Avalara Power
Updated May 10, 2019
Avalara Power
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- AvaTax
- Returns
Overall Satisfaction with Avalara
We use Avalara for sales tax calculcations, reporting and remittance. The tax department owns the relationship with Avalara, but the IT and web platform departments work quite closely with Avalara as well. Avalara takes the challenge out of calculating sales tax for our multi-state, multi-entity retail businesses. In light of the Wayfair decision, Avalara has been a great tool to already have implemented. We have added approximately 25 states since the Wayfair decision.
- Provides up-to-date sales tax rates
- Maintains taxability rules in every jurisdiction -- assuming that you have your products mapped accurately.
- Completes the reporting and remittance process in a timely manner
- Customer service can be a challenge. Avalara tends to give you a canned answer . . . even when you tell them that you've already tried their canned solution.
- Billing can be a challenge. Review all bills from them. Verify all amounts with your contract.
- Timeliness of responses on compliance notices from states has a little to be desired. Process is very slow, even though Avalara prepares, files and remits for the majority of our sales and use tax returns.
- As a result of Wayfair, we had to begin filing approximately 7,300 sales tax returns in a year vs. 1,500 sales tax returns. And we did this without adding a headcount. We may need to add headcount in a couple of years when we are subjected to more audits, but for now, Avalara took on the extra returns and we didn't need to add a preson to our department.
- Also as a result of Wayfair and the requirement to collect and file in many new states, our transaction-based fee went up significantly , which hurts our bottom line.
- We spend a little more time researching compliance notices, since we don't actually prepare the returns (Avalara does), but it is still a much more efficient process than manually preparing returns ourselves.
- We use the returns filing. As mentioned below, this allowed us to more than quadruple our annual compliance burden without adding staff. We fully expect to add staff within the next couple of years to help deal with the audits that are (no doubt) coming.
- Vertex O Series
For the size of our company and the tools that we need, Avalara was priced better than Vertex or Sabrix and, appeared to be more self-suffient . . . that is more intuitive than the competition. The sales person from Vertex made us feel like we were too little for them. Avalara made us feel like we would be a valued partner from the beginning.
Avalara Feature Ratings
Cross-Border Tax Compliance with Avalara
Wayfair has required us to increase our footprint. Without Avalara there is no way that we could have kept up with the number of new states.
Not that I'm aware.
Using Avalara
6 - Tax, Accounting and IT are the primary users of Avalara. IT helps coordinate the web team and accounting utilizes Avalara reports to prepare the journal entries for the cash tax payments. Tax is the primary user -- that sets up the product mappings, compliance calendars and runs reports for audits.
2 - The people that support Avalara within our company have a solid understanding of sales tax and how it works. They have worked with various support people within Avalara to determine how to best set up rules and mappings and know how to run ad hoc queries and tests.
- Real time tax calculation
- Reports that can be generated by state/time period to support audits
- Returns are filed by the same system that calculated the tax, so all information is in one place.
- We utilize Avalara to verify tax rates for one of our lines of business that doesn't (yet) use Avalara. Just need the details of the transaction and let Avalara do the rest.
- We also obtain rate tables for our HQ state that we utilize in our Excel based use tax process.
- Use tax -- The Avalara solution to automate this sounds good . . . I just need to get the internal support for this project.
- We also have a handful of brands/entities that currently use a flat rate table from Vertex to calculate tax. This needs to change!
Evaluating Avalara and Competitors
- Price
- Product Features
- Vendor Reputation
- Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
From day one, Avalara made us feel like a true partner. They answered all of our questions and took the time to get to know us and our business -- even our very manual, custom processes. Their responsiveness during implementation was key to us getting the system in place in a timely manner and within the expectations of everyone involved.
I 'm not sure that much would have changed. We may have looked at the other vendors with a little more detail and we probably would have talked to more people about their experiences with the different services/products that Avalara offers. We didn't utilize the Avalara returns/compliance from the beginning and we truly wish that we would have started that process on day one!
Avalara Implementation
- Implemented in-house
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled
- Determining how to map products.
Avalara Training
- Self-taught
Very easy to learn
Configuring Avalara
Don't map UPCs -- Map product categories!
Not that I can think of.
Avalara Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Good followup Knowledgeable team | Not kept informed Escalation required Difficult to get immediate help Need to explain problems multiple times Slow Initial Response |
No - Transaction cost is too high. Business won't support spending more $$.
Using Avalara
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Product mapping is very easy using the upload feature
- Running transaction reports for audits is very easy.
- Looking up filed returns can be a little cumbersome. Not all returns are on the dashboard as quickly as I would expect.
- Setting up a filing calendar can be cumbersome. A lot of information to enter!
Integrating Avalara
- API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
- We have a self-developed system that we have integrated with Avalara.
Our systems are self-deleveloped and our IT team worked with the developers at Avalara to build a custom integration. During integration we had a good experience. Sometimes it took a little longer to get a response, from the Avalara team, but we eventually always got the assistance that we needed.