Most businesses are intimately familiar with the growing pains of updating their business management systems, hiring additional employees, and reviewing and revamping their processes and policies.  These are things that can immediately help or hinder your operations.

However One important task that is often unfortunately relegated to the end of the list of process improvements is addressing sales tax compliance.  Understandably, addressing sales tax compliance is not top of mind and someone in your Accounting department is tasked with this task.  Among the many elements that this person is tasked with are:

• Nexus
• Rates
• Sourcing and Taxability
• Exemption Certificates
• Preparing and filing returns
•  … and more!

What many businesses fail to realize is that the effort of maintaining compliance manually can become a major drain on resources very quickly.  In addition the potential penalties for non compliance and the human costs of going through a tax audit can be substantial.  

The Small and Mid-Sized Business Sales Tax Savior

In response to continued inquiries from our customers, small and large, asking for best practices to handle the sales tax calculation and filing effort, we decided to look for a solution to this problem. We identified AvaTax, a cloud-based solution from Avalara.  

AvaTax helps you automate the critical steps in sales tax calculations, such as:

1. Calculating the correct tax for each transaction
2. Managing exemption certificates
3. Filing and remitting sales tax returns
4. Preparing and managing your audit exposure

And best of all, it integrates with many SMB ERP and business accounting systems, Sage ERP included (MAS 90/200 and Sage 500ERP).  Automating the sales tax calculation and filing process for your business is one of those logical steps you will be glad you did.  Just as it makes sense to upgrade your accounting system when your business grows, it also makes sense to look for a software solution when it comes time for calculating sales taxes.

Even if you are not dealing with multiple states, or trying to determine whether your operations in a separate county can be considered a new nexus, check out AvaTax and you will be surprised by the ease and amazing functionality of this cloud-based sales tax calculation tool.

For more information on the benefits of the Avalara AvaTax Suite of products or to schedule a demo, check out our new Avalara products page.