Avalara CertCapture is now ECM

Epicor ERP 10
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We have used Avalara CertCapture for a couple of years. Now, Avalara has transitioned us over to ECM (That is Avalara’s ECM Exemption Certificate Management, NOT Epicor ECM which is Enterprise Content Management - Docstar)

I had a simple integration of CertCapture data into Epicor by taking a daily emailed report and importing it into a UD table with DMT and a Powershell script. But the ECM reports do not seem to be schedulable.

While looking for alternate solutions to getting a list of certificates into Epicor, I came upon this thread with several references to CertCapture integrations using REST API.

But, there are no examples, and all were for CertCapture, not ECM.

Question:
Does anyone have a method to get Avalara ECM exemption certificate data into Epicor?
I am at 10.2.700, I have not written any REST interfaces (yet). But, I’m willing to learn.
Or if I could just figure out how to get Avalara to send a an excel report in an email every day, I can use my existing method.

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I haven’t gotten to Certs with Avalara yet, but this is interesting. I’d say your ERP version is an issue because the newer Automation Studio tool should be your answer.

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@alintz and @MikeGross
If you were running Kinetic 2022.2 or later, Automation Studio would not be required. Tax Connect has been enhanced to work much more elegantly with Avalara AvaTax and its ECM capabilities. See “CertCapture Settings” in Company Configuration > Tax Interface card, “Send Customer to Tax Connect” and “Request Certificate Invite” actions in Customer Entry, and “View Tax Connect Certificates” action in Sales Order Entry.

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That’s good news, Scott. I’m just spinning up my first test installation of 2023.1 this week, so I will check out the newer Avalara features.

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I thought you might like that! We are working on upgrading to 2023.1 right now and I’m planning to test the new Tax Connect features between now and Halloween! Hoping it isn’t too scary! :smirk: I’ll try to remember to update this topic.

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Scott,

We’re on 2022.2.8, but I don’t see those settings in Company Config, Customer Entry, or Sales Order Entry. I tried for find mention of it in the help files, but didn’t. Any ideas? Our A/R dept would love to streamline as much as possible within Epicor instead of needing to go out to the Avalara portal to manage customer tax certificates.

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Well now, that ain’t cool! I don’t know what to say, Andris. Perhaps I was given an incorrect release for the introduction of the new features. I can confirm that the features exist in 2023.1, but that doesn’t really help you.

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Hah. Story of my life! We’ll get the 2023.2 environment set up as soon as it’s available for on-prem. Maybe it’ll be there and I can dangle that carrot to our AR team in exchange for testing the release :slight_smile:

Thanks for pointing it out.

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@alintz , @MikeGross , @askulte and anyone else who may be interested in the new exemption-related features in Tax Connect, there’s a new KB article pertaining to them…

Access Level and Permissions Required in Avalara (KB0132630)

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I’m testing Order Entry in our pilot Cloud 2023.2.6. Avatax is correctly calculating tax for customers without exemption certificate, not calculating tax for customers with exemption certificates in CertCapture. So far so good.
There is a new ‘feature’ on the on the menu Action > Tax Connect > View Tax Connect Certificates. But, it always returns “Customer Not Found. The Customer with ID ‘AA123’ was not found.” Same message whether the customer has a CertCapture certificate or not.
There is a new checkbox in Company Config > Taxes > Tax Interfaces named "CertCapture Enabled. I have that checked.
Does anyone have the View Certificates working?

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We are now Live on Epicor Cloud currently running 2023.2. I want to update this topic with the new-to-me Avalara ECM features.

ECM certificates are now viewable in Epicor in real time! I resolved the problem described in my previous post (turns out Avalara test sandbox has an independent ECM storage than Live so there were no test certificates to view).

First, you have to check a checkbox in Company Configuration:

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Then, this option is available in Order Entry and Quote and Invoice Entry:

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That opens a pop-up grid of the certificates at Avalara ECM for that customer, with a Preview button that shows the ECM certificate:

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That is all good news. And it really is a big step forward.
Here’s the bad news:

  1. The View Tax Connect Certificate submenu on Tax Connect action is not on Customer Maint, Customer Tracker or Invoice Tracker where it would do some good for us in our workflow.
  2. If a Customer has no certificate in ECM, a scary Business Logic Error “Customer Not Found” is shown, then after hitting OK, a blank pop-up grid is shown. That seems like poor programming practice to me.
  3. If a Customer has a certificate that is expired, the View Certificate grid does not seem to notice, and happily shows the Valid checkbox as checked, even though Avatax would know the cert is expired and charge tax…
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For bad news item 1, I added a button on the Customer screens that calls the Avalara process.

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Here is the code for the button click event:

private void epiButtonViewCert_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs args)
	{
		// ** Place Event Handling Code Here **
		EpiDataView edv = (EpiDataView)(oTrans.EpiDataViews["Customer"]);
		Int32 custNum = (Int32)edv.dataView[0]["CustNum"];
		ProcessCaller.LaunchForm(oTrans, "PR000093", custNum.ToString() );
	}

For bad news item 3, I’m going to customize that view with a Row Rule that will turn the Expired cell red if it is expired.

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