Avalara doesn't provide what's promised in their contracts
We used Avalara to track, file, and remit state and international sales taxes.
Starting at $21 per month
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What is Avalara?
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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Popular Features
- Sales and Use Taxes (295)8.888%
- Tax Exemption Processing (201)8.383%
- Tax Data Reporting (248)8.383%
- 3rd-Party Software Integrations (223)8.080%
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Pricing
Entry-level set up fee?
- Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.avalara.com/us/en/products/…
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Starting price (does not include set up fee)
- $21 per month
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Avalara AvaTax Demo
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What is Avalara?
Avalara helps to make tax compliance faster,
easier, more accurate, and more reliable for 30,000+ business and government
customers in over 90 countries. Tax compliance automation software solutions
from Avalara leverage 1,200+ signed partner integrations across ecommerce, ERP, and other billing systems to power tax calculations, document
management, tax return filing, and tax content access. Visit avalara.com to learn more.
Avalara Features
Type of tax Features
- Supported: Sales and Use Taxes
- Supported: Cross-border Taxes
- Supported: VAT / GST Taxes
- Supported: Energy and Fuel Taxes
Tax Reporting & Compliance Features
- Supported: Geolocation for Tax Assessment
- Supported: 3rd-Party Software Integrations
- Supported: Tax Data Reporting
- Supported: Compliance Administration Management
- Supported: Tax Exemption Processing
- Supported: Tax Document Management
- Supported: Complex Tax Scenario Management
Additional Features
- Supported: Centralized tax management: Unifies sales and use tax calculation, document management, and returns preparation.
- Supported: Integrations: AvaTax connects with more than 700 prebuilt integrations to connect with accounting, ecommerce, POS, and other systems, plus an advanced API.
- Supported: Cloud-based: A software-as-a-service solution, AvaTax updates take effect as soon as they are deployed, helping to ensure the most current information is used.
- Supported: Exemption management: Certificates from vendors are stored electronically for access and to track expiration dates. Automatic renewal requests are sent out before certificates expire.
- Supported: Returns filing and remittance: Returns preparation and remittance in multiple jurisdictions. Avalara Returns can track and manage due dates and payment requirements, enabling users to pay returns with a single source of payment.
- Supported: Lodging: Lodging tax for hotel or rental property are managed with a solution that plugs into reservation software to deliver lodging tax calculations in real time as well as preparation, filing, and remittances of lodge tax returns.
- Supported: Communications: Tax calculations are delivered on an array of communications transactions by directly connecting to a current billing or ERP system, or to an in-house build via API.
- Supported: Beverage Alcohol: Simplified regulatory compliance for suppliers, distributors, and retailers in the beverage alcohol industry.
Avalara Screenshots
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Why Avalara?
Avalara Integrations
Avalara Competitors
Avalara Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | No |
Avalara Downloadables
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
Avalara starts at $21.
Vertex, Sovos Intelligent Compliance Cloud, and Thomson Reuters ONESOURCE are common alternatives for Avalara.
Reviewers rate Sales and Use Taxes highest, with a score of 8.8.
The most common users of Avalara are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Reviews and Ratings
(720)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(151-175 of 413)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
November 17, 2020
Loyal Avalara user
Every invoice we create is ran through AvaTax during processing. We perform facility maintenance services in every state of the US and it would be a nightmare to keep track of the current tax rules and rates for our services.
- Reporting for completing my tax returns
- Dashboard ease of use
- Customer events
- Quickbooks connector can be flaky
- Account manager response time
- Cost
November 17, 2020
Avatax and Returns Management- Avalara has been a great solution!
