Overview
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.
Avalara helps a lot!
Avalara Review
So much potential and such disappointing customer experience
Using Avalara Software has been Great for our Company
Satisfied Customer
Indirect Tax
Avalara is great for small businesses
Avalara is what you need for Sales Tax.
Great!
Unforunately no real benefit
Avalara - My Evaluation
The good, the bad and . . .
My professional advice is to try to find an alternative to Avalara!
Tax compliance - Avalara
How Avalara Differs From Its Competitors
Additional Capabilities
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Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Popular Features
- Sales and Use Taxes (294)8.989%
- Tax Exemption Processing (201)8.383%
- Tax Data Reporting (247)8.383%
- 3rd-Party Software Integrations (222)8.080%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
Entry-level set up fee?
- Setup fee optional
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Starting price (does not include set up fee)
- $21 per month
Product Demos
Avalara AvaTax Demo
Features
Type of tax
A list of the different types of taxes that can be filed using tax compliance software.
- 8.9Sales and Use Taxes(294) Ratings
Software is capable of calculating and filing sales and use taxes.
- 8.3Cross-border Taxes(64) Ratings
Software is capable of calculating and filing taxes, such as customs, across countries.
- 7.7VAT / GST Taxes(55) Ratings
Ability to calculate and manage VAT and GST taxes.
- 8.5Energy and Fuel Taxes(25) Ratings
Ability to calculate and manage energy and/or fuel taxes.
Tax Reporting & Compliance
Activities relating to tax filing, reporting, document management, and exemption certificate processing.
- 8.7Geolocation for Tax Assessment(167) Ratings
Ability to use geolocation, which is more precise than zip codes, for mapping taxes to specific jurisdictions.
- 83rd-Party Software Integrations(222) Ratings
Pre-built integrations with various systems such as ERP, ecommerce, CRM, invoicing and billing, accounting, and procurement applications.
- 8.3Tax Data Reporting(247) Ratings
Ability to export transaction data for tax filing.
- 8.3Compliance Administration Management(191) Ratings
Ability to facilitate tax preparation, filing, and tax remittances across local, state, and federal jurisdictions.
- 8.3Tax Exemption Processing(201) Ratings
Ability to generate, track, exemption certificates from sales invoices.
- 8.1Tax Document Management(192) Ratings
Collection and storage of tax documents, especially exemption certificates, and ability to retrieve them to use for tax audits.
- 7.4Complex Tax Scenario Management(127) Ratings
Ability to automate handling of tax holidays and other anomalies.
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
What is Avalara?
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
Avalara Video
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
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(719)Attribute Ratings
- 9.2Likelihood to Renew26 ratings
- 8Availability8 ratings
- 8Performance8 ratings
- 8.1Usability404 ratings
- 5.7Support Rating18 ratings
- 7.3Online Training3 ratings
- 8In-Person Training2 ratings
- 6.4Implementation Rating197 ratings
- 5Configurability5 ratings
- 8Product Scalability7 ratings
- 5.1Ease of integration11 ratings
- 7.9Vendor pre-sale8 ratings
- 1.1Vendor post-sale8 ratings
Reviews
(176-200 of 412)Avalara Review
- Updating and staying current on sales tax rate changes.
- Filing state tax returns.
- Providing helpful webinars.
- CertCapture can take many days to validate a certificate, and/or does not provide explanation as to why a certificate was not validated.
- Submitting cases to Avalara is not helpful. Once an answer has been provided, the case is immediately closed and no helpful dialogue is allowed.
- When a mistake on return filing occurs, whether customer or Avalara's, correction of the error takes far too long.
User-friendly, flexibility for integrations, room for improve[ment]
- Good UI design.
- Flexibility to integrate.
- Customer Service
We are just getting going on CertCapture, but like AvaTax.
- Tax calculation by jurisdiction.
- Submit sales tax returns.
- Support should do a better job of reading the case submitted and not simply reply with the first canned response.
- Help us more with the problems we have encountered with the software company, Argentis.
