Our organization has utilized Avalara to perform automatic address validation and tax calculation on both our quotes that the sales team builds out and also through our accounting software when invoicing. This has allowed us to create a more effective process for users to calculate tax and reduce inaccuracies in manual calculations. Avalara has also filed for us in the states that we work in, reducing the personnel and time we previously had to dedicate to this.
Pros
Customizable integrations to other platforms.
Easy user interface.
Comprehensive tax options.
Cons
Unresponsive sales team.
Help desk support is not easy to navigate to.
Slow roll-out.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is easy to integrate on top of existing operations and has a comprehensive platform to build off of. We have recently tried to layer on their ECM Pro product, but once we signed the contract, we have not heard from our salesperson or implementation team in 3 weeks, even after reaching out multiple times. We've struggled with every salesperson assigned to us, and it seems they are highly understaffed when supporting customers.
VU
Verified User
Manager in Information Technology (Construction company, 51-200 employees)
Our organization is actively involved in multiple Avalara
products. Avatax allows us to monitor individual
transactions. Avalara does our sales tax
reports to multiple states within various jurisdictions. ECM stores and keeps
track our customer’s tax exemption certificates. Their tax research product provides volumes
of tax related answers to many of our basic tax questions. To quantify exactly how much time Alavara has
saved our company is nearly immeasurable.
Pros
Revamping their products to meet client's needs
Being proactive with Clients to meet issues before they arise
Taking the load off clients on tax related issues so clients can focus on core business
Cons
Support. Avalara's quick growth appears to hamper back-in support. Too big too quick?
Communication. Account manager use to reach out to discuss service plans options.
Pricing. Drastic pricing increases for basic services.
Likelihood to Recommend
Our company likes the products. They are user-friendly and simple to navigate. Avalara saves us an enormous amount of time every month from tasks like filing sales tax returns to keeping track of exemption certificates. Their proactive approach allows our organization to stay focus and allows us to do what we do best. We trust in Avalara to handle the tax related issues.
VU
Verified User
Team Lead in Finance and Accounting (Construction company, 51-200 employees)
We use Avalara to help with tax calculations as well as perform our returns. Avalara has taken away the problems we face with different cities updating taxes depending on jurisdictions or periods and ensures we calculate correctly. It is also able to help us ensure we are in compliance by calculating our nexus thresholds for us. We had to do all of this manually previously and it was a headache.
Pros
Calculates nexus thresholds
Calculates tax
Ability to file all tax returns for us
Cons
Some tax services offer certain features for free whereas it's an added cost feature with Avalara
We are never informed on when our account manager changes
There's no where to request a new account manager
Likelihood to Recommend
Avalara is wonderful if you're getting into tax compliance. Once you start filing for more than a few states, they are excellent with keeping track of rate changes and can easily update filing requires. If you're only filing for 1-2, your company should be able to track these changes individually.
VU
Verified User
C-Level Executive in Finance and Accounting (Construction company, 11-50 employees)
We are using Avalara for filing returns every month. Before using Avalara its to complicated to calculate tax on the basis of States and Counties. Now it's too easy, the transaction is automatically recorded on Avalara and integration provide us the auto calculate taxes.
Pros
Provide the state wise tax collection report.
Easy to file
Filing returns on time
Cons
Apply SST number for newly added tax State need to provide or fill all details again and again, you can assist us if the profile available data is already filled with the relevant field
Likelihood to Recommend
Initially, we are used to 1 state and later we are to file 4 States' tax and which reduced our time for calculating tax.
VU
Verified User
Executive in Finance and Accounting (Civil Engineering company, 51-200 employees)
We use Avalara to manage our sales tax compliance. We sell to customers across the United States including doing a lot of drop shipments for our customers. This leads to complexity as we navigate sales tax. Avalara helps us manage exemptions and ensures we charge the customer the correct amount. They also help save us from administration time in filing the sales tax returns.
Pros
Calculate Sales Tax
Managing Certificates
Cons
Improving the Communication when dealing with tax notices
Likelihood to Recommend
Avalara does a great job at helping to make sure we are charging the customer the correct sales tax amount to customers. If you only have nexus in one state, it may not be 100% necessary but as nexus grows it's an invaluable resource in making sure we stay compliant.
