Item: Avalara
Rating: 10
Author: Sarbjit Sidhu

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Avalara for tax calculation purposes, when we book an order, the query goes to Avalara to calculate the tax based on the state, county, and city, it also checks whether we have re-seller cert in the file.

Pros and Cons

Calculates the Tax
File Tax Returns
Stores Re-seller certs

For Re-seller, we have to load cert for each state, which is time consuming and also number of certs goes beyond limit and Avalara charges extra
When there are shipments on a order for multiple states at the line level, transactions don't get registered in Avalara or get registered with TRX, which doesn't get matched back in ERP system

Return on Investment

IT doesn't have to upload monthly or adhoc basis rate updates, Avalara takes care that
No more manual certs to keep around, gets uploaded to the system
Reduced one head count, that is saving

Implementation Rating

We are very happy, it works well and we don't see any glitches system wise, most of the time system is up and running, but needs some improvements, sometimes requirements might be different for each customer, understanding the requirements and delivering the final product based on the requirements.

Systems Integrated With

Oracle EBS, Avalara has partner with SMartERP as an integrator, and we have used the connectors from SmartERP system

I don't think it was hard to integrate, connectors from SMartERP system works very well.

Usability

We are using Avalara for Tax Calculation at the time of booking orders and we haven't seen any issue on the tax calculations, since we implemented Avalara. Also fililng state and federal tax using this system.