Generally pleased
October 30, 2018
Generally pleased
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- AvaTax
Overall Satisfaction with Avalara
We use the Avatax software to make sales and use tax calculation for our traditional sales model, and our e-commerce platform. It is only being used by the accounting/customer service department, 1 programmer who is deeply involved in our NetSuite ERP software has also been involved in the Avalara launch.
- Updated rates - compared to our old (manual) process, we're saving tons of time when we don't have to look up or update rates for new customers or new sites.
- Direct customer support - our account manager is very accessible and if she doesn't answer a call, Kristin gets back to me same day. She turned a quote for a new project very quickly as well. Very pleased with her.
- I've only sat through 3 trainings, or webinar sessions, but they were well done.
- Very annoyed by the $500 annual sur-charge that we were threatened with for not having our account set up for auto-pay. Literally the only vendor we do business with that has tried anything like this. My Visa is currently on saved on file so we weren't upcharged, but paid this years renewal a few days early via ACH transfer.
- We requested a custom rule to handle MO sales / use tax, that is unusual. It took months to get it finished, and we haven't gone live with it yet. This is partly on me though, and the fact that I'm not even 100% sure that my supervisor had gotten proper advice from MO dept of revenue on the issue.
- The software is expensive. Must be nice to have that big of a market share. We spend the extra money though because we do feel (and have been advised) that Avalara is the best, and this is important enough to go with the best.
- too early to tell from a staffing point, and we haven't been audited since we launched. I do feel confident that we'd pass, and part of that goes to Avalara. We spend less time processing orders for sure. While the annual software renewal is very expensive, i do think it's being offset by payroll savings.
- Magento & NetSuite.
I was only involved in the NetSuite integration, but it went fairly smoothly... and was working from day 1.
Not using either. But we've spec'd a side project that would require us to launch a much larger e-commerce site, and we'd at least start using the managed return filings, our account manager Kristin did a good job explaining the capabilities and quoting us a number we could use to market this project.
We selected Avalara because we were already using it with our first website, backed by Magento. Also, when we did a NetSuite launch a year ago, our consultants recommended it over the alternatives. Have not seriously compared to alternatives.