Signing up was easy and completed in a matter of minutes with a real person on the phone. After that, it was all downhill. Support is the worst of any company we deal with. Don't expect a real person to ever call you. Its all done by email. Employees all work from home so they lack any personal skills outside their little box. I email them a question and don't hear back for a few days. Then they explain I just need to login and everything is on my account page. They take money from my card with no explanation as to what all the "fees" are. We just paid a 33.00 fine to the state for something. They claim in Email "that shouldn't have happened" Well - no S**T ! No refund. Then they took 100.00 too much last month and will issue a credit. We actually had some kid call us last week about a billing problem, but he said he works remote and isn't in billing - we need to contact them. Well, good luck. Hope their emails make it to my inbox and not my spam folder. At this point, I plan to just lick my wounds, suck up a 3000.00 loss and cancel everything. Even in the ratings, SUPPORT rates a 3 out of 10. How in the world did they even rate that high.
As for the Avatar system - I can't even rate it as a 10 when I get a bill with 3 different "fees" and no explanation as to what the fees are for. A 700 dollar tax bill with a 1400 debit to my account for 3 "fees"? I think a lot of their ratings are fake BOTS when you see nothing but a glowing report with -0- negative issues. I plan to shop around and find a different provider, but this experience has been so bad I may just have to keep it in house.
Pros
calculates tax for every single invoice in a matter of seconds
Only reply by emails.
They never pick up a phone to call.
The don't forward emails to the proper person to handle
Cons
Introduce the employees to a phone.
Assign a specific "account manager" for a customer to email for help
Have a real phone that you actually answer at your main office (if you even have a "main office")
Likelihood to Recommend
Customer support is non-existent. Complained about them needing to call on a phone and was told "we don't call anyone and doubt any other large company would place a phone call either" to help me with the initial install
VU
Verified User
Executive in Manufacturing (Building Materials company, 1-10 employees)
We use Avalara Consumer Use to manage our use tax obligations. Within the construction world, we do not have a lot of sales tax, but we have large consumer use obligations, and our ERP system was not adept at identifying the issues. We implemented ACU to save us time on researching every invoice that was hitting our system. We were able to reduce the time in half, thanks to the software. We use Avalara business licenses to manage our growing number of license renewals. Along with around 200 licenses for our base business, we have 7 subsidiaries that we are having to manage licenses for. Between business licenses and contractor licenses, this was becoming an overwhelming task for my small department. We had tried a competitor for about a year and they did a horrible job, so when the opportunity came to work with a company that I have been working with for years, I jumped at it. We were fans of TTR before Avalara purchased them. Their vast construction library was what really drew us in and we were working with them after having a really bad experience with another research product. Once Avalara purchased them, though the only thing I can say is that the service and product have gotten better! It is awesome to have a single company managing all of our tax needs.
Pros
Service
Knowledge
Integrity
Cons
There is a need for a centralized account manager across all products. We struggle with knowing who to speak to depending on which product we need help with.
Likelihood to Recommend
In my previous job, we used Avalara for sales tax, and we struggled a little because of the type of customers we had. We manufactured large culverts, bridges, and other items that were used in construction, but were typically not delivered to addresses. This caused some issues when trying to track down the right taxing jurisdiction. If your company though, is a more typical business-to-business company, Avalara is definitely the right choice. The sheer number of taxing codes that they have the research behind is amazing and would definitely help you to ensure that you are in compliance. I would also recommend them if you are typically seeing high-dollar audits. Despite some of the issues with calculating with no address, at my prior company we went from regularly seeing 5-6 figure sales tax audits to zero dollar sales tax audits. Having them to help with the decisions and ensuring the rates were up to date really saved us money.
We use AvaTax to calculate rates on sales orders. We have issues with addresses bringing back incorrect rates when inside/outside city limits or special jurisdictions. We use Cert Capture to retain imagines of certificates. Our issue with this is the price of the product. Very Expensive.
Pros
It simplified rates on sales orders
Audit Reports are good.
Makes filing returns easy - since we do not have to send much data (we import use tax and bad debt)
Cons
Avalara's customer service has gotten worse over the years. Long wait times and the initial support person usually can't resolve this issue We seem to waste a lot of time in this area.
The new process of entering a support ticket via the website instead of email is not preferred. It makes the whole process take longer to resolve. Also, when support replies to the ticket, the original issue is not included so we have to stop and research what we sent as the issue.
Our account rep is always trying sell add-on products even when in the middle of an issue.
Likelihood to Recommend
I would recommend Avalara, as it's been a great tool for my company. I think Avatax is good, but not perfect. We have to have a lot of custom rules.
