Avalara

Takes the hassle out of filing taxes

Vorteile:

- Portal is easy enough to navigate. Lots of training and tutorials provided - "Set it and forget it" .. well not exactly .. you still have to monitor and reconcile monthly to ensure everything is running smoothly. But saves a lot of time logging in and figuring out how to file taxes monthly for each state. - Reporting is very transparent. Easy to download reports, and compile and save info for auditing purposes.

Nachteile:

- Use Tax functionality is not fully automated for all software. We use NetSuite, and there's no way to capture Use Tax on Expense Reports so these must still be entered into Avalara manually. - Customer Support is sometimes lacking. It takes forever to get a hold of someone on the phone, and when you do, many of the times the case just gets escalated to someone else so no immediate help. Also, they may point you to an article online that you've already found by Googling on your own.

Good product but expensive, not trustworthy & not for international stores

Kommentare: I contacted Avalara well before launching my store; we were just commencing the development. I communicated this to the sales representative and all he focused on was about how this was ideal because I had no footprint and I would be properly set up from the beginning. However, at no point did it tell me clearly what were the things I needed to have in order before implementing Avalara, nor did he say at any point there was no reason to make the purchase until after the launch of the store since I had no sales and therefore no threshold would be surpassed. For this reason I went about 8 months without using the platform until we were getting closer to the launch at which point I realized there was no support for implementation outside of a manual, that by the way, is outdated, no videos to explain to new entrepreneurs not only how to navigate the waters is compliance but how to properly use their system. Then there were compatibility issues between avalara and our system, though they say they are compatible with WooCommerce, if your platform is using any other plugins or apps it will cause issues, such as long delays in the check out process. I communicated this to the tech team and they acknowledged that they knew of some issues (so we aren’t the only ones), but they never even replied about remotely addressing this issue. In addition, I was sold on an idea that Avalara was the best system for international stores. This is disingenuous, since it won’t calculate and send you automatic warning when you’re going to cross any NEXUS outside of the US. This wasn’t clearly explained on the sales meeting and it should have since we are a Canadian Corporation and it wasn’t going to serve even our own jurisdiction.
In addition, it is not set up to configure locations of warehouses, so it calculates taxes according only to the location of the corporation, sending a warning to all clients outside of that country that they may have to pay duty charges upon receiving the goods. We were extremely careful of ensuring the most easy shopping experience for our clients, therefore we are working with warehouses in other countries like Mexico, to bring down shipping costs and take care of all duty charges so our clients don’t have to. But though we already paid the duties, Avalara was still posting a warning in our system during the check out process and though we explained our situation, they did nothing to accommodate this.
We had technical issues with syncing our products with Avalara, and this was already at the point when we were finally ready to launch our store. It took Avalara 2.5 months to provide a solution, which caused a delay in our launch and they were not even communicating during the process, no timeline was provided, not even an email to ask us to be patient. Nothing.
It is super expensive too, and though I never ended up actually using it (we did not launch our store with it) and due to all this frustrating issues met with indifference, we decided to cancel our contract and ask for a report nbirsement for the software that was never used, ensuring I mentioned that as a business owner, I was willing to negotiate a fair market value for the time spent with their engineer in the one meeting we had with him to explain our issues and the one meeting with the implementation specialist at the beginning, who sent us the manual to read, and took us through a general walkthrough of their platform, as well as all the HS codes we had received vs the ones we actually paid for. But they were unwavering due to their 60 day policy, which I sure went well o er since I purchased the service way before we were ready for launch, and all though I explained everything I stated above. Overall the worse experience in my life and I truly try to avoid saying any negative reviews unless I’ve exhausted every opportunity to make things right and the negative reviews are truly deserved. And I try to honour the good things they do have, which is what seems like a good product for more generic local companies within the US.

