Avalara

Pros

Certcapture provides the ability to create a campaign to email or fax customers for whom exempt certificates are required, and it makes it easy for them to supply the certificate(s). It is also simple to followup with those that did not initially respond. For daily use, the Walk me Through help feature, and the great wealth of help articles and FAQs, make it easy to find the answer to any questions.

Cons

CertCapture allows you to select an Exempt Reason that isn't valid for the state of the certificate. Avalara knows it isn't a valid reason, but it lets you select it anyway, and doesn't give you an error. After you finish validating the certificate and saving it, you can then look at a "History" tab and there you will see an API Call Failed error which if you research you'll find out the reason. But why set the user up for failure?

Another issue: how is it useful to allow only the last PO number to be used for a single-use certificate, but at the same time allow multiple PO numbers to be saved? That’s also setting people up to fail! The Avalara University videos on Certcapture do not mention that only the last PO number saved is effective. The “Walk me through” feature doesn’t either. The field says “PO Numbers” and allows multiple PO Numbers to be saved, but it doesn’t actually work. The only way someone could learn that the field that says PO Numbers really means PO Number is by having orders they expected to be exempt be taxed, then have customers complain when they are not.

Avatax should validate the selected Exempt Reason, and check all the PO numbers listed for a certificate and exempt orders with PO numbers that match any of them. I've told them this, but instead of “That’s a good idea, I’m going to forward your idea to our product development team and see if we can get it implemented.” they say “the software is working as designed.”

Pros

The software works great. Once you have it set up, it runs in the background and involves almost no review. I know we are always charging the correct tax rate and with the tax return processing, I know my returns are being submitted correctly and on time. With exposure in most US states, staying up to date on all tax changes and filing individual returns would require a small team to keep accurate. With Avalara, we set up the states and localities we are in and the software takes care of the rest.

Cons

When questions do come up, customer service could do a better job. I have also had our individual customer rep changed on us multiple times in the last year, which is frustrating. I have also experienced billing issues around the time of renewal each year, which can take up to 4 or 5 months to get resolved.

Pros

Avalara makes tax calculation easy for each of our sales order. We no longer have to be too much concerned with the right tax rates in each of the states and counties we have business in because Avalara update those rates every time a tax rule or tax rate changes. Each time I need to research when a tax calculation is wrong, based on the user’s input, I found that Avalara is correct and that the issue is related to something the user is missing to take into consideration.

Cons

The only dislike that I have is that Avalara support takes a lot of time to get back to you. I always end opening a support case thru e-mail, chat and phone, so I work with the one that answers the fastest.

Pros

Ease of use and navigation of support questions. There is a lot of capabilities in the system depending on your business structure. Any questions that you might have about using the software is available for non users in the support search.

Cons

Support emails. Blocky and convoluted, they notify you if there is a support request made. They become hard to follow with the generated support number and when the request has been elevated to another department or specialist. I mostly just archive the emails without looking at them as they tend to be redundant (which has had me miss some important emails unfortunately). Would benefit greatly in cleaning up the email format.

Pros

I use Avalara's CertCapture program for filing all of the tax certs my company receives. If you are still keeping physical copies, you need to consider this. CertCapture allows the user to assign account numbers and names to every cert uploaded - it also allows expiration dates to be set. A report is processed every couple of weeks to see which of our customers will need to send in updated paperwork. Then an automated email and fax are sent, reminding them what certs are needed. Staying in compliant is one of my top priorities and this allows me to do so with ease.

Cons

I am honestly struggling to think of anything negative to say about this software. We currently use Vertex for our tax calculations, i would like to start using AvaTax though. I work for a large corporation and from what I've been told AvaTax doesn't meet our business needs. I would like to see that change in the coming years.