<div>Avalara is implemented in our computer system (NetSuite) to calculate sales tax for each transaction come into the system, it affects the Invoices and sales receipt that we send to our customers. Then on monthly basis, Avalara will calculate the sales tax amount that we need to pay to each States that we're registered to.</div><div>Avalara simplify the calculation of sales tax based on the specific location of the Ship To address and we relied on it to be accurate and up to date with all the constant changes and regulation from State to State.<br></div>
- Keeping up to date with tax calculation for each State
- User friendly Tax Returns system to manage Returns
- Managing the Tax Returns on time and simplify filing amendment if needed
- During Tax Returns reconciliation, i've encountered where sales tax were not being calculated as it should, and I usually have to open the particular transaction in NetSuite and refresh it, then it will assign an Avatax Doc code, as an indication that the transaction is now accounted for in Avatax. It will be great is Avalara would be able to send notification for "flagged' transactions where there's no exemption shown but not calculating sales tax
- If Avalara can send out notification to its clients for Sales Tax related subject (Tax holiday, change in rates starting on certain date of the month etc), so that when we receive those from the State, we know that Avalara is already aware of it and already implementing it in the system
November 17, 2020
Avala - IMO
It is used in the accounting department to run sales tax on sales invoices. We generate approximately 400 invoices nationwide weekly. We use one system to generate invoices and run sales tax. We then import the invoices with added sales tax to our accounting interface. Occasionally, we must modify/delete invoices within the accounting interface. For this reason, we have an Avalara integration for both systems.
- Calculate tax by location across the entire US
- Integrate with multiple systems
- Streamline reporting
- Streamline filing
- Our biggest issue is Avalara not being able to recognize the address of a customer and having to choose a "fake" location in the same zip code to run tax.
- It will not recognize the same invoice within 2 systems. It assigns different doc codes. If we adjust an invoice in our accounting system that was original created and taxed in our tracking system, we must login to Avalara and delete the original tax on the original doc code.
November 17, 2020
A+ Avalara
Used to calculate sales tax and returns organization wide. Allows accurate sales tax capturing & filing - frees up multiple hours of my time.
- Great customer service / quick response
- Easy to understand instructions
- Continued presentations with updated options
November 17, 2020
Great peace of mind that returns and certificates will be file and managed correctly.
We use AvaTax and CertCapture by Avalara in our whole organization with great success. We have economic nexus in most states and drop ship about 50% of our products accross the USA.
- Easy understanding of both AvaTax and Certcapture programs
- Great support structure
- Always keeping up the changes
- CertCapture program have a few issues which slows down our sales department at times
November 17, 2020
This product saves us money and time!
We use Avalara to calculate our sales taxes and to process our sales tax returns and submit to the proper authorities.
- Customer Service is quick and helpful, and don't let you off of the phone till you are happy.
- Making an appt with my rep is easy to talk with him and get any answers I may need.
- Continuity of my company's rep so that a relationship can be cultivated.
November 17, 2020
Sales Tax Simplified
We use for all sales tax calculations and it is incorporated into our ERP system - Epicor. We also have a rental business that uses a separate software, we are looking to incorporate Avalara to that software in the future. We use Cert Capture and Avalara prepares all of our sales and use tax returns. It simplifies the sales tax process. It allows us to define our product taxability with presets in Avalara and is accurate, efficient and we can trust it for a complicated tax world.
- The depth of knowledge of the tax laws and implementation into the software.
- Timely processing of returns
- Responsive Customer Service
- At times we have down time between the connection of Avalara and our ERP which is a loss in time or incorrect invoicing.
- Cert Capture - Validation of certificates should be able to validate with each state
- Proactively let us know about things like Tiered Tax laws or unusual taxation based on settings between Avalara and our ERP instead of the customer having to drill in and determine those when customers question.
We are using this across the whole organization. We have nexus in all states and it does a great job of charging our customers sales tax and filing our sales tax returns.
- Keep track of the ever evolving sales tax changes
- Manage our Exemption Certificates
- Calculates not just the state sales tax but also the many jurisdictions/counties, etc within the state
- We have had some API issues that certain customers numbers fail for unknown reasons, we have worked with Avalara support and they have a fix to roll out early December
- We use to get "canned" answers to support questions, quick to offer a work instruction when we really wanted to talk to someone. Moving up to a dedicated TM resolve this issue.
November 17, 2020
New user, happy with the rise in efficiency and accuracy of our reporting process so far
We have just started using AvaTax as our tax reporting software. I am very happy with the ease of use and user-friendly web interface. We file in almost every US state, and were very manual until signing up with Avalara. Our sales tax department is more efficient and compliant now with the use of Avalara's tax rate uploads and use of geocoding for tax addresses. The only thing I do not like is that our account manager is not able to help with a lot of user issues. We are always referred to the help desk who are hard to understand... I believe they are out of country.
