Item: Avalara
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it to calculate sales taxes. We cannot use it in all states because of the complex taxability of service items in different states but it has helped automate quite a bit.

Pros and Cons

For straight forward states, the rates are always spot on.
The return filings is really nice because for those states, I do not have to fill out anything.

For resellers, some of the more complex situations when you are buying and reselling services out of state, Avalara cannot handle these situations.
We already set up items being taxable in our system, but Avalara could not port this information over. So the taxability of individual items is managed by us. Avalara does not have this knowledge base/capability.

Return on Investment

We spend a lot less time checking and double checking tax rates for the straight forward states.
The one time Avalara did file a return late, they covered the fee.

I honestly think that the person I had helping us with implementation was not great. I have dealt with people since then and have had no problems, but our initial person (2 years ago) was not helpful or knowledgeable.