Avalara vs. Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Avalara
Score 8.1 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.
$21
per month
Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite is integrated tax and accounting software that manages the operations of legal firms. It is used to collect client data, and post finished tax returns, from managing client engagements to practice management.N/A
Pricing
AvalaraThomson Reuters CS Professional Suite
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AvalaraThomson Reuters CS Professional Suite
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AvalaraThomson Reuters CS Professional Suite
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
AvalaraThomson Reuters CS Professional Suite
Type of tax
Comparison of Type of tax features of Product A and Product B
Avalara
8.4
301 Ratings
1% below category average
Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite
-
Ratings
Sales and Use Taxes8.9294 Ratings00 Ratings
Cross-border Taxes8.364 Ratings00 Ratings
VAT / GST Taxes7.755 Ratings00 Ratings
Energy and Fuel Taxes8.525 Ratings00 Ratings
Tax Reporting & Compliance
Comparison of Tax Reporting & Compliance features of Product A and Product B
Avalara
8.2
279 Ratings
2% below category average
Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite
-
Ratings
Geolocation for Tax Assessment8.7167 Ratings00 Ratings
3rd-Party Software Integrations8.0222 Ratings00 Ratings
Tax Data Reporting8.3247 Ratings00 Ratings
Compliance Administration Management8.3191 Ratings00 Ratings
Tax Exemption Processing8.3201 Ratings00 Ratings
Tax Document Management8.1192 Ratings00 Ratings
Complex Tax Scenario Management7.4127 Ratings00 Ratings
Payroll Management
Comparison of Payroll Management features of Product A and Product B
Avalara
-
Ratings
Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite
10.0
1 Ratings
29% above category average
Pay calculation00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
Avalara
-
Ratings
Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite
8.5
1 Ratings
19% above category average
API for custom integration00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Plug-ins00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Avalara
-
Ratings
Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite
8.2
4 Ratings
4% above category average
Single sign-on capability00 Ratings8.33 Ratings
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.14 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Avalara
-
Ratings
Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite
7.2
4 Ratings
5% below category average
Dashboards00 Ratings8.13 Ratings
Standard reports00 Ratings8.04 Ratings
Custom reports00 Ratings5.64 Ratings
General Ledger and Configurable Accounting
Comparison of General Ledger and Configurable Accounting features of Product A and Product B
Avalara
-
Ratings
Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite
8.6
4 Ratings
15% above category average
Accounts payable00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Accounts receivable00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Cash management00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Bank reconciliation00 Ratings10.02 Ratings
Expense management00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Time tracking00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Fixed asset management00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Multi-currency support00 Ratings7.12 Ratings
Multi-division support00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Regulations compliance00 Ratings10.02 Ratings
Electronic tax filing00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Self-service portal00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Primary and Secondary Ledgers00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Intercompany Accounting00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Localizations00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Journals and Reconciliations00 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Enterprise Accounting00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Configurable Accounting00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Centralized Rules Framework00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Standardized Processes00 Ratings9.13 Ratings
Inventory Management
Comparison of Inventory Management features of Product A and Product B
Avalara
-
Ratings
Thomson Reuters CS Professional Suite
10.0
1 Ratings
35% above category average
Location management00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
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AvalaraThomson Reuters CS Professional Suite
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User Ratings
AvalaraThomson Reuters CS Professional Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(412 ratings)
8.5
(4 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.2
(26 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.1
(404 ratings)
8.9
(2 ratings)
Availability
8.0
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
5.7
(18 ratings)
9.9
(2 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.3
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
6.4
(197 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
5.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
5.1
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
1.1
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.9
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AvalaraThomson Reuters CS Professional Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
Avalara
The best I can do is a two. Our experience has been so bad, the software is not good in lots of respects, and the customer service people are either too overwhelmed with people with issues that they can't respond or they just don't care to respond. And the services come at a premium price. So you would think we could at least get a response. I know Avalara has real tax expertise deep inside that company. But the tools and processes they have cobbled together to monetize that expertise are not delivering a good experience. And their customer support is literally the worst I have ever experienced--and particularly coming from a premium provider
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Thomson Reuters
It is extremely suitable for the client since for us they are all US-based companies, even though the main headquarters of our business is in Mexico.

