[Deb Peters]

?We are implementing Business Central (BC) in the cloud and considering Avalara & Wolters Kluwer/ CCH for our sales tax.   I’m just curious how many use an add-on and if so, which one, or if you do not, how do you manage sales tax manually?

Thanks for any thoughts. Deb

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Deb Peters
Director of Finance, HR & IT
Midwest Rubber Service & Supply
Plymouth MN
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[Patti Parrish]

We have used Avalara for many years.  They have done an excellent job of calculating and reporting our sales taxes.  The setup is easy, IMO, and easy to maintain.  Their support site is user friendly.  I would highly recommend them.

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Patti Parrish
Finance Project Manager
EthosEnergy Power Plant Services
Alpharetta, Ga
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[Iaroslav Pankovskyi]

Deb,
In Canada we always set up taxes manually and the system calculates them automatically. The key areas to attend to are (in the order listed):
1) Tax Jurisdictions
2) Tax Areas (Header)
3) Tax Areas (Line)
4) Tax Groups
5) Tax Details

In the US, you may need additional or different areas to attend to.

If you would like to skip all the set up altogether and are in a position to manually calculate the applicable taxes – you can set your Orders, Invoices (or Customers and Vendors) to Tax Liable = “no” and then create a separate Line in the Order/Invoice going directly to the corresponding (tax-related) G/L Account. To help you further, you can consider Standard Texts.

If your company(-ies) does require complex tax setup (e.g. because it sells to many different states), then using tax software may be an advantage to save time and increase accuracy.

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Iaroslav
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[Andrea Riviezzo]

Hi Deb,
I’m team Avalara at 2 different NAV companies. Easy to use, and we send mass volume from our NAV system and our Magento website not to mention Amazon. It’s connected to all and we use the address validation as well. It also stores all of our resell certificates and does the filling – which CCH I do not believe is a full solution. Tax rates yes, filing maybe, certs no. Avalara offers professional services for getting certificates, loading them, etc. As well as analysis on nexus and alert if you tripped economic nexus thresholds as long as you send all transactions through. Can even offer VDA services if needed. So more or less, do you have a sales tax need, they have you. Also a fun company to work with, and Crush conferences cannot be beat.

Now the downside of Avalara: it’s cost. For sure pre-Wayfair pricing models. If your nexus in all states like us, file everywhere – maybe even monthly for most – and have high transactions and high certificates…well your tab is not going to be pretty. 

Best of luck!
Andrea

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Andrea Riviezzo
IT Manager – NAV
Charlotte’s Web, Inc.
Louisville CO
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[Jamie Constantine]

I struggle immensely with Avatax.   Out-of-Box it may work, but if there are any problems, the support at Avalara is awful.   I have experienced this with more then one of my clients/projects.

I have successfully setup Sales Tax in NAV without a add-on.   Most NAV customers chose an add on for guaranteed accuracy of rates, etc.

If I need a add-on for a new project, I will be trying Wolters Kluwer; I have heard good things.

?

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Jamie Constantine
Columbus Global
Scranton
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[Ted Johnston]

We have nexus in a limited number of states and our Controller has decided to maintain manually. Used to use raw data tables from CCH and had custom code to import the tables- lots of interesting issues.

Post Wayfair I would not recommend it- there are some strange sites.

I read recently that if you have a high number of orders, you may see issues caused by sending the request to Avalara at order release. According to the poster, the tables lock, the transaction is sent, and if Avalara is having issues (reportedly rare) or if your internet connection has an issue, it can really bog down the system.

Not sure if Avalara requires another transaction when posting if some amount of time has elapsed. If so, it may cause a similar issue when posting.

We handle back orders (can be months long). There are frequently times when the tax rate changes between the time the order is accepted and the final invoices are posted. I would guess that a web service based system would need to either check each order daily for changes or at release and at invoicing.

I would love to hear which way you decide to go. I would bet that our Controller will be asking for an automated solution before too long.

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Ted Johnston
IT Director
Streicher’s
Minneapolis MN
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[Greg Enns]

Take a look at my similar posted question here: AvaTax vs SureTax.
We still are very pleased with SureTax. Their support has been helpful and reasonably quick to respond. We’ve heard of a number of companies struggling with Avalara–especially with high costs. I’d recommend SureTax (Wolters-Kluwer).

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Greg Enns
ERP Coordinator
Technical Prospects
Kaukauna WI
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[Kim Dallefeld]

I recently was told that Avalara doesn’t work with Service Orders/Invoices in BC. Has anyone else had this problem?

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Kim Dallefeld
Kim@Dallefeld.com
Dallefeld Consulting, LLC
Member of Dynamics Consulting Group
Ft. Worth, TX
2019 NAVUG Board of Advisors
Past NAVUG Board Chairman
NAVUG Programming Committee
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[Michael Barnes]

There are issues with Service to which Avalara has not yet identified the cause but feels comfortable in pointing to the service module partner as the culprit in its intermittent and inconsistent record creation on the portal side. Also, we have issues with it reconciling the Service Orders to the corresponding Service Invoices nvoices on their side. In a troubleshooting call with 12 people and both vendors, we discovered that a Print Preview (not the customary Statistics or post batch run) insures a liability record is created on the Avatax side and Uncommitted.

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Michael Barnes
IT Manager, Enterprise Systems
Kenco Group, Inc
Chattanooga TN
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