- Monthly reporting
- CertCapture is very helpful and their reports are very helpful
- Filing returns
- Customer service
- Degradation issues
Intuitive Products
- Sales tax filings
- Document organization
- Resale certificate campaigns
- Intuitive interface
- Turning on and off filings (e.g., due to COVID many states changed filing deadlines)
- A little slow towards the 10th of the month
- More countries
Easy
- Automation
- Communication
- Resources
- Good help desk support
- Website Resource center: For example state sales tax rates and info is really helpful. Would be nice if there is indication when info was last updated.
- Website: A section for Hot topics, "What's new", or updates on State's regulation, etc.
Avalara Tax Review
- Avalara maintains tax % level by county and even by city zone more accurate than we expected.
- Avalara provides excellent customer support when questions arises.
- Avalara Cert Captures streamlines the capture of customer tax certificates efficiently.
- Avalara Customer Support sometimes takes 30 minutes to reply. I get they are too busy, but I normally send the Q and just get to do some other things in between.
- Changes to the Websites are too drastically from the latest version to the previous one. A video explaining the changes would be handy for us, customers, to understand the changes.
Peace of Mind!
- Keeping track of taxes in every jurisdiction in the country.
- Reporting is easy to use and understand.
- Almost seamless integration with accounting software.
- Account manager turnover seems high.
- Getting answers to questions can be difficult and/or delayed.
Saves time and money
- Real time taxing - always current rates.
- Preparation of tax returns.
- Reporting.
- Customer service.
- Help desk is very difficult to get a response from.
- More training at implementation.
Avalara and you
- Tax calculation based on ship-to address.
- Application of exempt certificates.
- Making it easier when setting up jurisdictions.
- Sometimes, it's not intuitive when you are looking for something.
- Quicker response when you encounter an issue.
Avalara is Easy to Use and Navigate
- They calculate sales transactions correctly.
- We have an account manager that keeps up well with our account and makes good suggestions.
- They have an easy to understand and use website.
- They have good reporting.
- It is hard to get someone to answer questions on support cases submitted in a timely manner.
- It is hard to get answer in a timely manner for tax notices.
- Some questions are by email and person never answers back.
- Phone support is good but email support takes a long time.
Avalara Product Review
- Time savings.
- Storage of documents.
- Determining taxability of transaction.
- On-Boarding was lacking for implementation.
- Transparency in pricing.
- Determining document storage and exemption not clearly explained at time of onboarding.
Simplifies sales tax compliance and processing
- Great customer support.
- Ecommerce extension is awesome.
- Provides a lot of analysis on our sales tax position by state.
- Returns filing is very convenient.
- Our account manager changed and we had some issues with an open quote.
- Difficult to change thresholds mid year.
If there are no taxable sales, this probably not a needed product.
Avalara Ava-Easy!
We also use Avalara's tax returns and registration.
- Tax calculations
- Nexus alerts
- Transaction details
- CertCapture implementation
- Tax exemption certificates verification
- Better alerts at Nexus
Wish the exemption certificates were more universal, which would help with verification.
Avalara Review
- Nexus study.
- Taxability matrix.
- Generating reports.
- Hold times
- Follow up with issues.
- Accessibility to account manager.
- Account manager.
Helpful tool, but requires caution
- Provides detail of how a sales tax rate is calculated/broken-out per the different lines of an invoice.
- Working with Jason and Annette on the implementation last year was easy and they were very responsive.
- Customer service: we have encountered several issues related to the tax rates that are being calculated (where they were incorrect), and were not able to get a satisfying response from customer service. We are also currently having an issue with the connection with Netsuite and were not able to easily resolve it by contacting Customer Service.
- Communication with account manager around contract and billing: our account manager seemed uninterested in helping us resolve a billing issue we had with Certcapture, or in explaining what our renewal for this year includes and how it would be billed.
- Updating rates for special situations: for example, in Hawaii, our company collect the GET tax, above the regular sales tax rate. Even when we brought it up, there was no straight-forward solution that was offered to us.
