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[Laura Duffey]

Good morning everyone,

My company is searching for a sales tax partner and we wondered who our fellow GPUGers are using. I did find another thread on this topic, but it is several years old. We will want a partner that integrates seamlessly with GP (we are on version 2018R2), can calculate the tax for any potential state in the US, and will file our sales tax reports for us. We have met with Avalara but need some additional suggestions so we can complete our RFP process. What partner solution are you using for your Sales Tax needs?

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Laura Duffey
Senior Staff Accountant
New Management Services
Jacksonville FL
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[David Morinello]

We use AvaTax, but did look at Thomson Reuters as a possible alternative last year.

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David Morinello
Senior Dynamics GP Systems Architect
Ascend Learning, LLC
Leawood KS
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[Laura Duffey]

Thank you David. We will follow up with Thomson Reuters.

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Laura Duffey
Senior Staff Accountant
New Management Services
Jacksonville FL
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[Elaine Salyer]

Laura,

We are currently implementing Avatax, it is a long slow process. We did not pay for extra support, so we are going it alone. There are always those questions that just can’t be answered on FAQ page. We also looked at Vertex, which was my preference. Avalara and Vertex both have the same functionality but have very different pricing models, so if price is an issue look closely at how their pricing would fit in your business. No matter which product you chose negotiate on the price, we were able to negotiate a very competitive price with Avalara.

Good luck! ?

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Elaine Salyer
MAS, Inc.
Richfield OH
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[Laura Duffey]

Thank you Elaine. We are also going to follow up with Vertex as well and good to know we can negotiate on the pricing. Several people have mentioned that so we will be sure we compare prices closely.

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Laura Duffey
Senior Staff Accountant
New Management Services
Jacksonville FL
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[Kim Peterson]

One I like to recommend is Vertex.  They work in the cloud, hosted and also on prem.  They also charge by the value of your company, not by the number of transactions.  So no surprises – which helps with budget.  Here’s a contact.

Ann D’Emilio
T: 610-256-0023
ann.demilio@vertexinc.com
vertexinc.com

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Kim Peterson
701-261-7307
Kim@DynamicsConnections.com
#KimPetersonGP
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[Laura Duffey]

Thanks Kim. We are going to follow up with Vertex. Thanks for the contact info too.

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Laura Duffey
Senior Staff Accountant
New Management Services
Jacksonville FL
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[Anne Provost]

?Is there a 3rd party sales tax product that just provides for gathering the data so that the user can report their returns themselves?

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Anne Provost
Chief Financial Officer
TNR Technical, Inc.
Sanford FL
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[Kristy James]

Avalara’s has AvaTax, which does the tax calculations, and they do not need to prepare returns for you.

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Kristy James
Financial Controller
Dairyland Electrical Industries, Inc
Stoughton WI
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[Kristy James]

We use Avalara (AvaTax, Return prep & filing, & Certcapture) and are very happy with it.  It was very easy to implement and great follow up service any time I’ve had questions.  I opted in for the setup assistance & yr 1 service, as it was minimal cost and well worth it.  Up & running in less than 3 months.  We’re registered in 20 states and they’ve helped with half of those with their free SST setup & filing abilities.  Also looked into Sovos, WoltersKluwers, TaxJar, Thomson Reuters, and Vertex with options eliminated others due to price, limited service, poor/nonresponsiveness.

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Kristy James
Financial Controller
Dairyland Electrical Industries, Inc
Stoughton WI
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[Jennifer Barber]

Hi Laura
I was just in your shoes a few months ago.  We did choose Avalara but mostly due to their partnership with SST.  I would strongly recommend you go to streamlinedsalestax.org and read up on their services. I’ve emailed them and they are very helpful, too.  Through Avalara and their partnership with SST you don’t have to pay for the individual transactions fee, registrations, and tax filings in the states that are registered through SST.  2/3 of the states we needed to file in were partners with SST and this was a huge financial savings as well as savings on my time to have Avalara register and file for us.
We are in our first month of tax collection and so far it has been pretty smooth.  It helps that our accounting software tech support is fantastic, too.

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Jennifer Barber
Business Manager
[Rood & Riddle Veterinary Pharmacy]
Lexington KY
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[Laura Duffey]

Thank you Jennifer. Great info. That will most likely be a factor in who we chose to partner with as well.

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Laura Duffey
Senior Staff Accountant
New Management Services
Jacksonville FL
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[Thaddeus Suter]

Have used this one for over 20 years…
https://www.kampdata.com/products/dynamiczip

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Thaddeus Suter
Retus, Inc
HELOTES TX
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[Paul Dyer]

We’ve used AvaTax for 10 years (both Calculation and Filing), I USED TO recommend them, but now we are looking to leave, since they went public, the support is poor, pricing keeps going up, and we get a revolving door of Account reps. They’re so understaffed you need to schedule a phone call on a calendar just to talk to them, sometimes weeks out. Every year you have to argue back and forth on costs since you pre-pay for the calculations, if you pay for say 40K, and go over, there’s a fee, if you pay for 60K, and you use 40K, you are out of luck. Not a fan of this type of pricing. The GP connector works well, but you pay a lot for the support, and to be honest, it’s non-existent. (I seriously feel they don’t develop it, just outsource it to another company). We also have Salespad, although mostly for reports, not for entry, we had it connected to AvaTax (via the built-in connector in Salespad) for a couple of years, just to keep it in sync if someone saves a document (and it burns lookup/transaction fees, so it’s not like we’re getting around paying them). I just got a note from Avalara with a $7500 invoice since they saw we’re using the “Salespad connector”. We didn’t buy the Salespad connector, it’s built into SalesPad. (Unlike the GP connector which they do supply). They basically found a way to charge us $7500 for something they didn’t furnish. What’s next a charge for using Microsoft Office? I ended up disconnecting it… they’re still sending me an invoice for it, after I informed them we’re no longer using it. It’s the type of nickel and diming games they like to play.

