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Avalara Tax

How to enable the integration between Avalara and SI

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Written by Ashok P
Updated over a month ago

The SI integration with Avalara, a leading provider of tax compliance automation for businesses, allows SI users to accurately calculate applicable taxes for every billing line item by location in real-time.

This integration also allows tax codes to be added to each product and item in their catalog.

This tax integration only works for US and Canadian addresses. You must have an account with Avalara.

To enable and configure the integration with Avalara, click the following icon.

Configure the Integration

To enable the Avalara Tax Integration:

1/ Select Enable Integration.

2/ Enter your Avalara account ID and license key.

3/ Under Environment, you will most likely choose the Production radio button, but we have provided the Sandbox option for any user with a Sandbox Avalara account.

Settings Tax Codes

Products and Labor Items

Once enabled, you will see additional product fields on the Price tab.

product tax codes.jpg

Labor items will have one additional field.

labor item.jpg

Clicking the Select link opens a dialog box where you can search for and select the appropriate Avalara tax code.

This feature is also available via Mass Update in the Product Explorer:

Clients

Also, once the Avalara Tax integration has been enabled, clients will have the following additional field that will allow you to add an Avalara tax exemption code for the client.

client exemption.jpg

Clicking the Select link will open a dialog where you can select the appropriate Avalara tax exemption code.

Automatic Tax Calculation

There are settings to automatically calculate taxes from Avalara, as shown below.

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  • If you choose "Calculate automatically when running a report" and don't choose either of the two prompt options, you won't be prompted for anything while running a report.

  • If items are missing an Avalara tax code, your default codes will be used.

If you choose to be prompted for missing tax codes or labor tax codes, you will skip the address validation steps and be brought to Step 3 of the wizard (see below).

Address validation will also be displayed or not displayed based on the "Enable Address Validation" setting.

Manual Tax Calculation

If you do not choose to calculate taxes automatically when running reports, you will need to calculate the taxes manually.

From within a project, click Settings > Calculate Tax Using Avalara.

This will open a four-step wizard.

#1 Verify Company Address

The first step is where you can modify your company address if needed.

#2 Choose Project Addresses

Here, you can choose which project addresses you wish to use.

If the client has an Avalara tax exemption code set, it will be displayed here. You can also use the "Select" link to set one for this project.

#3 Review Avalara Tax Codes

In this step, you will see a summary of all the project items and their assigned (if assigned) Avalara tax codes and Avalara labor tax codes.

If any items are missing Avalara tax codes, you can select them and use the button on the ribbon to assign codes.

If you don't assign tax codes or labor tax codes to items, the default tax codes shown at the bottom of the interface will be used.

#4 See Tax Values

This step will display the tax values returned from Avalara.

You can expand each tax to see the details if desired.

There are options to add these taxes as a single tax to the project, such as a tax group with the individual taxes in the group, and you can also choose if you want to add the taxes to your catalog or not.

man create taxes.jpg

When happy, click the Apply to Project button. You will get the following confirmation.

man confirm.jpg
  • If you add additional items to your project after this, you will need to run through the wizard again to verify that Avalara tax codes have been assigned to the items. Consider changing your Avalara Tax Integration settings to automatically calculate but prompt you if any tax codes are missing.

auto and prompt settings.jpg
  • If you are subject to the Florida Discretionary Surtax, please note that our implementation only works at the item level, not the "document" level.

Click here for a post from Avalara describing this surtax.

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