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AvaTax - Sales tax solution for our company
February 01, 2018

AvaTax - Sales tax solution for our company

Kellie Harrell, CPA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • AvaTax

Overall Satisfaction with Avalara AvaTax

We were provided with a implementation specialist in the beginning who walked us through everything. We did a lot of testing and training before we starting using AvaTax. I believe it would have been a little difficult if our company did not already have an IT specialist as an employee on our side.
It is extremely user-friendly. There is a learning curve in the beginning when learning how everything works but once that is accomplished it is very seamless. There is a very useful help center on their admin console that I have found extremely helpful. There are articles and short videos that help you understand not just AvaTax but also sales tax in general.
We use AvaTax for our billing. We have nexus in 31 different states so it calculates the correct sales tax amounts for each of our invoices. Each state and county has its own tax rates and rules. AvaTax helps take away the burden of complying with all of these different states correctly.
  • Great customer support
  • Admin console is very user friendly and organized
  • Keeping you current with tax rate changes and rules
  • We have a lot of farm addresses. Since they aren't mailing addresses in the postal service we sometimes have problems with tax calculations.
  • I use to spend numerous days each month just on reconciling tax reports and filing tax returns. Now it only takes a few hours each month.
  • We use to have to go to each state's website for any tax rate updates and update those rates in our accounting software. This task has been eliminated now that we use AvaTax.
  • We were not properly collecting exemption certificates before we used Avatax. We are in complete compliance now.
  • Sage 500
It was a little complicated for us. We have a lot of customizations in our accounting system due to the nature of what we do. We also use off-site servers. We had to have our IT specialist and Avalara's IT specialist to work together to integrate everything successfully.
We use the return filing capabilities. We had Avalara perform a nexus study for us and help us be compliant in all the states we sale products. We are required to file in 31 states. In addition, some of those states require multiple returns depending on county laws. Using this service eliminates days of work for us and gives us a peace of mind that everything is filed correctly. If we receive any sort of notice from a state we can upload it to the admin console and they will take care of it for us.
If you are required to collect sales tax in multiple counties and states AvaTax is a great tool to ensure you are in compliance with those requirements. Also if you have customers who are exempt from sales tax, AvaTax is a good fit. You are able to enter those tax exemptions in once on the Avalara admin console and it applies the exemption correctly to each invoice.