We use Avalara for Sales & Use tax filings. It's the best thing that has happened to me joining this company. In the past I had to manually login into each state website and file the returns. Great tool to keep up with the current sales tax rates. Very easy to setup and use. Will recommend to companies.
Pros
Keep up with current tax rates
Help with filings
Help with notices
Cons
The reports downloads can be slow sometimes
Likelihood to Recommend
It's been awesome to us. We don't have to do everything manual. Avalara logs into the state sites file the returns for us.
Avalara has been an amazing tool to manage our customer's sales tax exemption forms and provide us with the most up to date sales tax rates. We also utilize it to track sales throughout the country and see what thresholds we've met to register in new states as needed.
Pros
Up to date sales tax rates
Excellent exemption certificate management
Wonderful customer service
Likelihood to Recommend
Such an easy to use format with excellent customer service!
VU
Verified User
Administrator in Finance and Accounting (Events Services company, 201-500 employees)
Every invoice we create is ran through AvaTax during processing. We perform facility maintenance services in every state of the US and it would be a nightmare to keep track of the current tax rules and rates for our services.
Pros
Reporting for completing my tax returns
Dashboard ease of use
Customer events
Cons
Quickbooks connector can be flaky
Account manager response time
Cost
Likelihood to Recommend
Avalara is well suited for companies who do service in multiple tax jurisdictions. Would be less appropriate for companies who perform services in one or two tax jurisdictions.
Currently, I am the primary user, with my manager as back-up. I do have plans to roll out the application to billing personnel in my company and to sales for tax calculation.
Pros
Calculate real-time sales tax for invoices.
CertCapture for managing my TEC's.
Transaction sales tax detail.
Cons
Local jurisdiction exemption certificates.
Avalara online university classes are not interactive and do not provide for practice applications.
Likelihood to Recommend
Avalara does a great job with usual sales tax calculations, but it needs a bit of improvement in trickier or unusual sales tax calculations/exemptions.
It is being used by the finance department to calculate and remit sales tax across states that we do business in.
Pros
Calculation of sales tax.
Reports by state and period to remit sales tax.
East of setup for various types of sales types and codes.
Cons
I think it would be great it Avalara offered advisory services, i.e., where should we be collecting sales tax, and what types of services are taxable/ non-taxable in each state.
Likelihood to Recommend
I think it's really useful in cases where you are remitting sales tax for many states and localities since Avalara is responsible for staying up to date with rates, etc.
Avalara has been a lifesaver for us in the midst of an acquisition. It integrates beautifully with Sage Intacct and allows our parent company to access the data they need, remotely, to file Sales/Use returns with no headaches.
Pros
Integration with top Accounting Software Systems made the choice to go with Avalara super simple.
Customer Service and Support are excellent, specifically throughout the setup and integration process.
Cons
I love that I can set my Accounting Staff up with logins and they can perform their own tax calculations, however, the UI on the website doesn't offer much direction. We need a better roadmap when we're just figuring things out.
Likelihood to Recommend
Having a parent company who takes over the tax filings, from another state, has been a dream with the online functionality of Avalara. Works great with our cloud-based software.
It is being used by accounting specifically. We use it to process our monthly sales tax returns. We use Intacct for our ERP and due to the simplicity of the default sales tax module and the complexity of the PA tax code, we had to turn to Avalara
Pros
Accounts for sales tax remittances
Provides historical sales tax remittance data
Cons
At least when vetting the software...it did not handle the use tax side of the equation particularly well and we still need to do that manually by assigning GL accounts for the individual states in every transaction surround use tax.
On occasion when either Intacct and/or Avalara has updates to their software, it crashes the API connection. When that connection crashes everything on the order entry side of the fence grinds to a halt as no transactions can be processed. Needs to be escalated to engineering at either Avalara or Intacct.
Likelihood to Recommend
For multi-state and multi-jurisdiction sales tax returns, it is beneficial. I think if you are not in PA, however, you could get away with just utilizing the out of the box Intacct sales tax module. PA is a different ball of wax though in the professional services space.
VU
Verified User
Director in Finance and Accounting (Staffing and Recruiting company, 201-500 employees)