- Automatic tax rate updates
- Reporting
- Tax jurisdiction pinpointing
- Helpdesk
November 17, 2020
Avalara - value and compliance
Avalara has allowed us to maintain sales tax certificate compliance, properly calculate current sales tax rates, file and pay sales tax returns in a timely manner.
- Updates current sales tax rates automatically
- Integrates with our ERP system
- Getting answers to questions easily.
November 17, 2020
The Software is Helpful - Implementation was immensely painful
We use it across the entire Org. It addresses the concerns with our e-commerce based business and the management of certificates.
- Housing of Certificates with Expiration Warnings
- Automatic calculations of tax using predefined, up to date, tax tables
- Lack of prompt support when needed
- Lack of hands on implementation , we hired a team and expected them so say "Here is how it is best established for you company". That was not the case
November 17, 2020
WE LOVE AVALARA!
It is being used in our CRM (Netsuite) to assist in calculating and managing sales tax so our sales reps and inside sales associates don't need to worry about taxes being correct
- Easy to manage excempt certificates
- Easy to request exempt certificates
- Calculates taxes within our CRM for sales people
- Options for when someone is out of home country and don't need to collect taxes
We use Avalara to automatically apply sales tax to our individual B2B and B2C invoices with our accounting team. Since we sell online and across the country, Avalara is critical in helping us ensure we are applying the correct rates and tracking our sales tax exposure appropriately. We hope to implement a new module next year with their filing service as we don't have the capacity to handle this in-house any longer. Avalara is a great alternative to having an on-site sales tax expert.
- Sales tax calculation
- Cert capture campaigns
- Software integrations with ERPs
- Difficult to contact account manager via email
November 17, 2020
Avalara - a "no brainer" for business
We have Nexus in various jurisdictions and I can't imagine operating a business today without using Avalara. Avalara simplifies our tax life as well as making us feel secure about meeting the requirements of local and state authorities. Avalara works well with our ERP system, Epicor Prophet21 and allows us to grow our business.
- Tax filing
- Answering nexus questions
- organizing in case of audit
- Nothing
November 17, 2020
Loving Avalara!
We use Avalara to keep track of customer exemption status and to track all tax and file all our S&U tax filings with every state we are registered in.
- Tax Filings
- Organized information
- Very helpful staff that answers all questions in a timely manner
- Educating people new to the tax world
- Giving more information on registering to collect tax in more states
- Making auto withdrawal of funds easier to update
Avalara has always been my favorite purchase at a prior company years ago. I was pleasantly surprised that my current company uses it as well. It replaces having a FTE doing the tax returns each month. It keeps all the annoying exemption certificates easily at hand and linked to Netsuite (our ERP) and able to tell customers to the lowest tax line what rate was. All for a VERY reasonable price!! It is crazy to not at least review this service when you are considering sales tax compliance.
- Sales tax return processing
- Support can be less generic and actually help
November 17, 2020
Good Tax Assistance Company
Mostly it is being used to determine the taxes for each transaction and to do the reports for each state.
- They submit all state reports when they are supposed to be submitted.
- Not always the best at follow up when a situation is going on.
November 17, 2020
Sales and Use tax experience in Avalara
We use Avalara to file our Use and Sales tax - that is what I use it for anyway. As far as I know, it is being used by at least one department, possibly two. It helps us calculate sales and use tax that we are supposed to be paying. It is a little tricky because we are an international company and calculating tax can be really hard.
- Customer Support
- Good UI
- Good reminders
- Server problems
- Clarification on template upload errors
- Inactive log in time
November 14, 2020
Avalara & AvaTax Benefits for Remote Sellers
Avalara's AvaTax system is being used in conjunction with QuickBooks by our accounts receivable department to insure sales tax compliance with all taxable sales. Avalara's Returns program is being used by our accounts payable department to insure registration and filing in all states where Nexus has been met.
- Sales tax calculations per Wayfair
- State sales tax returns
- QuickBooks Integration
- Product training for initial setup
November 14, 2020
Great service for sales tax
Avalara files and pays all of our sales tax. We also use CertCapture for all of our tax exemption certificates. Without Avalalra, we would need to hire a tax accountant/attorney to handle just our sales tax filing. Money spent using Avalara's service is well worth it, eliminating the need to hire additional staff.
