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Helpful tool, but requires caution
Updated November 10, 2020

Helpful tool, but requires caution

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • AvaTax
  • CertCapture

Overall Satisfaction with Avalara

We use Avalara to calculate sales tax for our transactions via the Netsuite connector.
  • Provides detail of how a sales tax rate is calculated/broken-out per the different lines of an invoice.
  • Working with Jason and Annette on the implementation last year was easy and they were very responsive.
  • Customer service: we have encountered several issues related to the tax rates that are being calculated (where they were incorrect), and were not able to get a satisfying response from customer service. We are also currently having an issue with the connection with Netsuite and were not able to easily resolve it by contacting Customer Service.
  • Communication with account manager around contract and billing: our account manager seemed uninterested in helping us resolve a billing issue we had with Certcapture, or in explaining what our renewal for this year includes and how it would be billed.
  • Updating rates for special situations: for example, in Hawaii, our company collect the GET tax, above the regular sales tax rate. Even when we brought it up, there was no straight-forward solution that was offered to us.
  • It is difficult to determine whether the correct Avalara tax code is being used for items that we sell. There isn't support offered to help with choosing the correct type (and committing to it, rather than saying that you do not assume responsibility for the option we choose).
  • We have been able to ensure that sales tax is being collected and remitted timely. It has not changed the number of staff involved or reduced the time of filing.
There is a lot of ongoing maintenance that needs to happen, and most of it is self-prompted. Avalara does not notify us when there is potentially something that we are doing wrong. It would be helpful to be prompted for action (or at least raise the question of "did you consider xyz?"), rather than assume that we know everything and are able to update our settings correctly all the time.
  • We also started using Certcapture. It is helpful in terms of managing documents. However, again, it lacks in that it expects the user to be able to determine whether a certificate is acceptable, rather than help with determining whether that's true or not.
Avalara does help in calculating the sales tax when the particular state and customer is already set up. However, we still do not feel 100% comfortable using it without double checking the rates ourselves and making sure that we didn't miss a county or city tax that needs to be added. It would be helpful if Avalara would also bring up a note that says that there is a potential additional city/county tax that was not applied that we should at least look into.

Avalara Feature Ratings

Type of tax
7.0
Sales and Use Taxes
7
Tax Reporting & Compliance ()
Not Rated

Avalara Implementation

Overall, the implementation process was very positive. However, it would help if Avalara could offer additional support (even at additional charge) related to verifying that we are choosing the correct tax items, checking off the correct states and/or counties where we are registered, etc'.
We found ourselves struggling with it, and the response was that Avalara can't help with that and we should reach out to an external tax advisor.