AvaTax API - Setup
This feature requires additional licensing. Please contact AcctVantage Sales for a quote.
Do you need to collect Sales Tax? Do you worry about getting it right? Would you like to save time in reporting and remitting your tax liability? If you've answered "yes" to any of the above, then our AvaTax integration is meant for you.
AvaTax is a web based service that validates, calculates and reports on anything and everything to do with Sales Taxes throughout the US. Your AcctVantage system can seamlessly integrate with AvaTax to ensure proper calculation and reporting of sales taxes for any situation.
Set up the AvaTax Integration in AcctVantage
Install the license
A license script will be provided by AcctVantage Support. Install the script per these instructions.
Create a Tax Area
Navigate to General Ledger ➤ Tax Areas and create a Tax Area for AvaTax. AcctVantage uses a single Tax Area to communicate with Avalara; the detailed reporting of tax by jurisdiction will be done via the AvaTax web service.
There is no need to delete existing Tax Areas and no need to change the Tax Area assignments on your Client or Ship To records. Once the integration is enabled, AcctVantage will ensure that the AvaTax system handles all sales tax activity.
If you are setting up a BigCommerce integration with AcctVantage, you will also need a Tax Area for BigCommerce.
In this case, the best practice is to create two separate Tax Areas -- one for tax calculated via AcctVantage and one for tax calculated via BigCommerce. Even though AvaTax is calculating sales tax in both places, using different Tax Areas will help ensure there is no conflict with tax calculations.
System Setup settings
Navigate to Administration ➤ System Setup and select Tax API from the drop-down menu. Here, you will enter your AvaTax account information.
After you've entered the info below, click the Test Connection button to enable the service. The Enabled setting will automatically be checked when the connection is successful.
- Tax API Service Name: AvaTax
- Account Number (assigned to you by Avalara)
- License Key (assigned to you by Avalara)
- Company Code (unless you have multiple companies leave this set to DEFAULT)
- API URL: Enter this URL -> https://avatax.avalara.net/
- Tax Area Mapping: Enter the Tax Area that you created above.
- Send Open through Packed Status as Order: If this setting is enabled, open, committed, picked and packed orders will be sent to Avatax as "Sales Order". If the setting is disabled, those orders will be sent to Avatax as "Sales Invoice".
- Disable Document Committing: (Not recommended) Check this box if you want to have AvaTax calculate sales tax, but NOT report the sales tax.
Warehouse Setup
AvaTax requires a valid origin address in order to calculate tax. There are some tax jurisdictions where tax is calculated based on the Ship From address so you'll need to confirm each Warehouse has a valid address.
Navigate to Warehouse Management ➤ Warehouses and click Show All. Open each Warehouse record and verify the address is valid.
Client Exceptions (Optional)
- Tax Area: When using a Tax API, the Tax Area on the Client/Sales Master screen is not used.
- Once the integration is enabled, AcctVantage will ensure the AvaTax system handles all sales tax activity.
- You may wish to keep existing tax areas for your own reporting, but it will have no impact on AvaTax processing or reporting. There is no need to delete existing Tax Areas and no need to change the Tax Area assignments on your Client or Ship To records.
- Tax Exempt Number: This number will be passed to AvaTax for processing as a tax exempt sale.
- The system does not validate the tax exempt number. Any number entered into this field will designate the client as being tax-exempt.
- Please review the AvaTax documentation for any special requirements regarding tax exempt reporting that you wish to enforce. AcctVantage simply passes the number you've provided; AvaTax takes it from there.
- Tax API Customer Code: AvaTax has a provision to handle exceptions for individual clients. Please refer to the AvaTax documentation for use cases.
- Tax API Calc Using Bill To Address: Enable this setting to force the system to always use the customer's billing address for tax calculations.
Client example
Ship To example
Product Assignments (Optional)
Map items to tax codes to tell AvaTax which tax rules to use when processing transactions. Items that aren't mapped will be taxed as tangible personal property.
If there are items that you don't want to be taxed as tangible personal property or items that should be taxed using some other rules, you will need to enter an exception into the Tax API Tax Code field on the Product record.
See the tax code list published by Avalara. AcctVantage does not maintain this list. Contact Avalara support for any questions.
