Item: Avalara
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use [Avalara] in our excise tax department. It is used to produce all necessary returns and schedules for motor fuel transactions.

Pros and Cons

Quick response to trouble tickets
User guide is helpful for some situations that don't require heavy lifting
Online videos (youtube) are very helpful
Friendly attitude from case ticket support staff

User guide could include real world examples (with screen shots) of issues and how to fix
New and updated youtube videos would be great on issues industry has run into
Avalara puts a lot of resources towards Sales Tax, and feels like they ignore Excise tax at times (the CRUSH conference was very heavy on Sales tax info and very little on Excise).

Key Insights

Do you think Avalara delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Avalara's feature set?

Yes

Did Avalara live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Avalara go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Avalara again?

Yes

Return on Investment

Having Avalara has allowed our Excise unit to be cut in 1/2 and move staff to other areas to better serve the business.

[Avalara] is easy to use, but can get more complicated as situations may require custom scenarios and/or profiles. These can be tricky to get to work correctly and require a lot of experience to understand how they work. I would love to have a call center to talk to customer support on the phone with issues vs. having to submit a ticket and wait for it to be assigned.

Additional Capabilities

Avalara Returns

The returns module is great and provides us a way to file electronically directly to the state when available. Being able to look back at prior periods to resolve an issue is also a great tool.

Alternatives Considered

Have not evaluated other products.

Likelihood to Recommend

Avalara is a great product, but there could be more attention and resources directed towards the Excise tax product. They could be more proactive in regard to rate updates and legislation changes. Depending on volume and complexity of a business Avalara can be a big time saver and a step towards automation and electronic files.

Avalara Excise

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Avalara