens when the person who implemented your system leaves, and ask it as bluntly as you would ask a vendor two time zones closer.
The same product or service, the rate you charge for it in two of the six, and where that rate is stored. If the two figures match and they should not, you will have found it before we say anything.