taxjar users - what's your process?

[cat...@acuatlanta.net]

Wondering who's using TaxJar?

It connects with our cart, but no formal integration with SEOM. 

How do you 'complete' orders (inc cancels, returns, etc)  - with an export from OM?  What's your process? Is it working well?

Before I tell my web dev to install this on the test site, just curious as to pros and cons...

Thanks!

Cathy

[John Frazar]

Cathy,

We were investigating building a TaxJar integration last month after several people had inquired about it.  After scoping the project and reaching back out those people, we realized that there was actually very little interest in it and the project stalled.  

There are some limitations with TaxJar:  1)  They only support a limited number of product tax categories.  2) They do not have "roof top" level accuracy. In other words, a lot of their tax calculation is accurate only down to the zip code, but not the specific municipal boundaries that would only be determined by the actual address of your customer. 

They are making improvements everyday, but at this moment in time, they are just not as good as Avalara.  Furthermore, when compared to Avalara, price seems to be the big argument when comparing TaxJar to Avalara. I would challenge you to do a true apples-to-apples comparison between those two systems to compare pricing and features.  TaxJar advertises inexpensive pricing on their site, but when you start to add in all the extras, it quickly gets up there in price and isn't that much of a savings over Avalara.  

That's my two cents. 

John Frazar

[Cathy Wise]

That’s good to know.  Price is an issue, but so is customer support on all fronts. There’s literally NO response for anything that goes wrong. I have 2 open support tickets that are 9+ days old.

 

I guess I’m lucky because my items fall under their TIC’s.

 

Also I had just read about their updates – they have consistently added ‘rooftop’ calc

 

 

See screenshot – is this what you’re referring to?

 

https://developers.taxjar.com/api/reference/#changelog

https://developers.taxjar.com/api/reference/#changelog

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Stone Edge User Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to stoneedge+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to ston...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/stoneedge.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/stoneedge/c7318604-1b1f-429c-aa05-ade06b531c05%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Paul Christel]

We have been uploading transactions to TaxJar and have not had any issues with one exception being IL sales tax for which they do not have rooftop accuracy.  Hopefully, that will be added very shortly.  We have never had support issues go unanswered with them.  Pricing we received from Avalara was extremely high compared to what we can get with TaxJar. 

 

John –

What add-ons do you see that drive the cost near that of Avalara?

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/stoneedge/006b01d4989b%2486bd1b00%2494375100%24%40acuatlanta.net.

[Chris Allen]

We just started using taxjar recently.  It is integrated directly with our shopping cart (shopsite), and when we import orders we tell SEOM to not recalc taxes.

For manual orders, our CS team uses the online taxjar calculator ( https://www.taxjar.com/sales-tax-calculator/ ) to get a rate for the order, then manually enters it into the order as a surcharge.  Once the order is finalized, they correct the tax rate on the order and remove the surcharge.  This is clumsy (vs proper integration,) but working so far and we don't have tons of phone orders so we're getting by.

For reporting, we generate a .csv file at month end.  We review the .csv in Excel to make sure there aren't any issues, and then upload the .csv to taxjar.  Then we go into taxjar and mark any tax exempt orders manually (that's not part of the .csv upload at present.)  We file state returns manually, using the district reporting from taxjar.  We're not using the taxjar auto-file option at this time.

We calculated and filed October and November returns (> 20 states) this way, and so far so good.