3rd party tax programs

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Lawrence Neibauer

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Apr 30, 2019, 3:54:29 PM4/30/19
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hey all, I have seen in this form that most people use Tax Jar with Stone Edge, does anyone use anything else? Are people having good experiences with Tax Jar? I am asking because we are starting the process of collecting taxes for the other states. I know we are a little late to the party but I know it is something we need to start doing.    

John Frazar

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Apr 30, 2019, 5:31:50 PM4/30/19
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I would be happy to give you my opinion on the different tax services available, but I cannot comment publicly on the subject.  Shoot me an email with your phone number and a good time to reach you and I'll give you a ring. 

Thanks! 

John Frazar

vga...@eotconsulting.com

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Apr 30, 2019, 6:14:02 PM4/30/19
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I'm in the process of setting up Avalara for one client, and TaxJar for another client.  Both use Stone Edge.  Avalara seems more refined but is also more expensive.  TaxJar saves you money but you also have to export and format Stone Edge data, then upload it to your TaxJar account.  


On Tuesday, April 30, 2019 at 3:54:29 PM UTC-4, Lawrence Neibauer wrote:

Albert Carruthers

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Apr 30, 2019, 6:22:50 PM4/30/19
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I have heard that TaxJar is less expensive on the front end, but after installing and adding up all extra fees, TaxJar and Avalara end up costing about the same. Has anyone run numbers on both products to know the difference?

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Travis Romine

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Apr 30, 2019, 6:41:59 PM4/30/19
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I’d highly recommend doing all the tax calculations at the cart level of at all possible.

Thank You,

 

Travis Romine

sharpcommerce.com

(509) 474-1465 Office

(206) 228-2971 Cell

Scheduling link below:

http://www.meetme.so/sharpcommerce



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John Frazar

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May 1, 2019, 10:46:49 AM5/1/19
to Albert Carruthers, vga...@eotconsulting.com, Stone Edge User Group
Albert - Your point is dead on.  TaxJar is an a la cart solution and appears to be less expensive, compared to Avalara which is a full service solution.  At the end of the day when you do a true apples-to-apples comparison of features and services, they aren’t that far off on price.

So if they cost the same. What about the product itself?  Avalara is the gold standard of tax calc and reporting.  They are the best.  TaxJar has known limitations.  For example, they do only offer “roof-top” level tax calculations in a handful of locations in the US.

Stone Edge has built a TaxJar TaxCalc integration that is in the current release, but personally, I would put money with Avalara.

Cathy Wise

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May 1, 2019, 1:24:55 PM5/1/19
to John Frazar, Albert Carruthers, vga...@eotconsulting.com, Stone Edge User Group

We just switched from Avalara to Taxjar.

 

There are some limitations with TJ – the big one being sales tax categories. If you sell only 1 kind of product – regular retail stuff, you’re fine with the basic setup. If you sell exempt or special classes – I would go with Avalara because it is pretty sophisticated and set up for line item detail (if you didn’t want to do custom setup with your cart).

 

Basically – it’s

Simple calc vs complex state and product calc.

 

Avalara is def more expensive. When we first signed up with AVA we paid $100 month, then out of nowhere they doubled that in 2018. This year, 2019, We were going to have to pay ~$400 + month with all the new states coming on board. But with the switch to TJ we pay $50!  (We do not autofile – Ava is $50-75 per state, and TJ is $25.)

 

Avalara makes you sign a contract for the year. If you go over your transaction level, you’re charged at a per trans fee. It’s about $2 per trans. So when you renew, you pay overages, + a change to upgrade your plan – a few hundred dollars. It’s pretty hard to predict in this environment with the new sales tax law what your volume would be, IMO.  With TJ, you can change your monthly subscription level AT ANY POINT. No fee. And FYI Our AVA overages for 2018 were going to be about $1800…

 

Also, Avalara’s helpdesk, customer service and sales teams are all horrible. I would wait 7, 8 days to get a response on a technical ticket. The sales team wasn’t exactly transparent about fees and costs either. My account rep over the course of 3 years changed more times than I can remember too.

 

Steve at Tech co-pilot wrote a pretty straightforward export for TJ. Feedback I get from my staff is that it’s a lot easier to see what tax is with the TJ system vs Avalara because of the way it’s integrated.  On both cart and OM side.  Even my bookkeeper has said end of month is a lot easier. On top of that - Avalara had some glitches, and OM used to send rogue non-taxed transactions to the AVA api/portal which we were charged for.  We never figured out the issue.

 

If you want more info from me, feel free to email me directly.

 

Cathy

Robert Clipp

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May 1, 2019, 1:50:26 PM5/1/19
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I'm following the same approach as Cathy.  SEOM export, TJ import, manually filing the returns.  This method works pretty well, and saves quite a bit in compliance expenses.  It does take some time and a bit of reading, bit it gets the job done.  (I did not try Avalara first and started using TJ in 2018.)