Vorteile:

Seems like a good product (bit only truly good for the US), lots of services under one roof

Nachteile:

1. Sales representative only concerned with making the sale and did not offer trustworthy advice in my circumstances. 2. We needed more help in the implementation process. We would have been open to paying for an hour or two, or whatever was necessary with some one that would actually takes us through the process to do it right from the get go. We are not experts, and it would have been more effective than sending us to read stuff. Even step by step videos would have been better. 3. Disingenuous information; I made specific comments about how I needed a system that was international. I also communicated that my corporation was in Canada. It wasn’t until a year later that I realized that automatic NEXUS calculations are only available for the US in Avatax, and that I would have to manually keep track of all other countries. This should have really been explained by the sales rep, and explain the significance of this, especially as a Canadian corporation. 4. System compatibility. Avalara was making our system extremely slow. We communicated this to the tech team and it was never addressed. At no point in time were we asked what elements were we using as part of our platform to see potential compatibility issues. 5. Uncompromising client care; only cares about Avalara’s interests and does not care about clients.

Horrible Product. Horrible Service.

Kommentare: Absolutely the worst company I've ever worked with. Avoid Avalara at all costs.

Vorteile:

What they said they would deliver, until it was obvious that they wouldn't.

Nachteile:

First, the product: AvaTax doesn't work well. Avalara clearly doesn't care about maintaining an excellent product with their QBO integration. We had tax calculations change after we sent the invoice to a client, even though we didn't change anything on the invoice. Most recently, Avalara has failed to support an update the QBO rolled out, and now tax calculations tax 3-5 minutes to calculate... what a huge waste of time? You want to create an invoice, and then send it to your customer, right? Nope, create that invoice... sit around for 3-5 minutes, make sure the sales tax shows up, then send it. Absolutely horrible. Next, the service: Avalara's support is the worst I've experienced, of any company, ever. We paid for a higher level of support, and we were assigned an Account Manager. Our Avalara Account Manager will not respond to me unless I send at least 3 emails. Average response time is 8 days. Technical support is worthless as well. They just tell you what you already can see in the AvaTax dashboard and will not help you find meaningful answers. If your ticket gets escalated, be prepared to spend 4-5 hours showing Avalara how you QA'd their product and found their bug, and then once you've proven to them, multiple times, that the bug exists, they might just fix it. Finally, the price: Avalara will automatically upgrade you to higher usage tiers without your permission. They will charge exorbitant "Upgrade Fees". Because their QBO integration is so bad, you end up having to use 3x the usage you expected, which then costs you 3x what you expected. We literally paid more because their product was worse than expected.

Review of Avalara AvaTax and Returns

Kommentare: Very good overall. We encounter very few issues with Avalara given the quantity and complexity of our transactions.

Vorteile:

Avalara AvaTax and Returns is a must have given the quantity of our transactions and returns required. Additionally, Avalara stays on top of changes in the tax regulations so that we don't have to worry about that.

Nachteile:

Their help desk is usually not very helpful unless it's a very basic question, like where is something located on the platform. Any questions regarding tax not being calculated correctly takes a long time to resolve with a lot of back-and-forth on tickets.

Efficient and Reliable Tax Compliance Solution

Kommentare: Overall, my experience with Avalara has been positive. The software provides reliable tax compliance solutions and significantly improves efficiency. Although the initial setup was complex, the automation and responsive customer support made it worthwhile.

Vorteile:

What I liked most about Avalara is its seamless integration with various platforms and the automation of tax calculations, which significantly reduces manual effort and minimizes errors in tax compliance.

Nachteile:

What I liked least about Avalara is the complexity of the initial setup and configuration, which can be time-consuming and may require technical support to ensure everything is correctly integrated and functioning.

If everything is set up & you don't need any additional support, Avalara is great. Otherwise, look elsewhere

Kommentare: If you have no backfilings that you need to do and you know everything will be set up correctly from the get go then sure, go with them. But otherwise stay far, far away. I was not the one who implemented Avalara, I took it over and have not been pleased with our overall experience. I also find their prices quite high, though I have nothing to compare it to. The combination of their chaotic emailing, lack of support with our new account manager, and their high prices are definitely making us lean towards taking our business elsewhere.

Vorteile:

Their website is very easy to navigate, also love that they have right on the dashboard states that we're coming up on reaching the nexus threshold. Our old account manager was very responsive and helpful, unfortunately our new one is not.

