ADP SmartCompliance is a tax and regulatory compliance platform for midsize or larger companies using an ERP or non-ADP platform for HR and HRMS services.
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Avalara
Score 8.6 out of 10
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Avalara AvaTax connects to the software that businesses already have and delivers sales tax decisions based on precise geo-location in more than 12,000 taxing jurisdictions in the U.S.
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Pricing
ADP SmartCompliance
Avalara
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ADP SmartCompliance
Avalara
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Required
Optional
Additional Details
Pricing varies based upon modules deployed and features enabled.
We love our account manager Joanne Renova who goes above and beyond to make sure that we are well prepared for quarter and year end. She is the reason we are enjoying our experience with ADP thus far. SmartCompliance itself is fairly easy to navigate and has a lot of resources/links available to help & further knowledge.
I find Avalara well-suited in the majority of situations when it comes to tax calculation. The only issues we run into are with more complex tax situations. It may be less appropriate for invoices that have significant variability that affects taxability. For example, if there is a business that sometimes is an installer and other times is not, there may need to be different tax codes set up for each situation. This requires the users to know how tax needs to be charged in different situations, rather than having Avalara do this automatically.
Has extensive research and documentation on telecommunications industry
Research is always up to date
The ability to ask questions and get clarification on specific situations with no limit as to how you ask a question and often get the answer the same day
ADP should have their SC employees better trained to give consistent answers about how to handle certain tax issues relating to the states. I seem to get a different answer multiple times.
It's difficult to distinguish between which cases/letters goes through ADP Workforce Now Service Connect and which cases go through SmartCompliance. I have been told differently on many occasions and will find a case in both places.
While many of the agency notices of tax rate changes, etc. are a very quick process and ADP "resolves" the case, I find other notices get lost in the shuffle when it doesn't fit exactly into the rate change bucket or the past due bill that says "Just Pay It". Some letters aren't that straightforward.
There is no other option on the table for us at the moment to go with a different vendor. We also have had very little issues processing with ADP that would make us want to look for a new vendor.
Avalara is the best sales tax compliance product on the market. Avalara allows us to accurately comply with our sales and use tax obligations in an accurate and timely manner for a reasonable cost. Avatax is a versatile and helpful product. We also are looking forward to implementing the cross-border product.
For the most part, one can get in and learn how to navigate the system by just clicking on one of the suject areas. If you have a good clientrepresentative, they will inform you of new features/functionality and give you a quick demo. This is helpful for one to go back in and navigate to learn how it works and usefulness.
Avalara is hands down the best product available when it comes to what they offer, the robustness of their systems, and the diversity of their offerings. -All while being very cost-competitive. Avalara's tech is best in class while providing a total solution and integration between products and our systems, making processes much more convenient.
Exceptional Services Received during our Build . The teams of ADP Professionals assisted on a daily basis with tight deadlines and testing, each day , each Qtr. and annual processes including setting up local and State agencies for the 50 State we are reporting since our Workday go live 4/1/23. The process was seamless.
If ADP is having issues, they communicate the problem within the solution once you log in. They also communicate that the issue will be fixed promptly. Reports run efficiently and in a reasonable amount of time. Also, the reports allow for various reporting types to be produced like a PDF or a Microsoft Excel file.
We do have trouble tying Avalara's reporting back to our POS, but we just got a new POS system and there are bugs we are still trying to work out within the POS system. I do not believe this is an Avalara issue
As mentioned in the last comment, everyone and everything has been great. However sometimes you get one person that I feel can bring a score down and the current dedicated tax representative I have I do not feel is very supportive.
In my experience, numerous questions, and particularly those regarding billing issues are just ignored, and it is impossible to get to someone to discuss. Your account manager will tell you they are taking care of it and then it just goes into a black hole.
ADP also provide in person training which can fit into our schedule. The are flexible on timing. We always have a pack schedule and not able to attend training in person if not available. Not sure the in person training with recording that can share with us especially we can review it again and again
They have annual training for Smart Compliance, which is very helpful. We learn the most up to laws for various subject matters, like garnishments, payroll law, child support, state unemployment laws by states. We also earn credit toward certifications. The training is user friendly, and highly recommended. It can be done live or listened to at your own convenience.
The documentation online we informative and helpful. The videos from the Avalara institute and the help tab if we have any questions and the search too were helpful. We like the ease of using the click here for more information tool about nexus and the information for the ECM Pro training were helpful. Whenever we have a question we normally get an email along with the tool as to where to find our answer. We also like that it shows information about nexus status of the states we maybe approaching and we can look more into it.
Exceptional Services Received during our Build . The teams of ADP Professionals assisted on a daily basis with tight deadlines and testing, each day , each Qtr. and annual processes including setting up local and State agencies for the 50 State we are reporting since our Workday go live 4/1/23. The process was seamless.
The implementation team from Avalara was very knowledgable and did a good job of passing along information so that we could maintain the system and be able to make future changes ourselves. We had asked for some custom tax setup and they worked with us to get additional taxes set up that they didn't previously have. They worked with us to pull our documentation on tax rules and make sure those were included. I had hoped more scenarios would be there out of the box to cut down on the configuration time.
ADP SmartCompliance was easily integrated with WFN and all of our employee data was in one place. We saw this as an advantage instead of having to log into multiple platforms, everything was quickly accessible to respond to a VOE or claim.
TaxJar is integrated with Kaseya autotask, and this integration is very inefficient and was not easy to set up. Neither TaxJar nor Kaseya support was helpful at all, "rude" is the only word to describe that, whereas Avalara has always tried to be helpful and has been very friendly to work with. TaxJar has no similar capability to retain their tax-calculated transactions and file the returns; TaxJar would calculate the taxes in Kaseya autotask and you would still have to manually import the data into TaxJar if you wanted to subscribe and have them file your returns. Needless to say that was a non-starter.
ADP has the ability to scale across departments. This was found to be true when we rolled out the wage payment solution. ADP users are able to view their pay stubs on their phones and/or computers. This wage payment portal offers W2 storage and paystub storage for access at any time by an employee.
The customer service phone service for the ADP Wisely service is very bad. No understanding or a language barrier is a very difficult service to deal with. Also working with them to correct a situation was impossible. It is basically non existent.