- It is difficult to determine whether the correct Avalara tax code is being used for items that we sell. There isn't support offered to help with choosing the correct type (and committing to it, rather than saying that you do not assume responsibility for the option we choose).
- Reports
- Returns
- Sales Tax
- Exemptions tab
- Implementation
- Explanation and Instruction on features
Avalara - user friendly, accurate and a great ROI
- Accurately calculates sales tax and communicates that with our ERP system.
- Tracks our sales tax certificates.
- Looks for other jurisdictions we have increased sales in where we now must collect sales tax.
- Add warnings when thresholds are close in jurisdiction.
Look no further than Avalara for your sales tax needs!
- Calculating sales tax for invoices; always using the most current rates.
- Creating helpful knowledge base articles and videos.
- Assisting with any questions we have on our account or future issues.
- Exempting customers - some data entry fields are not intuitive.
- Differences in the monthly reports are not as well-explained as I would like; I had to experiment a bit with different reports.
Making the calculation of sales taxes untaxing
- Seamless tax addition to documents without having to do anything.
- The tax rates automatically update when new laws are passed.
- Salespeople can look up accurate tax rates by address very easily for our quotes.
- I have confidence in their customer service when I have a problem
- I like to be able to drill down to the actual combination state, fed, and special tax rates that were on an order
- My account representative checks in annually to discuss my changing needs.
- The option of showing a window with tax rate details, without having to drill down, would be helpful.
- Adding some reports into the GP framework would be nice
I have never had a problem reaching someone at Avalara when I have a question about my service or about my account. It is nice to have trusted source to turn to when I have a question on a topic as complicated as sales and use taxes.
Gotta Have our AvaTax!
- If you have to submit sales tax in California, then you will love Avalara AvaTax! It keeps all the tax divisions in the right divisions separate.
- The liability worksheet makes it easy to check the amounts to be submitted, which you approve prior to submittal.
- Avalara AvaTax keeps you in control of the sales and use tax, which saves you time and stress.
- The training on the system could be much better. We only use the system once a quarter, so it difficult to remember something you only use in that time frame.
- Better help with the committed items, as sometimes they do not commit.
- Make the system reminders for the liability worksheet pertain only to your client's time-frame. We are quarterly, so please don't send us a reminder every month, it's confusing, especially when we are new to your system.
- Good website with lots of tools & functionality.
- Excellent integration with Netsuite.
- Requires manually editing sales tax calculations in cases of discrepancies with e-commerce sales tax calculations.
Avalara delivers huge ROI to our business
- Native integration with NetSuite, means we do not have to management the integration of data between the systems i.e. low maintenance.
- Automation - We do not need to worry about sales tax calculations for the different cities/states across the US, Avalara does the calculations automatically for us.
- Great support team. Responsive and have always solved any issues we have had.
- Only setup for US taxes right now. We would leverage the system even further if it was set up with international sales tax automation (VAT/GST)
- UI within Avatax could be improved slightly. Sometimes a little difficult to reconcile sales tax accruals and payments between NetSuite and Avalara.
- Nothing else that I can think of.
Avalara is the user friendly option
- The return filing is very easy.
- The interface is very user-friendly. I do not have to spend a whole lot of time training.
- Support is very helpful, fast, and always solves my issues quickly.
- I currently am unable to report on tax adjustments done in AvaTax Update. This makes reconciliation problematic.
- I am unable to configure a customer to be sometimes taxable. For example, if they buy some things for resale and some things for their own use. If there was some sort of flag I could send from our ERP on the invoice level rather than the customer level, it would be great.
- I wish I could easily see what portion (in total for all states) of our tax liability is carried over from or carried over to the next period, again for reconciliation.
- Avalara Account Managers serve as strong advocates for their customers.
- Their personnel at all levels are very knowledgeable about the solutions they offer.
- Account Manager and Solution Specialists propose practical and cost effective solutions.
- We run the Document Line Detail Report on a daily basis to ensure that our sales, re-billed freight and sales tax payable GL accounts reconcile with Avalara's numbers for these accounts. We would like to see this report refresh more often.