Nachteile:

Their emailing method is absolute *insanity* and extremely confusing because every email response you receive STARTS A WHOLE NEW EMAIL THREAD so if you have multiple projects going on it is nearly impossible to keep things straight. I literally had to make a spreadsheet one time when we had multiple backfilings going on because it was incredibly chaotic and stressful. Their website seems to regularly go down or will just have 1 page that isn't working which is incredibly frustrating. Their state registration fees are massive and you basically have to provide them ALL the information they'll be using to file with the state anyway. Save yourself the money and do it yourself.

the worst customer service I've ever experienced, not an exaggeration

Kommentare: Super negative, on top of the terrible customer service, the sales reps are also not helpful. They don't make it clear that when you purchase the plan that the returns don't roll over, despite knowing what I needed (about 15 returns a year) they still let me go ahead with purchasing 50 returns which I assumed was a 1 time purchase in bulk but turns out it's per year. In fact, when I messaged them about it later, they also didn't seem to know it doesn't roll over. Did they only train them for a day?

Vorteile:

when it works correctly for certain states, then it is nice.

Nachteile:

It's impossible to talk to someone who knows how the software works. I'm honestly just guessing right now that it's working because no one seems to have answers. The customer support line is a joke, it's worse than quickbooks which is really saying something. They are not trained at all at what the system does and sometimes I have to explain what the system does to them because of how little they know. It's truly impressive.

Brutal customer service, no transparency on billing

Kommentare: We use Avatax integrated with our ecommerce provider. It does what's advertised on the tin, but don't expect clear and transparent pricing.

Vorteile:

Tax calculates correctly, unless the API is down of course.

Nachteile:

It is impossible to receive an answer from the support team regarding billing. For a month now I've been trying to understand the 4x price increase we received after almost 10 years. There was no explanation on the renewal notice. Submitted a support case online, no response for a week. Called, spoke to a person, 48 hours later my case was closed with information unrelated to my case. They also called me by another name.

The most terrible customer service ever

Kommentare: Please, please do not use this service if you can avoid it. I am a Shopify Plus member and am held hostage by Avalara because Shopify doesn't offer any other choices. If you can avoid them, you must. They are horrendous.

Vorteile:

The salesman made Avalara seem like it would be SO easy to use & implement. They were really friendly and aggressive to tell me how wonderful Avalara was. It was all trickery. Once they got me to sign their contract, the support offered was absolutely terrible. I really can't believe that this company is still in business.

Nachteile:

They charged me to register in 10 states. 5 of those states they then came back and told me they could not complete the registration and that I would have to do it. They never refunded me for what I paid for this. I asked at least 10 times and then had to file a VISA dispute. They change my rep. all the time and are very disorganized overall. During the first month I had to go into each of the 10 states and file my own $0 return. No one from Avalara even noticed. Thankfully I had been logging into each state myself to check on things when I saw their level of incompetence. Once there, I saw that I had returns due in a few days. Avalara didn't even know. Shame on them. I paid them a lot to help me.

Horrible Customer Service and Horrible Software

Kommentare: The worst company I have ever dealt with in the past 20 years! They have wasted so much of my time and the time of my staff. It is beyond me that they are still in business!

Vorteile:

There are no pros of dealing with this company! None!

Nachteile:

Incompetent personnel, no customer service, they compromised our data, combining our account with other company's account, not responsive to emails/calls, do not know how to solve problems they create, overcharge, impossible to cancel account, they keep charging you. RUN!

Avalara Makes Taxes Less Taxing

Kommentare: Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, I had to deal with more tax scrutiny. I am a tiny shop, but knowing that Avalara and their Avatax program is calculating my sales tax, I feel reassured about filing on time and correctly. When my sales grow they also have an option to sign up with multiple states and file my returns for me at a reduced cost.

Vorteile:

I use Avalara's Avatax program to determine sales tax on my Woocommerce shop. The tax calculation is seamless and accurate. The synchronization works in the background, and I am confident that my customers are always charged the correct amount, even with the confusing sales tax rules of New York and California.

