Sage 100

Does anyone have viable options for accurate Sales Tax calculations gor MAS90 besides Avalara?

I saw the CCH booth at Summit. They do SpeedTax. Have no idea if they're a viable option - http://www.speedtax.com/sage-mas-90-200-erp

We use it and it works fine. They have a solution for v4.40 and v4.50 that should work just fine.

What don't you like about Avalara?

I thought you didn't like it. Has your opinion changed? I don't have any experience with it. i was also looking for a non-internet based solution. One that didn't require internet access. But it appears that Speed tax has gone that route also.

That was back in v4.1. They finallly debugged it enough to make it acceptable..............

The last quote I received from CCH was almost as much as Avalara, starting in the 7-8K for 5 states, with 3200 per year after that. I wonder if SpeedTax is different from the CCH ""Sales Tax Load Utility"" - maybe I just wound up in the wrong department?

Historically I've thought AvaTax should not be internet based; rather for performance reasons and classic internet reasons (no internet, slow internet, loss of internet, things that @BethBowers endures), it makes more sense to have their app directly installed on a client's network where it would periodically download latest sales tax rates. But then I learned this: 1) At least part of their pricing model is charging by the number of invoices you post (you are not charged for the sales tax calc done in S/O Entry that is ""free""). So they can easily capture the volume of invoices that way and charge ""per transaction"". It's also true the higher the volume of invoices the lesser the per invoice fee. If it wasn't internet based and entirely subscription based (presumably initial fee + monthly fee + M&S) , the up front ""visible"" charges would be higher and the service would appear more expensive to the client, whereas with per transaction model, client sees lower up front costs but would need to estimate the real cost of the service based on projected volume. The client may also see it favorably as a service that grows with them, that on a good month they have more services fees, on a bad month they have less service fees. 2) Some of the reports and services they provide is based on the captured data from the posted invoices. So being internet based has its advantages maybe that's why SpeedTax went that route too.

What? Some of you don't like Avalara?? Why *wouldn't* you like it??

There have been issues in the past with: - Outages (requires live connect to get data) - Compatibility with product updates / speed at which the fixeds are issued I think those are the two biggest issues. @MarkKotyla in the group has done a lot of work with Avalara - as has @JeffSchwenk (and probably a few others who I forgot to mention)

I have several clients who use it - including myself! I don't think it works as great with Accpac as it does with MAS but I love it!

My beef goes way back to the 4.1 release. Reports from their website SUCKED and I received absolutely no support from them. I even ran the flag all the way up to Marshal Kushniruk and was basically told deal with it. Client dropped the service for about 18 months. When they upgraded to v4.3, they went back to the service. Since that time, I haven't been directly involved with tax reporting so I don't know if they ever fixed the reporting or the new controller just has a highler threshhold of pain. Since this role has been assumed by their CPA firm, I tend to think that they just deal with it as it is against their bottom line interest to streamline the proocess. So, mark me as a neutral vote. I would be willing to try them again (especially since I make a whopping $10 monthly commission. Love that recurring revenue).

I wouldn't say I've done a lot of work... just had a lot of problems. However, most were due to bugs within early product releases AND integration with JobOps. Perhaps the biggest issue I noticed was speed. When compared to on-premise solutions, Avalara (or any SAAS Sales Tax solution) greatly increases the overhead associated with invoice generation (especially at month end, when everyone is trying to process billing). If you're generating hundreds of invoices at a time for contract billing or imporing from web site, forget about it. Next time I'd seriously explore solutions by CCH, which updates MAS 90 tax schedules, so performance is not impacted. Reporing from Avalara sucked and support was weak. I'd entertain working with it again, but only if able to test on the target system (instead of relying upon vendor promises).

We do not having anyone using Avalara with JobOps, I must admit. It also doesn't play nicely with Hightower's Time & Billing but since I am ""killing the time sheet"" that problem is going away. :)

@MarkKotyla @JeffSchwenk Has Avalara improved enough that we should feel comfortable recommending it? Are you customers still using it (or maybe the better question is do you get complaints)?

My very first AvaTax customer was using CCH but that was a manual update process and he didn't like being responsible for it. I had one client who had a speed issue for users accessing it through RDP but they had other network issues going on and it has since been resolved. I have another client who imports invoices from other systems once a month (25,000+ lines) and they don't have a speed issue. I am comfortable recommending it and if any of you want to discuss it, I'd be happy to do so.

Thanks Therese - given that Rob Johnson and Pascal V are both over at Avatax I suspect we may be hearing more from them and it's nice to have an update on what experiences people have had.

As noted, I would recommend it to another client if the opportunity presented it self.

I'm in Minnesota where there are several local city/county/special sales tax jurisdictions in addition to the general state sales tax. Unless a client does not collect sales tax, it almost always presents itself, which is why I am such an advocate for it.