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Paul Dyer
IT Director
Hoffman Technologies (Dba: Item Grabber)
http://www.itemgrabber.com
ROCKLIN CA
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[Jackie Schade]

We currently use Avalara as well, in a small capacity, and have also had some of the same issues with customer service. We would also like to know what others are using and the level of service and pricing with GP/SalesPad.

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Jackie Schade
Maxwood Furniture
Mt Pleasant SC
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[Anne Provost]

We have been using GP to calculate sales tax for the 5 states where we have physical nexus, but with Wayfair we are now adding 10 more states.  We will continue to have GP calculate the tax, but will be sending our taxable sales information to StatesSalesTax.com to file all of our returns.  They are extremely affordable (about $35 per state per return).  If anyone is interested, I will let you know how it goes.

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Anne Provost
Chief Financial Officer
TNR Technical, Inc.
Sanford FL
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[Steve Parisi]

We are using Avalara and we are finding that we continue to get hidden charges for all the usage from our websites. The fees continue to grow. We went with Avalara because we liked CertCapture which allowed us to store all the re-sale certs which we have thousands. I see some other solutions but does anyone know if there is a similar solution to Avalara and CertCapture.

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Steve Parisi
Controller
Qosina Corp
Ronkonkoma NY
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[Jessica Person]

Hi everyone, thank you to those of you who have taken the time to write about your experiences with Avalara. We strive to offer the best service possible, and some of the frustrations you’ve described with support and responsiveness are not what we want. If you’re open to a conversation, we’d like to learn more about your specific experiences and how we can improve. You can reach us at customercare@avalara.com. 

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Jessica Person
Partner Marketing Manager
Avalara
MI
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[Paul Dyer]

Can you explain why Avalara gives me the following answer when I’m trying to get help for an issue with GP 2015R2 (Not 2014 like they state): (Which is in EXTENDED SUPORT UNTIL 2025, which includes security releases). All while the connection for GP 2015 is still downloadable from the Avatax Portal, nor was ANY notice of discontinuing support for GP2015 given by Avalara.

(FYI We’re looking at 2018.3, which we have running in a test environment, but Avalara doesn’t have a connector for 18.3 yet).

Here’s the answer we got from support on an issue over some documents that we’re unable to post as the transactions were locked in avatax:

Hope you are doing well. Our Development team have provided below resolution for the issue:-

You’re using  GP 2014. We don’t support GP 2014 and there are no fix solutions for anything older than GP 2016 and GP 2018. Microsoft also does not support this anymore and it may have security vulnerabilities. We won’t be able to assist.

Note :- GP 2014-2015 are the same. The audit log show you are on GP 14.00.1159 || 116.00.

 

Thank you,

 

Jainil Vora | Customer Success  

Avalara | Tax compliance done right

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Paul Dyer
IT Director
Hoffman Technologies (Dba: Item Grabber)
http://www.itemgrabber.com
ROCKLIN CA
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[Kristy James]

That’s an odd reply .  I’m on GP 2015 and haven’t had any issues with getting support help.  It’s been about a month since I submitted a ticket and at that time I got a prompt reply directly helpful to my issue.  ?Have you tried replying back or open a new ticket?  Sometimes it takes a couple rounds to get them on the right track with what I’m looking for, but so far I’ve had good luck.

Also, I haven’t hear anything about not supporting GP2015, so I hope that stays true for a while.

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Kristy James
Financial Controller
Dairyland Electrical Industries, Inc
Stoughton WI
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[Paul Dyer]

Yes, we have asked, this response was when we asked for additional clarification on GP 2015 being unsupported, and I gave them a copy of the Microsoft GP Lifecycle (showing GP 2015 R2 is still supported in extended lifecycle until 2025). That was the repeated response from this morning.

I’m willing to post all of the emails between us an support. But the short version:

This started when they said our original issue was “fixed” with an update, they gave us the 2018 version (after we already told them we’re on 2015R2, (the language barrier with Avalara phone support is quite bad, so I figured it was a oversight). When I asked them if I could get the 2015R2 version with this “fix” (although no fix for this issue shows in the changelog on the 2018 connector either). They then responded  with the message above, that we’re on “2014” and not supported (guessing a confusion with the GP2015 version being 14.0.xxx), and a security risk. Then we responded back with link to official Microsoft Documentation on the GP lifecycle, they repeated the response that GP 2014(?) was no longer support.

I’m so glad I paid $7K for GP connector support now…

I sent copies of the support emails to our sales rep, and his supervisor and for the most part have gotten little response back, basically sending us back to support.

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Paul Dyer
IT Director
Hoffman Technologies (Dba: Item Grabber)
http://www.itemgrabber.com
ROCKLIN CA
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[Jean Hill]

Hello Paul,
I am very sorry to hear that you are having an issue with Avalara support; we have always had the best experience with them.  I can’t answer your question, but wanted to let you know that we are running GP 18.3 with Avatax  successfully using v2 of the GP18 connector.  You should be able to get it installed on your test system if you need to.
Good luck!       ?

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Jean Hill
Network Engineer
H&W Computer Systems, Inc
Boise ID
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