Avalara Review
February 02, 2023

Avalara Review

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • AvaTax
  • Returns

Overall Satisfaction with Avalara

For sales tax calculation and return filing. Initially Avalara was purchased to be used for global tax calculation and return filings, but there is still an issue with the reverse charge mechanism not working between Avalara and Chargebee. This issue led us use other tax software to calculate and file international tax returns.
  • Calculating US Sales Tax
  • Plenty of reporting options to analyze data
  • No ability to review tax returns before filing.
  • Support tickets are closed before solutions are confirmed to work, so need to open/file multiple tickets for the same issue.
  • No ability to prevent tax returns from being filed after the 1st, but do not know if anything is incorrect until the 1st.
  • All returns filed should include payment confirmations from the state, for audit purposes.

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?

No

Would you buy Avalara again?

No

  • No change really, if any it's spending more time submitting support cases for returns.
  • Chargebee
I was not part of the integration, but there was a major issue with reverse charge mechanism not working, so we had to find other options for our international returns.
Avalara is user friendly, but some of the requirements for returns are restricting and leaves room for errors that need to be corrected after the return is filed. Specifically we are a remote seller of SaaS products and our Arizona return has transactions that flow to categories we do not have selected in our product codes and we did not know until after the return was filed.
Chargebee had an agreement with Avalara so we could not use our current provider for sales tax. Avalara is good for sales tax collection, and even easier to set up, but Vertex Returns was better because once it was set up there were fewer issues than we have had with Avalara, and all documentation was provided once the returns were filed.
Avalara works well for US sales tax calculation. We have not received many issues of incorrect tax rates. Areas of improvement for Returns, all returns filed should include payment confirmations in the returns packet for audit purposes. Multiple states do not include this based on how Avalara files the return, for example there was an issue with the May 2022 Maryland payments for multiple taxpayers, Avalara said it was resolved and then we received another notice. This could have been solved by us if we had a payment confirmation, but instead interest and penalty is increasing because we are waiting for Avalara to resolve the issue. Not to mention if we are ever audited we have no proof of payment.

Avalara Feature Ratings

Sales and Use Taxes
7
VAT / GST Taxes
3
Geolocation for Tax Assessment
10
3rd-Party Software Integrations
1
Tax Data Reporting
10
Compliance Administration Management
6
Complex Tax Scenario Management
5