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Hire more staff or use Avalara - you decide!
September 27, 2018

Hire more staff or use Avalara - you decide!

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • AvaTax
  • Returns

Overall Satisfaction with Avalara

We have Avalara integrated with our Sage Intacct accounting system and use it determine sales tax for all of our sales transactions across multiple products and states. The Finance department is the primary user but our Sales Department also utilizes tools available in Avalara to help determine how much a customer could be impacted by sales tax charges when they are negotiating contracts. Our customers are all non-profits so we utilize Avalara's sales tax exemption features to store customer exemption information. This keeps us from sending invoices that later need to be adjusted. We also fully utilize the filing service, which saves my department hours at the end of every month and quarter.
  • The integration with Sage Intacct is one of my favorite features. I am confident that my sales tax is being calculated properly and that my filings are correct. The exemption storage feature allows me to invoice my customers accurately and avoid over billing them if they are tax exempt.
  • I really appreciate the visibility that I have into the transaction detail in Avalara. This is crucial when adjustments are needed or questions need to be researched.
  • Avalara does a great job with education for their users. They frequently offer targeted webinars and keep an extensive information database available at all times.
  • The UI is dated and it is not especially intuitive, but the addition of "walk me" help has improved the learning to use the software experience.
  • We also have an integration with Stripe which we use to manage one of our subscription products. This integration does not work smoothly and forces us to use customer email addresses as the Customer ID so if an email address changes the link is broken. Fortunately the transactions are duplicated in Intacct because I would not trust this integration to manage my sales tax owed.
  • My account manager is very slow to respond if I have a question. If we do need to open a case it is difficult to know exactly what to do depending on what the issue is. Once case is opened, we get good response from the case manager but I'm not sure why I have an assigned account manager if responding is not part of their job.
  • Avalara easily saves me the salary plus benefits of a staff person. Without it we would need someone just to manage our sales tax situation.
I have two implementations. I would give my Avalara / Sage Intacct implementation a 10. It has been reliable and trouble free. But I would give my Avalara / Stripe implementation a 5. The Avalara team was not clear on key points of the functionality (we found out after we implemented that the customer's email address would be the customer ID in Avalara) and it is not reliable. Sometimes it charges tax, sometimes it doesn't and we experience the same inconsistency with the system recognizing if a customer has an exemption stored in the Avalara system.
  • Sage Intacct
  • Stripe
The Sage Intacct integration went smoothly and has been trouble free. The Stripe integration has been a challenge and I don't find it to be reliable.
It is a great tool that simplifies a very complex and time consuming function. It takes some time to learn and is not very intuitive.
We currently utilize the returns filing and store exemption certificate information. Both of these save staff time and reduce risk associated with calculating and filing returns in multiple states.
If a business is selling multiple types of products in multiple states I would highly recommend Avalara. Add customers who may or may not be tax exempt to this equation and I don't know how you would manage without a resource like Avalara.