Item: Avalara
Rating: 9
Author: Dawn Mehler

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Avalara Avatax and Avalara Returns and are registered in most states either under Physical or Economic Nexus. Avalara provides the granular detail of tax rates in every jurisdiction so that we don't need to stay on top tax rate changes that seem to happen almost daily!

Pros and Cons

Calculate Detailed Sales Tax
Submit Returns
Awesome Tech Support

It is expensive, but is worth it.
Their Sales Team runs from Excellent down to Inattentive (The inattentive one seems to have moved on)
Quoting for help seems high.

Key Insights

Do you think Avalara delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Avalara's feature set?

Yes

Did Avalara live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Avalara go as expected?

Would you buy Avalara again?

Yes

Return on Investment

The hours spent to manually calculate sales tax returns has been removed
Customers get accurate quotes including sales tax
The registration with SST States was seamless and because Avalara is an approved supplier, the cost of Avatax and Returns for those states is free!

Systems Integrated With

StaxBill
WooCommerce

Seamless!

Usability

It really is seamless and the reporting or transactional investigation has become better too!

Additional Capabilities

Avalara Returns

Absolutely... 1000%. With the volume and intricacies of our products I can't imagine preparing these returns on a monthly basis. AND... if we didn't have a well structured system in place internally, we'd probably use CertCapture as well.

Alternatives Considered

TaxJar

We briefly reviewed TaxJar, but went with Avalara when we did our evaluation. Avalara Provided everything that we needed.

Likelihood to Recommend

I can't think of any area where it wouldn't be an asset to your company. The peace of mind that it gives any company that you are collecting and remitting the correct sales tax is invaluable. It is expensive, but when you realize that you would need a team to navigate the calculation of sales tax for every local, district and state sales tax rate where you ship, it would be mind boggling. It is an expense... a cost of doing business, but money well spent.

Avalara Works!

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Avalara