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Paul Christel

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May 1, 2019, 2:41:12 PM5/1/19
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I found the same thing when quoted pricing from Avalara and went with TJ because of most of the issues you point out (annual contracts, overage fees, set-up fees, connector fees, etc.).  And, as you mention, the states for which we have to collect seems to change  each month.  The experience with TJ has been pretty good thus far.   They are not perfect, but fairly responsive.  We’ve been using them since Q3 of last year and many things we’ve asked for have been implemented or alternate solutions provided.  We do use the autofile for some states and manually file in others.  And, that $25/state is on the high-end.  If you buy credit packages, it goes down to ~$20/state (from my recollection).  

Albert Carruthers

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May 1, 2019, 3:12:51 PM5/1/19
to Paul Christel, Stone Edge User Group

This is all great information. Are any of you enrolled in SST, which is processed by Avalara, but paid for the States. I believe 27 (?) states are enrolled.

bra...@coralvue.com

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May 1, 2019, 7:49:19 PM5/1/19
to Cathy Wise, John Frazar, Albert Carruthers, vga...@eotconsulting.com, Stone Edge User Group

I priced out Avalara late last year and signed up with them. It is very expensive and I ended up canceling within the trial period. They wanted to charge me $8000/year. I did talk to Taxjar while still in the trial period with Avalara and they told me I didn’t have economic nexus in some states that Avalara told me I did. I signed up for way too much. Remember these are salesman trying to get you to purchase their product. They took forever to respond after I signed up. So I canceled Avalara and signed up with Taxjar. I pay $49/month and file my own taxes as of now. I use the Taxjar export report in Communique that Tom helped us install.

My business is mostly wholesale with some retail so it’s different than most. Taxjar was very responsive in support. It may take a day or two for response but they do respond. The Taxjar website and blog are very informative and you can find a ton of information just searching. Both companies have their limitations in my opinion.

 

I would highly recommend talking to a sales tax specialist. They don’t ask for money upfront. They give you a consultation reviewing your information and give you their best advice. As I stated I am primarily wholesale only so I have different situation that isn’t very straightforward. These tax specialists do offer to file the taxes for you as well. You can look on Taxjar and they give you recommended specialists that work with them. I did consult with Alex at Tax Butler. He was wonderful and I recommend him. His pricing is reasonable. The only downfall is they file all states not just the difficult ones. To be honest, as of now I have not signed up with him to file my sales tax. Primarily due to the fact I have to do a lot of clean up on my data before I can get him the information to do everything. He does ask for a year commitment but after that is up to you. He does use Taxjar to review your data. So you would still need to export your data into Taxjar. I plan to use him but just have been lazy in cleaning up my data as this is a new thing for my company.

 

 

Thanks.

 

------

Brandi M D'Aquin

CFO

CV Industries
(985)781-9078

 

http://coralvue.com/images/cv-signature.jpg

 

From: ston...@googlegroups.com <ston...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Cathy Wise
Sent: Wednesday, May 01, 2019 12:25 PM


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vga...@eotconsulting.com

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May 2, 2019, 5:39:42 PM5/2/19
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I agree, Travis.  You should calculate tax and charge the customer for it at that time, but not post/invoice with Avalara.  Invoicing should happen once you import it to Stone Edge.


On Tuesday, April 30, 2019 at 6:41:59 PM UTC-4, travisromine6 wrote:
I’d highly recommend doing all the tax calculations at the cart level of at all possible.

Thank You,

 

Travis Romine

sharpcommerce.com

(509) 474-1465 Office

(206) 228-2971 Cell

Scheduling link below:

http://www.meetme.so/sharpcommerce




On Apr 30, 2019, at 3:14 PM, vga...@eotconsulting.com wrote:

I'm in the process of setting up Avalara for one client, and TaxJar for another client.  Both use Stone Edge.  Avalara seems more refined but is also more expensive.  TaxJar saves you money but you also have to export and format Stone Edge data, then upload it to your TaxJar account.  

On Tuesday, April 30, 2019 at 3:54:29 PM UTC-4, Lawrence Neibauer wrote:
hey all, I have seen in this form that most people use Tax Jar with Stone Edge, does anyone use anything else? Are people having good experiences with Tax Jar? I am asking because we are starting the process of collecting taxes for the other states. I know we are a little late to the party but I know it is something we need to start doing.    

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Travis Romine

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May 2, 2019, 6:30:53 PM5/2/19
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Roger that. Invoicing in Magento typically happens on import which can also be used as a flag for customers to get an order update. That’s a double edged sword depending how fast you’re processing, but has worked great for me in the past.


Thank You,

 

Travis Romine

sharpcommerce.com

(509) 474-1465 Office

(206) 228-2971 Cell

Scheduling link below:

http://www.meetme.so/sharpcommerce



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