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Avalara delivers huge ROI to our business
Updated August 12, 2020

Avalara delivers huge ROI to our business

Sonny Spencer, ACA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • AvaTax

Overall Satisfaction with Avalara

We are using Avalara to automate sales tax calculations on our sales invoices to customers in the US. Avalara in turn file our monthly/quarterly state tax returns for us and remit payment on our behalf.
  • 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.
  • For us to calculate sales taxes and filing returns would be a significant burden on our small Finance Team's resources. The relatively small cost of filing and integration with NetSuite yields significant ROI.
Falls short of a 10 for the reason I mentioned earlier. UI could use a little improvement, to make it easier to reconcile between NetSuite and AvaTax data.
  • We have benefited from the managed returns filing and this provides us with huge ROI. We do not have many exemption certificates to manage, so make use of Avalara's free version of that functionality at present.
I have not used another sales tax automation software like Avalara. For me, it is the market leader in its industry.
Suitable for any company operating in the US that is currently manually calculating/filing sales taxes for customers based in the US.

Avalara Implementation

Apart from one small speed bump, the implementation went well. There was an issue due to migrating from a former system, but that was quickly remedied.

Integrating Avalara

In my experience, Avalara integrates seamlessly with ERP systems that I have used. With very little support, an Accountant can install the Avalara AvaTax bundle within their ERP, set the appropriate tax codes for each item for sale/purchase and start automating tax determination and tax filings right away.
  • NetSuite
  • Sage Intacct
Yes, they do.
  • File import/export
  • API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
Avalara has a direct integration with both NetSuite and Sage Intacct. When necessary, we would upload transactions to AvaTax and export for reconciliation purposes. This made the technology aspect of the integrations simple and easy to understand for less technical users. Really it is a plug and play solution that Accountants can use immediately.
Be sure to work closely with the implementation representative assigned and be ready to classify your existing items for sale/purchase, so that the appropriate tax determination can be applied for each item/jurisdiction on a given transaction.
  • NetSuite
  • Sage Intacct
We used the standard integration connectors in each instance. Not difficult at all.