Avalara

Customer support is non-existent.
Complained about them needing to call on a phone and was told "we don't call anyone and doubt any other large company would place a phone call either" to help me with the initial install

Generally, at least for the products our company uses, Avalara is well suited. I am not sure if they are the most competitive in pricing but we have been satisfied with the products in most respects. I will say the interaction I've had with our reps has been helpful on all aspects. They are pleasant to deal with at all times.

We use Avalara to assess sales tax to our customers. We utilize the tax codes and map them to our products. This helps assess tax on our products that are used throughout the USA.

Works very efficiently for customers who are registered in multiple states and do not have adequate staffing to calculate appropriate sales tax, manage certificates and file sales tax returns. Had some initial issues trying to connect through Progressive Edge due to our own unique ERP system, but overcame those issues relatively smoothly. It is important to have good IT people to assist with the technical side of the software if necessary.

Avalara helped get us in compliance with our online sales, and ensured that we were in filing the correct returns with each state.

It's good for what it does and what it is meant to do. I wouldn't change much given the speedy timely visibility of tax data as it related to our application.

worry free sales tax calculations and management

If you have a need for Sales Tax implementation and your current platform is not cutting it, Avalara is excellent. It has taken the guess work out of Sales Tax billing and is easy to use. It took some time to get it set up initially, but once implemented; it has been great. We have the ability to add companies if they receive a new resale certificate and it is an easy process. If you have several companies that need to be added you can do it with an upload that is quick and painless.
When it is time to pay taxes to the state, etc you have access to reports that calculate the sales tax collected. Avalara and AvaTax have been a great time saver for our company and I would recommend it to anyone needing this sort of application.

During a recent audit, Avalara helped saved over a 100,000 in tax by helping us find an exemption on services we use. We were also recently able to automate our sales tax compliance process to save us money on outsourcing those returns.

In my opinion, Avalara is my go to software for all sales tax compliance work for any company in the United States. Without Avalara, I won't know how to stay in compliance because the change in laws are so many and it comes when you least expect it. Thank you Avalara!

Avalara is an expert in sales tax compliance and easily connects to our systems.

Avalara is well-suited to a company that has accounting software that has the ability to integrate through API. It becomes more manual when you have a situation where third-party software does not integrate well. The more time that you can spend in the setup phase, the better your experience will be.

Setting up sales tax for the state of Louisiana was very complicated in our company. There were many different jurisdiction that needed specialized tax rates. Customer service was able to help me create over five combinations of unique tax amounts for state and parish. This was very important, as certain parishes had exemptions for medical devices, which we sell.

Avalara is easy to use. Reporting can be downloaded to Excel. Avalara isn’t great and helping assess tax codes with products. They also weren’t helpful with tax reconciliations which is why we switched to someone else to generate our returns.

I was having trouble getting our discounts to show up from CV3 and I opened a case and we had it solved within a day. There was a time I was going to have a zoom call and the customer service person had the wrong time zone - it took a month for it to happen, but by then I had figured it out. Sometimes, customer service isn't efficient enough.

Avalara is well suited for businesses that have a broad reach of sales across multiple taxing jurisdictions. Specifically, where the business may have customers that also have a broad expanse of sales across multiple taxing jurisdictions. Avalara helps to manage the certification, reporting, and paying of tax across multiple tax jurisdictions. Avalara most-likely is less appropriate for business that only selling in one taxable jurisdiction.

Avalara would be well suited for any company that has exemption certificates that it needs to track and monitor. Also, if there are sales in multiple jurisdictions where returns need to be filed, or the internal employee's knowledge base is low, Avalara would be a great fit. If a company only has sales in one state, then Avalara may not be appropriate, depending on the state and the product being sold, because there my not be many exemption certificates and there could be as little as 1 return.

Well suited when you reach Nexus in lots of states. Not helpful if you haven't reached Nexus in more than a few states I think.

We have had many scenarios when Avalara has been unable to help us get situations resolved. A lot of back and forth. Where issues remain unresolved.

For the most part, the software does what it is supposed to do. We have had several glitches that we've spent months working with support on fixing. In our experience, implementation was awful and the Avalara team we worked with was not up to date on what products and services we had purchased, every meeting we had to review that with them at the beginning. The order of implementation was mind-boggling, as they did not even start Cert Capture training until after our planned go-live date (which we had to move 3 times due to Avalara delays), which makes no sense as you would want that live and setup before going live so that resale customers have those certificates on file on day one. We purchased Managed Services work to assist in collecting certificates, which was a huge mistake and a huge waste of money. I would not recommend anyone utilize that service. In my opinion, customer service is beyond awful. Our account manager is impossible to reach and we've had probably 5 different account managers in 6 months. Customer Support is supposed to answer tickets within 8 hours, based on paying a premium for the "pro" level support. However, the response we receive is never within 8 hours, and normally is an email stating they need additional information to look into the issue, and then it's another 24+ hours before you get another response. If the software ran smoothly and never had issues, it would be fine because you would never have to interact with anyone at Avalara, however, that has not been our experience.

Avalara is helpful in keeping our tax rates up to date for the various jurisdictions where we are registered and provides a simple process for filing returns. I would not recommend using their services when service (as opposed to technology) is required. For example, VDA assistance was not a pleasant experience and there are other providers that may charge more, but are worth every penny you pay to get them done in a timely manner.

Avalara did fine on the calculation and remitting of sales taxes and integrated well with NetSuite. However, we've had numerous challenges: 1) States changed filing frequency requirements and we did not receive notification and Avalara did not help with this. We received penalties and interest and it was significant work and effort to file past returns (i.e. state moving us from annual to monthly filing requirements). 2) We found an error on the 11th day that resulted in a significant overpayment of taxes which were not due until the 20th of the month and Avalara was unwilling or unable to help us. It cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales taxes which we have not yet received the refund on. 3) Smended return process is difficult and it is hard to get a hold of people in support.

Ease of testing, looking up/calculating rates. Ease of TTR research.

I have no real experience with any other system for tracking and filing multi-state sales tax. I can't imagine trying to calculate and track these things manually, so Avalara has seemed appropriate in all the situations I am directly involved.

A scenario where Avalara was less appropriate was during our implementation process. There was no communication on the steps we needed to follow with our service team vs. the Avalara team.