Nachteile:

The software and/platform takes a little getting used to. If you are not familiar with tax codes, you might have to do a little digging, but support is always available. Setting up the return calendars can also be a little confusing. It can be expensive to have them file for you in many states if you have a nexus there. All tax calculation programs are costly, but it is much better than me doing it all on my own.

Service is Nonexistent - Broken Software

Kommentare: Since they charged me over $7,000 dollars for a product that never worked - zero benefits. I would never recommend this company. Avalara has had a history of terrible customer service but from recent reviews, that had seemed to change. It hasn't. If you encounter issues, be prepared to suffer through basic IT troubleshooting multiple times before your issue isn't resolved.

Vorteile:

Avalara could never get the connector to work to use the software. But the online interface seemed like it would have been useful had Avalara gotten their software to work with QuickBooks.

Nachteile:

The implementation process was miserable. From day one, I received a nondescript error that was simply a large red question mark in a dialogue box from the QuickBooks Connector. The application would also attempt to open a hundred windows while using QuickBooks. Three separate engineers walked me through the exact same troubleshooting - uninstall, reinstall, change permissions, restart computer, etc. All concluded "huh, that's weird!" It took nearly five months of effort to get that response continuously and escalated to development. Then the whole team fell silent about the issue. So I cancelled the implementation. Then, Avalara decides to bill me almost $5,000 for tax returns filing and support services when they couldn't even get their own products and services to work. It is even against their terms of service but the billing department doesn't care. It is extremely unscrupulous to even bill for services that were never rendered and could never have been rendered.

needs some work

Kommentare: We use Avalara currently, even though it is not perfect.

Vorteile:

I like that it calculates the tax for our customers on our web store automatically. It integrates with our WooCommerce site.

Nachteile:

The accuracy of the tax rates is questionable to the point of us having to double check rates on state websites to verify that the correct tax rate is being charged. We were also unable to successfully integrate Avalara with QuickBooks.

My Avalara Review 2024

Kommentare: My overall experience with Avalara is awesome. I would recommend this product to others.

Vorteile:

What I like most about the Avalara product is that its user friendly.

Nachteile:

I do not have any at this time. Product works great.

Avalara is a helpful tool

Kommentare: great experience having this tool on my office

Vorteile:

it is a helpful tool that i recommend to to my clients

Nachteile:

the telephone assistance is not available as dessired

Avalara is a nightmare

Kommentare: We have spent a great deal of money having outside people help us with issues that Avalara customer support does not know how to fix.

Vorteile:

It was available in the hosting environment we had

Nachteile:

Their customer service is awful. They close claim tickets without even working with you to fix the problem. When you do get a zoom meeting you never talk with the same person twice so you have to start over. They point the blame to other platforms you use as the source of your problem. Some of our issue have gotten worse by the fixes that their customer service reps have implemented to fix other issues.

Overall Satisfaction

Vorteile:

All the training materials, on time support, ease of report filing, campaings

Nachteile:

Very difficult with language issues and having support understand at times what I am referring to.

best way to manage tax returns

Kommentare: Great experience with Avalara and happy to recommend.

Vorteile:

everything so far. Reporting is the best feature. so easy to use it.

Nachteile:

nothing so far. Only thing needed as exempt certificate upload and templates to match with other competitors.

Review

Vorteile:

The reports and it is very user friendly

Nachteile:

The responses to ticket tend to be oversimplified

Quick, Easy to Use Tool

Vorteile:

Avalara offers a one-stop-shop for all business tax calculation and compliance.

Nachteile:

The service is costly, but there are many benefits to the program.

Love/Hate Avalara

Vorteile:

What I like most about Avalara is they file our sales tax returns. (That is the worst part about business)

Nachteile:

The Avalara team is terrible about following up with customers. Also, the account manager (CAM) changes very frequently without letting the customer know.

CertCapture does what it is supposed to do, but doesn't make it easy

Kommentare: It would be impossible to correctly charge tax and file in the various states where we now have "economic nexus" without Avalara, so Avalara has been indespensible. However, they have completely ignored my suggestions for improvements for over 4 years. We need them, but I hope they get better at the certificate capture part of the business.

