Item: Avalara
Rating: 7
Author: Lisa Burns

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Cert Capture to keep Resale & other tax exemption documents/letters on file for all of our dealers. It is only used by the Credit Department, and if we have a tax auditor come through. It keeps certificates on file and allows us to know when they are about to expire, as well as try to assist us in running a campaign to collect any new certs in certain states.

Pros and Cons

Storing arena for Resale Tax Exemption Certificates.

The need to hit Refresh several times throughout the process to upload a new cert can be tiresome, and on occasion we have to wait a long time for it to show up during one of those refreshes.
Campaigns can be clunky; not always notified which dealer accounts didn't get their email delivered, and sometimes dealers find the format to appear to be SPAM and so they do not complete it.

Return on Investment

I have not been involved in a Tax Audit yet since we started using Avalara. It is hard to know the ROI based on that. Nor do I file the Tax Returns.
I suppose it is a positive impact on ROI versus not having a software system in place at all to track Tax Certs.

Systems Integrated With

None that I am aware of

Usability

Need to hit refresh often during process to add a certificate, and then they are not always there for a long time. Campaigns to collect new certs can have their own issues with knowing who all did and did not receive our email like if it was undeliverable. And when a document comes in from a dealer that is a failed transfer, we have no idea to know who actually sent it to let them know it failed and to try again.

Additional Capabilities

CertCapture

My review has been based on CertCapture.

Likelihood to Recommend

To my knowledge, we aren't aware of a great software for the Resale Tax Exemption Certificate need we have. So it does work to store, and collect, tax certs even if parts seem clunky to me. If we did not have it, it would make collecting & storing the certificates much more laborious.

Avalara's pros & cons for storing & collecting tax certs

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Avalara