Avalara vs. Taxify, by Sovos

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.

Incentivized

I would not recommend this software/solution. For the price they quote, I would look into other solutions as their software never fully supported our business and the filings were incorrect for years without resolution from customer serv. Their Resale Cert platform also lacked credibility- I suggest, look into other solutions to better support your filings.

Incentivized

• Sales tax rates at a "roof top" level
• 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

Incentivized

• veratax download
• ticket system is average
• average communication from rep via email

Incentivized

• Reporting could be more flexible - I'd like to customise what columns I want to export.
• Adding bulk transactions is a bit cumbersome, and the user interface for required fields could do with some improvement.
• It would be good to have more options to pay for tax settlements.

Incentivized

• in my opinion, customer service could improve
• in my opinion, implementation could be better to ensure accurate reporting
• in my opinion, better rep support and pricing for smaller term contracts

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Avalara is great at calculating taxes and filing state registrations. It is easy to turn on new state tax calculation and fairly easy to set up new state filings. It is not so great at setting up new state registrations, and it has no coordination between its own state registration setup and setting up the state filing. Avalara integrates well with some platforms, and not very well with others

Incentivized

I have been using Avalara for years and do not remember ever having an outage during working hours. The service is accurate and dependable.

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

Incentivized

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.

I wasn't here when they first started with Avalara.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We picked Taxify, by Sovos based on original contract price- would not recommend this as well as (with all the issues we have been experiencing) would rather spend the money and time on Avalara. When we asked for a 1 yr contract to limp along for the year, the price was quoted for about $70K which was triple our original agreement.

Incentivized

It is usable across all departments

Incentivized

• We went from two staff members down to one staff member dedicated to monitoring and reconciling sales tax with the G/L.
• It takes the one staff member less time to monitor sales tax than having to go through and calculate and file in each state.
• Avalara gives us confidence that the returns are filed accurately and timely every month.

Incentivized

• manual work to get accurate info- increase in manpower & time for accurate submissions
• increase in time w. rep to fix or address issues without resolution

Incentivized