Item: Avalara
Rating: 8
Author: Mollie SwannDeyoung

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

AvaTax is used to calculate real-time sales tax rates for our e-commerce platform. This includes our wine club members and all mail orders. Before Avalara, we had to manually research and update rates in our older system. Avalara saves us so much time, and allows us to remain compliant in real time with any and all sales tax laws.

Pros and Cons

Annual CRUSH conference.
Website information and research.
Implementation of product.
Continuing education webinars.

Threshold emails-- the frequency and process of estimating when/if your account will go over.

Return on Investment

We have seen time savings in our ordering process.
We have seen a positive impact on our reporting abilities.
We have seen time savings in researching appropriate tax rates or manually updating any systems, as we were before.

Implementation Rating

We implemented before the new product catalog product. I think implementation would have been much easier if this had been available then. We were able to recreate something that assimilated our historic rates, otherwise, the implementation would have been painful.

Systems Integrated With

Magento
Ship Compliant
Counterpoint
B-Loyal

Once we had our products mapped, the implementation was not difficult to achieve.

Usability

The admin console is easy to follow, and reports are easy to customize. Implementation is difficult unless you have an IT team or background.

Additional Capabilities

We have not yet, but given our level of satisfaction with AvaTax, we are looking to add more product offerings to our portfolio.

Alternatives Considered

Sovos Compliance

We use Sovos-- specifically, Ship Compliant, to manage all our liquor/beer/wine licenses, permits, and returns. This system also checks our level of compliance across all jurisdictions. Avalara only recently has offered an excise tax solution, and we have been using Ship Compliant for years successfully. All our staff is trained on it, the price point is good, and all our information is already available in their system. We will not likely stop using Ship Compliant, given its ability to tap into the wine industry in addition to compliance.

Likelihood to Recommend

When multiple states are involved at a transaction tax level, automation is a must. Avalara can do that for you so you are compliant, and save you tons of time and stress. It might not be appropriate if you only do transactions in one or two states and don't plan to expand past those.

Future of tax!! Must have for E-commerce!

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Avalara