Item: Avalara
Rating: 8
Author: Morgan Eliasen

Overall Satisfaction with Avalara

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The tax team is using it to calculate sales tax on orders. They are also using their returns service for sales tax compliance. The customer service (group sales) team is using their certcapture service to verify exempt customers and store exemption certificates.

Pros and Cons

Pros

They listen to recommendations for improvement
Availability of support
Responsiveness of compliance team

Cons

Support is not super effective (I'd say we're at about ~50% having an answer of our questions)
Pricing is high
Sales team was a bit misleading as to the volume their system can handle

Return on Investment

Avalara certainly provides a big ROI when compared with bringing sales tax calculation and return filing in house. Given our volume, that would not be possible.

Implementation Rating

ERP implementation was relatively straightforward, but the implementation team didn't always seem the most knowledgeable to our questions.

Systems Integrated With

Netsuite

Usability

Most functions are user friendly. However, having subsidiaries with a high transaction volume creates significant inefficiencies. The DTS is quite clunky.

Alternatives Considered

Vertex Cloud and Vertex O Series

We have created a relationship with Avalara and believe they are a good option for our current system.

Likelihood to Recommend

For exemption document management - they are great! For processing returns at the end of the month for approval - they are slow but improving.

Comments

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Bobby Sands
(Vendor Representative) commented 7 years ago
Morgan, thank you for taking the time to share your experience using Avalara. We work hard to deliver our customers the best service possible, and we're grateful for the opportunity to work with you. Regarding your feedback about use tax reporting, we’d appreciate an opportunity to learn more about what’s going well and improvements you’d like to see. If you’re open to continuing the conversation, please contact customercare@avalara.com so we can share your insights with our product team.

The Growing Solution

Modules Used