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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Lexis+
Score 7.9 out of 10
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Lexis+ is a legal research tool used to resolve legal research issues through its case law collection, editorial analysis, and data visualization, which are all accessed via one simplified AI search experience.
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.
Lexis Advance is highly customizable and intuitive, perfect for solo or small practitioners who lack the patience for extended training and too much searching. The contracts are also customizable and can be graduated for new practices so you don't go broke in year one paying for research. I do wish there was more contact with a dedicated account rep, and perhaps not with sales. In a larger firm, you can stack more features and content as needed. I probably would go back in time and renegotiate my contract, which stepped up quite a lot in year two and will step up again in year 3 to what I think will be an uncomfortable level. Also, Lexis has maybe one too many brands and could stand a redesign of the main home page.
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.
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.
I only say this because we had no real training on the system at all. We requested it multiple times, and no one could give us that. We had to figure a lot out for ourselves, got a rep change and finally got someone to help us navigate a bit better. Please make sure any onboarding clients get proper training and resources before going live.
Very intuitive, easy to use visual qualitative assessments, and I like that they don't "summarize" rules but give exact quotes from cases. The product is super customizable and you can try before you buy. Unlike their main competitor, I don't feel like they tricked me or set me up to purchase more content that I don't need--so in terms of service and overall functionality, they are superior to the competition.
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
It does not [matter] how much you pay in support packages for Avalara, [from my experience] you will never receive timely response times. Additionally, [it seems to me] their support techs are not experienced and/or do not understand the nature of your issues. I have resolved the majority of my issues before the support team is able to.
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 rating of a 6 was not because I was displeased with Avalara's service or implementation team. The implementation process and implementation team were great. The issue I had with implementation was finding the time of an implementation specialist to devote to our account. With the fast growth of Avalara, my specialist always felt rushed which made me feel I did not get adequate time or support.
When I started with the company, they were using a version of CCH. This was my first experience with that program and I found it very cumbersome. It was unable to calculate multiple tax rates (this may have changed in the last 10 years) and while it filled out some of the tax returns for us, we still had to manipulate many and file them ourselves. Now we just verify that what we show in our system matches Avalara and hit approve and we are done for another month.
Lexis Advance and Westlaw do the same thing and are very comparable. We actually use both. If Lexis Advanced doesn't have content we are looking for, it can usually be found in Westlaw. They compliment each other well. If I had to pick one over the other I would choose Lexis Advanced, but it's close.
