Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Avalara
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
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.N/A
Tipalti
Score 7.8 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Tipalti automates critical financial processes to drive efficiency, including accounts payable, mass payments, procurement, and expenses, all on one global finance automation platform that grows with the organization, automating, de-risking and simplifying finance.
$129
per month
Pricing
AvalaraTipalti
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AvalaraTipalti
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalRequired
Additional DetailsPricing starts at $149 per month for the platform fee. Users can upgrade to Tipalti's more advanced capabilities as their businesses gets more complex. The Tipalti pricing model is designed to grow with the user's company. Advanced features such as W-8 tax forms, international tax IDs, or multi-entity payables are available as needed.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AvalaraTipalti
Considered Both Products
Avalara

No answer on this topic

Tipalti
Chose Tipalti
The AP element of Tipalti was in place when I started, so I was not involved in the selection of the tool.
Chose Tipalti
Paper checks and the occasional wire transfer for urgent payments, Tipalti is 1000% better!

We did evaluate Bill.com, Beanworks, Quickbooks, Avid XChange, and Mineral Tree when searching for an AP software, but found these solutions were not as advanced or did not offer all of …
Features
AvalaraTipalti
Type of tax
Comparison of Type of tax features of Product A and Product B
Avalara
8.1
362 Ratings
2% above category average
Tipalti
-
Ratings
Sales and Use Taxes9.1356 Ratings00 Ratings
Cross-border Taxes8.277 Ratings00 Ratings
VAT / GST Taxes7.269 Ratings00 Ratings
Energy and Fuel Taxes8.028 Ratings00 Ratings
Tax Reporting & Compliance
Comparison of Tax Reporting & Compliance features of Product A and Product B
Avalara
8.4
341 Ratings
7% above category average
Tipalti
-
Ratings
Geolocation for Tax Assessment9.0206 Ratings00 Ratings
3rd-Party Software Integrations8.3277 Ratings00 Ratings
Tax Data Reporting8.5306 Ratings00 Ratings
Compliance Administration Management8.8235 Ratings00 Ratings
Tax Exemption Processing8.4247 Ratings00 Ratings
Tax Document Management8.5234 Ratings00 Ratings
Complex Tax Scenario Management7.5163 Ratings00 Ratings
Payment Management
Comparison of Payment Management features of Product A and Product B
Avalara
-
Ratings
Tipalti
8.8
62 Ratings
17% above category average
Customizable Approval Policies00 Ratings8.750 Ratings
Financial Document Management00 Ratings8.047 Ratings
Payment Status Tracking00 Ratings9.259 Ratings
Payment Audit Trail00 Ratings9.053 Ratings
Duplicate Bill Detection00 Ratings9.052 Ratings
Advanced OCR00 Ratings8.645 Ratings
Electronic Funds Transfer00 Ratings9.348 Ratings
Accounts Payable
Comparison of Accounts Payable features of Product A and Product B
Avalara
-
Ratings
Tipalti
8.4
55 Ratings
21% above category average
Automated Accounts Payable Processes00 Ratings8.952 Ratings
Vendor Management00 Ratings9.052 Ratings
Tax Form Preparation00 Ratings7.432 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AvalaraTipalti
Small Businesses
TaxJar
TaxJar
Score 8.1 out of 10
Square 9 Softworks
Square 9 Softworks
Score 9.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
LOVAT
LOVAT
Score 9.1 out of 10
Square 9 Softworks
Square 9 Softworks
Score 9.7 out of 10
Enterprises
ADP SmartCompliance
ADP SmartCompliance
Score 8.3 out of 10
Webexpenses
Webexpenses
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AvalaraTipalti
Likelihood to Recommend
8.4
(472 ratings)
8.5
(101 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(35 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
Usability
8.7
(464 ratings)
8.7
(77 ratings)
Availability
8.0
(11 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(11 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
5.6
(24 ratings)
7.4
(14 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(4 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.9
(199 ratings)
7.3
(3 ratings)
Configurability
8.9
(8 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.9
(14 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.9
(10 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.3
(11 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(11 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
AvalaraTipalti
Likelihood to Recommend
Avalara
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.
Read full review
Tipalti
I would tell them that it manually syncs to ERPS. Additionally I would include the fact that you can pay multiple entities in one pay run allowing to be very efficient. I would also include that they can add rules to bill approvals or set up auto payments for certain vendors. Lastly, there are many reports you can run providing you will very informational data in seconds.
Read full review
Pros
Avalara
  • 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
Read full review
Tipalti
  • Tipalti has a very user friendly interface, clearly laid out and easy to navigate
  • The audit trail feature is hugely helpful to track an invoice's progress through the system
  • Being able to schedule invoices to be paid exactly on their due date ensures we pay on time but not earlier than necessary