It is less appropriate in terms of usability than taxes, since it does not include adaptability to Mexican legislation, and its deployment through customizations and reports is extremely expensive.
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Pros
Avalara
  • Calculates the correct tax regardless of state, county, or local jurisdiction.
  • CertCapture provides a site for managing all resale certificates, updating, renewing, and providing reports/backup in the event of an audit.
  • One stop shop for all things tax makes my life easier!
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Thomson Reuters
  • Allows users to create associations, groups, locations, or property types to categorize each asset.
  • Fixed Assets CS can be deployed in a virtual office setting or as a SaaS application.
  • Fixed Assets CS also supports common depreciation methods.
Read full review
Cons
Avalara
  • I find it virtually impossible to access people when you have issues with anything
  • In my experience, everything runs through account managers and they are non-responsive and unavailable most of the time.
  • In my experience, 99% of all communication with anybody at Avalara has to be done via some ridiculous form or via email. Human contact is extremely difficult to resolve an issue that sometimes requires human to human contact.
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Thomson Reuters
  • Requires a time investment for the learning curve to fully utilize the benefits provided by CS Professional Suite.
  • Older looking UI and aesthetic.
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Likelihood to Renew
Avalara
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.
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Thomson Reuters
No answers on this topic
Usability
Avalara
The software and addons that we use are very applicable to our operations and the usability of the sotware works great with all of the software we have it integrated with. The certcapture and avatax work great together and has made things very automated for our company as majority of our sales are sales exempt. Navigating through the software is very user friendly and helps when we have to have other individuals go in as it is not difficult for them to find where they need to go within the software.
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Thomson Reuters
The platform is stable even though a version for MacOS is also missed.

In general, the user management and administration process is intuitive and once the roles are defined it is simple and easy.

However, the user experience has become out of date in relation to other web-based platforms currently available on the market.
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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.
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Thomson Reuters
No answers on this topic
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
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Thomson Reuters
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Avalara
Avalara is not consistent in giving us information timely. For instance, right now, we have a help desk ticket with them that's been open since October. They are still trying to figure it out and we haven't gotten any feedback on where they are at or what is going on. That seems to me a very excessive amount of time to be working on a problem. Was it forgotten? Is there something bigger going on? Do they need something from us? An update would be helpful.
Also, many times when we call with an issue or concern (wrong tax rate for instance) we generally feel like the help desk assumes it's of our doing instead of theirs and doesn't truely listen when we explain the problem because we end up repeating it over and over as well as sending examples. We expect more respect on our end.
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Thomson Reuters
Support for Thomson Reuters is very in-depth as they have a ton of knowledge articles that help troubleshoot common issues and gives a launching pad for users to learn more about the product and help them use the tools effectively and efficiently. When needed, reaching out to the live support is always prompt and we are able to effectively work past any issues that come up.
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In-Person Training
Avalara
I wasn't here when they first started with Avalara.
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Thomson Reuters
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Avalara
The videos go too fast; I kept having to pause them and go back. They don't allow for any practice transactions or provide training materials.
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Thomson Reuters
No answers on this topic
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.
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Thomson Reuters
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Avalara
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.
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Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters is all I have experience with.
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Scalability
Avalara
There is no change that has to happen as your company grows, Avalara continues to do it's job for any size company
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Thomson Reuters
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Avalara
  • We are positively impacted by Avalara in having a central library to store our certificate files.
  • We spend very little time and resources to calculate and compile tax data for filing.
  • The electronic filing has helped insure we are on time with our filings and avoiding penalties.
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Thomson Reuters
  • Not authorized to view the large scale picture of Thomson Reuters CS Suite on ROI, however, it has been a part of the business model for years with constant updates and is only getting more and more efficient as time goes on.
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ScreenShots

Avalara Screenshots

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