Avalara Review: Pros, Cons, Features, and Pricing
Avalara is a tax software that automates tax compliance and simplifies reporting for businesses. It best serves e-commerce companies, retail chains, and financial departments needing accurate sales tax calculations. Avalara ensures accurate tax compliance, reducing manual errors and saving time.
Avalara integrates seamlessly with major accounting platforms and e-commerce systems, allowing businesses to manage tax obligations across multiple jurisdictions. Its cloud-based automation handles everything from real-time tax calculations to filing and remittance, ensuring compliance with evolving tax laws. In this article, I'll cover Avalara's features, pros and cons, use cases, and pricing so you can decide if this software aligns with your tax compliance needs and goals.
Avalara Evaluation Summary
- Pricing upon request
- Free demo available
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Avalara Overview
In my opinion, Avalara is a solid choice for businesses needing reliable tax compliance solutions. It excels with its automation capabilities, making tax calculations and reporting easier. While some users find the onboarding a bit challenging, the overall ease of use and integration with other tools make up for it. Compared to others, Avalara's standout features and customer support may not be top-tier, but the software still offers good value for money. It's well-suited for e-commerce and retail businesses that handle complex tax scenarios. If your team values automation and accuracy, Avalara should be on your shortlist.
pros
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Avalara automates complex tax calculations, saving your team time and resources.
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It provides accurate tax compliance, reducing manual errors in your work.
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Avalara simplifies reporting, making it easier for your team to manage tax obligations.
cons
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Some users find the onboarding process challenging.
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Avalara's customer support might not meet all your expectations.
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The user interface could be more intuitive for your work.
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How We Test & Score Tools
We’ve spent years building, refining, and improving our software testing and scoring system. The rubric is designed to capture the nuances of software selection and what makes a tool effective, focusing on critical aspects of the decision-making process.
Below, you can see exactly how our testing and scoring works across seven criteria. It allows us to provide an unbiased evaluation of the software based on core functionality, standout features, ease of use, onboarding, customer support, integrations, customer reviews, and value for money.
Core Functionality (25% of final scoring)
The starting point of our evaluation is always the core functionality of the tool. Does it have the basic features and functions that a user would expect to see? Are any of those core features locked to higher-tiered pricing plans? At its core, we expect a tool to stand up against the baseline capabilities of its competitors.
Standout Features (25% of final scoring)
Next, we evaluate uncommon standout features that go above and beyond the core functionality typically found in tools of its kind. A high score reflects specialized or unique features that make the product faster, more efficient, or offer additional value to the user.
We also evaluate how easy it is to integrate with other tools typically found in the tech stack to expand the functionality and utility of the software. Tools offering plentiful native integrations, 3rd party connections, and API access to build custom integrations score best.
Ease of Use (10% of final scoring)
We consider how quick and easy it is to execute the tasks defined in the core functionality using the tool. High scoring software is well designed, intuitive to use, offers mobile apps, provides templates, and makes relatively complex tasks seem simple.
Onboarding (10% of final scoring)
We know how important rapid team adoption is for a new platform, so we evaluate how easy it is to learn and use a tool with minimal training. We evaluate how quickly a team member can get set up and start using the tool with no experience. High scoring solutions indicate little or no support is required.
Customer Support (10% of final scoring)
We review how quick and easy it is to get unstuck and find help by phone, live chat, or knowledge base. Tools and companies that provide real-time support score best, while chatbots score worst.
Customer Reviews (10% of final scoring)
Beyond our own testing and evaluation, we consider the net promoter score from current and past customers. We review their likelihood, given the option, to choose the tool again for the core functionality. A high scoring software reflects a high net promoter score from current or past customers.
Value for Money (10% of final scoring)
Lastly, in consideration of all the other criteria, we review the average price of entry level plans against the core features and consider the value of the other evaluation criteria. Software that delivers more, for less, will score higher.
Core Features
Automated Tax Calculation: Avalara automatically calculates taxes for your transactions, ensuring accuracy and saving you time on manual entries.
Tax Filing: Avalara handles your tax filing, taking care of paperwork and deadlines so your team can focus on other tasks.
Sales Tax Management: It manages sales tax rates and rules for different jurisdictions, making it easier for your business to comply.
Tax Reporting: Avalara provides detailed tax reports, offering insights into your tax obligations and supporting audits.
Exemption Certificate Management: This feature enables you to manage exemption certificates effectively, ensuring your business remains compliant and error-free.
Address Validation: Avalara verifies addresses for tax purposes, reducing errors in tax rates and saving your team from compliance issues.
Ease of Use
Avalara is fairly user-friendly, but there’s a learning curve that might challenge your team initially. Its interface is straightforward, but some users find navigating through complex tax scenarios a bit daunting. Once your team gets accustomed to its functionalities, managing tax compliance becomes easier and more efficient. Avalara's automated features help reduce manual work, making your day-to-day tasks more manageable. Overall, it strikes a solid balance between functionality and ease of use, although the onboarding process could be smoother.
Integrations
Avalara integrates with Shopify, NetSuite, SAP, QuickBooks, Sage, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Salesforce, Zuora, Adobe Commerce, and more.
Avalara also provides an API for custom integrations and connects with 1,400 partner integrations across ERP, ecommerce, procurement, and POS platforms.
Avalara Specs
- 2-Factor Authentication
- Cloud Deployment
- Dashboard
- Data Export
- Data Import
- External Integrations
- Inventory Tracking
- Multi-User
- Network Device Performance Monitoring
- Notifications
- Password & Access Management
- Remote Access