Item: Avalara
Rating: 2
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our business sells direct to customers online as well as wholesale to stores that resell our products. We use AvaTax for tax calculations in Shopify and in our ERP system, and we have Avalara file and remit our returns based on those transactions. Additionally, we utilize Cert Capture for exemption certificates, which connects into AvaTax to exempt customers with valid certificates on file.

Pros and Cons

most of the time, it properly calculates sales tax on transactions.
filing returns is easy and handled entirely by Avalara once everything is setup.

I feel customer service in all areas needs drastic improvement - customer support, implementation, account management, etc.
Support for implementation; have the implementation team understand the business you are in and what products/ services you have purchased. Improve upon the sequence of implementation to make logical sense.

Key Insights

Do you think Avalara delivers good value for the price?

Are you happy with Avalara's feature set?

Yes

Did Avalara live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of Avalara go as expected?

Would you buy Avalara again?

Return on Investment

Decrease in Accounting staff time dedicated monthly to calculating and filing sales taxes.

Systems Integrated With

ERP- Microsoft Business Central
Shopify

We utilized a 3rd party consultant to assist with implantation with our ERP system- Business Central. Since we did not purchase the integration with Shopify through Avalara- we have Shopify Pro level which has that included, the implementation team did not assist with that integration, which was not clearly communicated at the onset of the project or during the sales pitch to us.

Usability

Overall, the software is easy enough to use, reporting could be better and more robust/ user friendly, have ability to create own reports, etc.
The difficulty comes with interacting with or getting any answer from someone at Avalara.

Additional Capabilities

Avalara Returns
CertCapture
Professional Services (nexus studies, registrations, backfiling, etc.)

Avalara Returns- no issues or complaints once we got everything set up. CertCapture- could be more user-friendly; training upon implementation was minimal. Professional Services- we utilized this for initial certificate collection and in my opinion, it was horrible. We utilized the team to run 2 campaigns; the 2nd campaign they emailed out incorrectly the wrong template to the wrong group. Response times from our Avalara PS team contact were horrible. It takes a minimum of 2 weeks to get a campaign turned around, which seems unnecessary for it to take that long. We did not even utilize all of the purchased resources as our experience with them was awful. The sales pitch we received made it seem like this service was end-to-end for collecting all required exemption certificates, but that was not the case. They also made it seem like there was no way for us to go about doing that work ourselves without individually emailing or calling customers. Had I known I would be able to generate distributions to specific customer listings on my own, I never would have purchased Professional Services work.

Likelihood to Recommend

For the most part, the software does what it is supposed to do. We have had several glitches that we've spent months working with support on fixing. In our experience, implementation was awful and the Avalara team we worked with was not up to date on what products and services we had purchased, every meeting we had to review that with them at the beginning. The order of implementation was mind-boggling, as they did not even start Cert Capture training until after our planned go-live date (which we had to move 3 times due to Avalara delays), which makes no sense as you would want that live and setup before going live so that resale customers have those certificates on file on day one. We purchased Managed Services work to assist in collecting certificates, which was a huge mistake and a huge waste of money. I would not recommend anyone utilize that service. In my opinion, customer service is beyond awful. Our account manager is impossible to reach and we've had probably 5 different account managers in 6 months. Customer Support is supposed to answer tickets within 8 hours, based on paying a premium for the "pro" level support. However, the response we receive is never within 8 hours, and normally is an email stating they need additional information to look into the issue, and then it's another 24+ hours before you get another response. If the software ran smoothly and never had issues, it would be fine because you would never have to interact with anyone at Avalara, however, that has not been our experience.

Software is fine, customer service is not

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Avalara