Sage 100

Probably all / any whitepapers would come directly from Avalara since official communication stems from them. But for the in-house programmer / IT person, something like this may work:
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Using Sage 100 as an example (but not limited to that at all as Avalara has integration with many ERPs), the AvaTax DLL / API is physically installed and registered on the Sage server in \mas90\AvaTax folder. When you select S/O Entry in Sage and the business object for it gets instantiated, so does the AvaTax DLL / API. While in S/O Entry, when you hit a spot that would run an AvaTax function such as Sales Tax calculation when clicking the Totals tab, a secure https based web services call / request is made to their RESTful web service (located somewhere in North America) . At that point it creates a "request file" for sending, the contents of which includes data like Ship To info for the customer, exemption info, etc. The payload (contents of the file) is formatted as either XML or JSON. Avalara's web service receives the request, processes the Calc Sales Tax function, then sends back a response file of data formatted the same way (XML or JSON). When response is received, the integration programming parses that payload and sets the data (taxable amt, nontaxable amt, sales tax amt, etc) into the correct places. The actual payload size of the request and response files are extremely small and the connection is secure. There is usually a minimum of 2 requests / responses per sales order.

____________________________________________
Hope that helps.

Probably all / any whitepapers would come directly from Avalara since official communication stems from them. But for the in-house programmer / IT person, something like this may work:
____________________________________________

Using Sage 100 as an example (but not limited to that at all as Avalara has integration with many ERPs), the AvaTax DLL / API is physically installed and registered on the Sage server in \mas90\AvaTax folder. When you select S/O Entry in Sage and the business object for it gets instantiated, so does the AvaTax DLL / API. While in S/O Entry, when you hit a spot that would run an AvaTax function such as Sales Tax calculation when clicking the Totals tab, a secure https based web services call / request is made to their RESTful web service (located somewhere in North America) . At that point it creates a "request file" for sending, the contents of which includes data like Ship To info for the customer, exemption info, etc. The payload (contents of the file) is formatted as either XML or JSON. Avalara's web service receives the request, processes the Calc Sales Tax function, then sends back a response file of data formatted the same way (XML or JSON). When response is received, the integration programming parses that payload and sets the data (taxable amt, nontaxable amt, sales tax amt, etc) into the correct places. The actual payload size of the request and response files are extremely small and the connection is secure. There is usually a minimum of 2 requests / responses per sales order.

____________________________________________
Hope that helps.

Probably all / any whitepapers would come directly from Avalara since official communication stems from them. But for the in-house programmer / IT person, something like this may work:
____________________________________________

Using Sage 100 as an example (but not limited to that at all as Avalara has integration with many ERPs), the AvaTax DLL / API is physically installed and registered on the Sage server in \mas90\AvaTax folder. When you select S/O Entry in Sage and the business object for it gets instantiated, so does the AvaTax DLL / API. While in S/O Entry, when you hit a spot that would run an AvaTax function such as Sales Tax calculation when clicking the Totals tab, a secure https based web services call / request is made to their RESTful web service (located somewhere in North America) . At that point it creates a "request file" for sending, the contents of which includes data like Ship To info for the customer, exemption info, etc. The payload (contents of the file) is formatted as either XML or JSON. Avalara's web service receives the request, processes the Calc Sales Tax function, then sends back a response file of data formatted the same way (XML or JSON). When response is received, the integration programming parses that payload and sets the data (taxable amt, nontaxable amt, sales tax amt, etc) into the correct places. The actual payload size of the request and response files are extremely small and the connection is secure. There is usually a minimum of 2 requests / responses per sales order.

____________________________________________
Hope that helps.