- File and pay sales tax in a timely manner
- Great customer service
- Easy to use their site
- They consider themselves a software rather than a service
- The interaction between Avalara and our EDI
- Not voiding items that we have voided in our system, we have to manually void them
November 13, 2020
Strong product with room for improvement in certain areas
We use Avalara in a couple of departments. It addresses our exempt sales (CertCapture) as well as our tax calculations and tax return needs.
- Tax calculation
- Customer service
- Articles for help
- Account manager time of response
- Help on making tax decisions on tough or unclear areas
- Speed of import (takes a day to recalculate sometimes)
November 13, 2020
Avalara is Great
We use Avalara in conjuction with our accounting software to manage sales tax charges and exemptions. This software is being specifically used by our finance department. It allows us to manage and track which of our customers are exempt or taxable and in which states. It also helps to ensure that our exemptions are valid and allows us to effectively monitor when our customers' exemptions are going to expire.
- Simplicity of use
- Accurately tracks tax
- Great for managing exempt customers
- Ease of use in item taxability
- Better notification settings/alerts for when we are nearing our plan thresholds for document counts
- System sometimes "shorts out" when adding new customers and causes us to have to enter all of the information a second time
November 13, 2020
Avalara takes "taxing" out of taxes
We are a 3M Window Film Distributor. We use Avalara for US, Caribbean and Puerto Rico sales. It helps us maintain compliance with every region we are accountable for.
- Communications
- Returns
- Documentation
- Tech Support - terribly challenging. It takes forever to get a trustfile code. Several cases were never answered, and I was referred back to account manager who only said they'd open a case. Several issues were not resolved with a phone call. It's very discouraging. Especially being fairly new. We just hesitantly renewed, but feel the lack of proactive and successful assistance isn't worth the $12k per year.
- Inconsistent communication from Account Manager & their turnover for us
- We had a TTR contract prior to the "merger" - we certainly don't use the $5k / year of services. I asked for a discount on CertCapture because of this and was promptly denied.
November 13, 2020
Avalara taxing can relieve some tax stress
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Avalara is being used for US taxing for all states, and sales tax reports are being used from Avalara to reconcile with the tax in our general ledger account in order to file our returns. So the taxing function starts with the billing, and follows through to running reports in order to fill in returns for all states. Sometimes it may be used when a quote goes out to a customer if the customer wants tax included in on the quote.
- Calculating the correct tax including state increased rates when applicable.
- With a little adjusting, I was able to find a way to get an audit report of the sales and sales tax charged for an audit that satisfied an auditor.
- Taxing based on an address that correctly taxed even though the city was different than the ship to city. I verified this by checking on the state as when running different reports I was confused why, but when I checked on the state there was a reason that explained it.
- I had an issue where my general ledger recoded one state for the sale, but Avalara recorded another. When I looked at the zip code it was evident that the state listed on the invoice was incorrect, but Avalara taxed on the correct state because it taxed on the zip code.
- I use multiple reports - because in different states my company is classified different - and I have to watch the total gross because it is different on reports, as some give the gross after the discount and others do not. This sometimes causes an imbalance. The discount is a cost reduction of the item so it should be considered in all reports as a reduction to the gross.
- At month end I have some manual billings that need to be entered and even though I am working in the system the system times out on me. At times in the middle of a transaction.
- On entering exemptions, if I have multiple to enter for one customer the system will sometime[s] log out in the middle and does not save it so I have to re-enter data.
November 12, 2020
Avalara Helps with the Ups and Downs of Tax Compliance
We use Avalara in conjunction with QuickBooks, Amazon, and Big Commerce to address the tax requirements for our business from state to state in a wholesale market as well as with resellers across multiple platforms (one being Amazon). We have a B2B website, and our facility is in Oregon, where sales tax does not apply. We needed a solution to juggle all of these variables while staying in compliance with each state's requirements.
- Collect data and use it process returns
- Software design
- Training
- Communication in the implementation process
- Checks and balances for company support
- Pricing