Vorteile:

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.

Nachteile:

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.”

Avalara overpromises & Under-delivers

Kommentare: TERRIBLE! There are a lot of configuration issues that we had discussed in the pre-sales cycle (like CertCapture integration, configuring marketplace facilitatort exceptions, etc.) these were all ignored and never were addressed by Avalara when we went live. Tons of issues, then their customer service doesn't respond to cases for weeks at a time. Just a really horrible customer experience. AVOID AVOID AVOID!

Vorteile:

I liked that it integrated with all of our platforms (i.e. NetSuite, Magento and future state Shopify+) and the quoted price came in much lower than other comparative software solutions.

Nachteile:

The setup is not intuitive. There are tons of issues where it doesn't calculate sales tax correctly or at all for some states or on returns. There are multiple different logins for different services/features (i.e. AvaTax, CertCapture, General Avalara account) which are frustrating. Also had a number of issues with our NetSuite integrations. CertCapture required us to manually upload each state certificate for each customer, then manually review and validate each one all over again. You select a state, then it doesn't select a Country and errors out, but never asks you to enter a country.... There's are just a whole lot of things not to like about Avalara. There are a lot of configuration issues that we discussed in the pre-sales cycle, then were ignored and never addressed once we went to implement. Implementation shhTheir customer service is

Avalara Charges for doing nothing. They provide no benifit at high cost. Do not subscribe.

Kommentare: Avalara sold me on what they described as a sales tax service that freed me from the headache of filing quarterly reports. For this they charged me about $300 initiation fee and then $29 per month. Every report they filed had 000000. NOTHING! Why? Because I had to file the report to them. Then they would file the tax form to the local government agency. What I joke. I just filed my tax report myself. Avalara did nothing but bill me for nothing. When I ask for a credit for failure to preform they refused to even offer one cent in refund. The agent advised she was very happy she was going to get a big stock option benefit on the sale of Avalara in a buy out. Great for her. She got my money plus stock options, oh wonderful. SAVE YOUR MONEY AND FILE OWN YOUR TAX WITHOUT PAYING THEM FOR DOING NOTHING!!!!

Vorteile:

Zero service. You must file the report for them. What are they charging for?

Nachteile:

High cost. No benefit. Avalara only files what you file with them. This is useless service at a high cost. Just file you tax yourself as they do nothing unless you file the income and tax with them first. What a joke. Charge me for nothing and then refuse to refund even one cent. Every form they filed with my city was 000. I filed it myself at no extra cost. It is just as easy to file my tax report myself as to file the report with Avalara who charged me over $1000 and never filed one proper report. Save your money they do nothing.

Too many bugs for QBO

Kommentare: ST filing on the client's behalf....if it captures the correct data.

Vorteile:

The concept of Avalara is good...calculate sales tax based on ship to address, file returns for various states. Avalara is the ST experts so internal knowledge does not have to be CPA level.

Nachteile:

Every time you save, email, update sales rep or make any change to an invoice in QBO, you get charged for using the program (even if it's not impacting the $ amt or ST), items were all being charged tax regardless of how the item is setup (resolved in Mar18), Customer support is very useless until you can get to tier2 or engineers when you have a REAL problem, program bug resolution is very slow (still waiting on resolution to invoices that Avalara decided to update tax on invoice after the ST was filed and "should have been" locked, and countless others. The accounting partner team is the only group that has been helpful in getting anything resolved or fixed. Unfortunately, they cannot resolve back end issues. I've given them many chances to resolve my clients' issue. Avalara charges for estimates that are generated in QBO (no option to not be charged). Then if you use another 3rd party program that feeds invoices to QBO, your invoices have the Avatax verbiage from the estimate on them. If your invoice is not "resaved" in Avalara then the tax portion will properly be billed to the client but will not show up in Avatax console unless you re-save the documents. As an Advanced QB ProAdvisor who works with multiple companies and 3rd party programs, I would recommend to use caution if using a 3rd party program with QBO and Avalara.