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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Bloomberg Tax
Score 8.9 out of 10
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Bloomberg Tax is a tax management and automation software suite supporting corporate tax research, calculation, and compliance.
I find Avalara to work very well if you are using a software system that is integrated with Avalara, and it is set up to calculate the tax and file the returns. It is very streamlined and efficient. It doesn't work as well if the tax is calculated elsewhere and you have Avalara filing your returns; the options for getting the tax info into Avalara are very limited.
The fixed asset software is very advanced for software in general, but it is limited to accounting (GAAP and Tax) fixed assets. Would love to see a more IT user friendly software allowing IT personnel to use a gun to scan the servers and computers, etc. This wouldn't necessarily be a fixed asset as many computer items are too small dollar wise, but it would be a useful feature for IT and accounting to track IT assets by locatoin, user, departmetn, etc. and would be company wide. Another software needed is for company contracts with an ability to send out emails for notifications that a given contract is coming due. Obviously, this would be for contracts and leases but is also useful for accounting and would involve the whole company as there are contracts for rentals, equipment, service maintenance agreements, capital leases, IT contracts, etc.
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
Avalara needs to be able to provide tax and legal advice, so we don't have to go to an outside source.
Some states we file in have more than just sales tax on the return. For example, Washington has B&O tax, tire tax, sales and use tax. It would help a lot if Avalara could report all of these taxes, so we don't have to file manually.
Better outlay of the depreciation section, rather see periods vertically, then horizontally. The periods are difficult to move through when you need to see many months in the past or vice-versa.
Would love to see an ability to mandate certain fields when creating an asset as every company is different.
Would love to see each field have the ability to have it's own pick list, and the pick list that does exist needs to be larger to allow for a longer list rather than just 8-10, then the rest are hidden so you have to move to section 2 to see that continuing list.
We need their help with filing and keeping track of things. It is very likely we are in the process of renewing right now. Autumn is our case manager and she has been a great help in keeping us updated on our usage and renewal. I feel we will be using this for a very long time.
The UI is simple and straightforward. The site is organized in a manner that is easy to understand for beginners and experts alike. There's also tons of resoruces on Avalara University at your disposal to better understand how Avalara can work best for your business needs. I would recommend Avalara to anyone wanting to investment in the betterment of their business's sales tax function
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
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.
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.
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.
When I first started my position, we were already in the process of going into Avalara. I am unsure why our previous Controller selected Avalara, but I do believe it was because of the ease of use and aiding with determining nexus in states where we ship our products.
The ROI with Avalara has been significant. We did not have to hire additional staff to manage sales tax. Before Avalara, when we managed taxes in-house, we constantly received late filing notices and paid related penalties. That all stopped once Avalara took over.
