Our experience with CCH SureTax since 2021.
February 16, 2024
Our experience with CCH SureTax since 2021.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with CCH® SureTax®
We currently have SureTax built into our ERP system to maintain sales tax rates, taxability, and reporting. Nexus is very easy to maintain plus SureTax even notifies us if we are approaching a threshold in a different state that we do not have Nexus in so we can get registered there to also collect sales tax. We currently collect taxes in 26 states. I could not imagine keeping track of all of the tax codes, rates, etc.
- Maintains Nexus nationwide.
- Implements all of the various sales tax rates nationwide automatically.
- Clean website that is very user friendly.
- Support is very quick to respond and always fixes any issues you may be having.
- We have had this since 2013, and not one time has a sales tax rate been wrong. We used to have Avalara, where we had 12 different overrides in their system just to calculate the correct tax. It is nice not having to maintain those.
- We have returns enabled. For the most part, it is a terrific service. I couldn't imagine having to file 26 returns monthly. There are some hiccups we have encountered with additional Schedules and tax forms that are not populating for certain states, but those are being fixed as we go. Any errors I have come across, they directly looked at and have either corrected or educated me on what I should be seeing.
- SureTax does not "see" miscellaneous credit and debit memos, even if tax is credited or debited. There is not a calculation there, so I do understand why it does not include it in reporting, however it would be nice if an amount is filled into the tax field for SureTax to break it down by the customer address on the memo just as it would an invoice so I wouldn't have to manually put in a Transaction Adjustment in SureTax
- When having to add Nexus to a state, it would be nice if SureTax "knew" if it was a Vendor Use or Sales Tax for a Remote Seller automatically. Clearly, the laws and thresholds are already built into the system, so the answer must be there. This causes confusion for the first couple of returns to file when we have a new state.
- We would have to hire multiple people to maintain everything SureTax handles for us.
- Returns could easily be a full-time job if someone had to manually file them for all of our Nexus states. The yearly cost is a fraction of what a salary would be.
- Breaking down our tax numbers by state, county, jurisdiction, city, etc, would be impossible to do manually.
We used Avalara from 2007 through 2012. We had continual connection issues with their system going down at least once a month. When your sales tax system goes down, everything within your ERP that uses sales tax also goes down. We are constantly entering quotes, orders, purchasing, and invoicing, all of which touch sales tax. When Avalara would go down, our business flow halted. We also had many issues with their sales tax rates being wrong. We had 12 rate overrides in their system that we had to manually keep up because their system could not drill down enough to determine the correct rate for a few of our customers. We sell to education the most, and some of the school campuses have various tax rates within. Avalara's system could not calculate it correctly. We sampled CCH back in 2012, and my test to them during our demo was to enter a sales document using an address that was one of our overrides for Avalara to see how their system did. Every address they calculated correctly. That was enough for us to say yes. Avalara has even contacted me recently to try to get our business back. I gave them the same test, and their rate was STILL wrong!
Do you think CCH® SureTax® delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with CCH® SureTax®'s feature set?
Yes
Did CCH® SureTax® live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of CCH® SureTax® go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy CCH® SureTax® again?
Yes
CCH® SureTax® Feature Ratings
Using CCH® SureTax®
36 - Every user of our ERP uses SureTax in some way. SureTax plays a part in every quote, order, and invoice. Our team has to rely on our sales tax program as we do not know the rates and laws of all of the states in which we have Nexus. SureTax saves us a lot of time and gives us the confidence our tax rates are correct.
2 - We have learned a few things to assist SureTax in ensuring the correct rate (like using a zip+4 for those trickier addresses). On the back end, the only thing I have had to contact support at CCH for is mainly when setting up a new tax return or if some numbers are not populating correctly. It is rare, but it has happened a couple of times. Their support team is always right on top of it.
- Returns Filing - We would have to hire someone JUST to file the returns if they did not offer this service.
- Nexus tracking - Tracking our sales numbers in non-Nexus states to ensure we are complying with the Remote Seller laws is key.
- Sales tax rates - Maintaining the monthly updates for sales tax rates in all of our Nexus states would be impossible to maintain manually.
- We have reported that we can run at different levels of detail. These are key when we get audited.
- Everything that is dialed into Returns is incredible. It would be very difficult to maintain manually.
- We would like to implement it into our E-commerce site so we have one singular tax system company-wide calculating the tax. Often times, our e-commerce site differs from SureTax when we enter the order into our ERP system. It is always the tax engine our e-commerce site host uses that is not updated properly.