  • We were able to put in strong controls around changes to vendor data
Read full review
Cons
Avalara
  • 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.
Read full review
Tipalti
  • The report that provides the "Not payable" vendors does not work well for us, particularly because the sync to our ERP goes both ways, which means all of the employees also sync over to Tipalti and remain as Not Payable. So the list is very long, and I don't find a good use for it.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Avalara
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.
Read full review
Tipalti
Solid system performance. Suits our needs and solution provider very inclined to accept feedback and involve users in developing the solution to serve both the provider and the ultimate user. Tipalti has streamlined our process that was previously very manual and prone to error. Now there is transparency of information and role.
Read full review
Usability
Avalara
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.
Read full review
Tipalti
Two-time Tipalti selector, implementor, and user. The payment features in the app saves many steps in the payment process. No longer do you have to set-up or upload payment information to your bank and then go back to your accounting system and mark items as paid. Tipalti does all of this with a click of a mouse. The payment feature is the stand out feature. Many vendors can process your invoices. Look at how at the payment process of others.....you will see.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Avalara
I have been using Avalara for years and do not remember ever having an outage during working hours. The service is accurate and dependable.
Read full review
Tipalti
Tipalti has always been responsive to our questions and concerns.
Read full review
Performance
Avalara
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
Read full review
Tipalti
No issues here. Generally has been pretty fast.
Read full review
Support Rating
Avalara
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.
Read full review
Tipalti
Since I also work in customer support, I often have to contact Tipalti's team with questions from our users. Tipalti's support team has always been exceptionally helpful and it was a pleasure to communicate with them. I have always received prompt responses to any inquiries and they are excellent at solving our customers' issues within a short time
Read full review
In-Person Training
Avalara
I wasn't here when they first started with Avalara.
Read full review
Tipalti
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Avalara
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.
Read full review
Tipalti
Tipalti provides great How to online guide
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Avalara
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.
Read full review
Tipalti
The salesperson involved was involved in implementation which I found very helpful.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Avalara
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.
Read full review
Tipalti
From initial implementation through to user experience, Tipalti has been able to exceed our expectations in terms of its functionality and useability. We have found with other systems implemented in the past they did not match our expectations which resulted in us terminating these services.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Avalara
No answers on this topic
Tipalti
I did not make the decision to purchase this product.
Read full review
Scalability
Avalara
It is usable across all departments
Read full review
Tipalti
We were given the option of only one integration.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Avalara
  • 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.
Read full review
Tipalti
  • Vendor onboarding has taken the responsibility from one person to the Vendor directly. This provides the vendor with the ability to enter their own banking information for payments and upload their Federal W9 form.
  • Vendors can upload their own invoices to the system, taking the possibility that our AP team did not receive an emailed or mailed invoice to upload. This also increases payment efficiency as the vendor's invoice is processed in a more timely manner.
  • AP can review invoices for accuracy and concentrate on how to code an invoice, rather than be a paper pusher or a data entry clerk. AP doesn't spend time searching for invoices that might be a duplicate, the system will communicate this on the software review process and if AP has uploaded by email the same invoice multiple times, an email will be sent to AP to indicate that the invoice was not uploaded due to duplication.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Avalara Screenshots

Screenshot of the Avalara portal homepageScreenshot of returns, appearing in the Avalara portalScreenshot of transactionsScreenshot of reportsScreenshot of jurisdiction details

Tipalti Screenshots

Screenshot of Intelligent invoicing workflowScreenshot of Mobile approvals for invoices and paymentsScreenshot of Brandable self-service supplier portal (including handling tax forms)Screenshot of Brandable self-service portal to collect and validate payment detailsScreenshot of Combined payment methods, currencies, and entities in a single payment fileScreenshot of an early payment, which can be offered to suppliers through email or the supplier portal