ECC like Epicor commerce connect or electronic credit card?
Are you using Avalara’s address verification function? You should be able to call that with the API in ECC.
Well, since this topic got bumped, figure I may as well mention that as an alternative to using Cert Capture, we just attach a customer’s exemption certificate(s) to their Customer record in Epicor (using DocStar, but could also just use a link to a network folder) and mark them with an appropriate “Entity/Use Code” on the Billing tab in Customer Entry and on their Ship To records (it is then copied by Epicor to any new order releases for that Ship To). This has been working for both full and partial tax exemptions for us. It’s entirely self-managed, though, and Cert Capture probably has other features that you’d like to use as well, I imagine.
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The Entity/Use Code is a useful trick, but is generally ignored when you are setup as SST for relevant states. Streamlined Sales Tax (SST) can save a lot on Avalara fees, but has a few gotchas.
Agreed that Avalara is better than most third party integrations with Epicor. I use Avalara for tax calcs, Exemption management, return filing, and registrations.
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wow… old thread bumped… but I am glad to read the many great responses and positive experiences. It confirms what I have been telling customers over the years.
My FIRST Avalara implementation was WAAAyyy back when we first hooked up with Avalara (2008/2009?). I had a customer who collected sales tax for nearly every shipment to every state. The fact that we had a tax calculation for them actually caused our project to change shape, and them implemented AR/AP/GL first with a data integration to their old system transferring in the financial data… then a year later, we got the first manufacturing site live.
Avalara worked elegantly, and the one problem that they ran into with some tax calculation being wrong in the one specific state was quickly remedied.
Following my experience, I always recommended Avalara if they had not purchased it as part of their original sale. I “Won” the argument that they should not attempt to “build their own system” most of the time… but there were other times where I “lost” and the customer went with a custom tax solution “because it is cheaper”…
BUT in at least 2 of those… the customer build a custom solution, and a year or two later, gave up, and moved to Avalara… (no, i didn’t say “Told you so”… but it was tempting).
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I would like to elaborate just a bit on Paul’s reply. If you register with SST states and engage Avalara as your Certified Service Provider (CSP) for those states and qualify for “Volunteer” status in those states, then the entity/use codes on the shipment invoices pertaining to those states are not only ignored by AvaTax, but also technically are not allowed, per the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement. Customers’ exemptions cannot be passed on the invoice level; to properly exempt the customers from tax, relevant customer information must be entered in AvaTax via the Exemptions tab or in Avalara Exemption Certificate Management. Entering that information is more time-consuming, but the payback in the forms of free processing and audit protection is a worthwhile tradeoff!
We are about to start with Avalara soon.
We invoice our sales orders in terms, one ADV invoice and one SHP invoice. After shipment the SHP invoice is created and the ADV amount is automatically deducted.
Is it normal that no sales tax is calculated on the ADV invoice and tax is therefore calculated at the SHP invoice for the full order amount - resulting in a strange looking tax amount.
It could even be that the ADV is 100% of the ordervalue which will result in a SHP invoice that only contains sales tax.
Yes, I believe that is normal. If the goods/services have not been shipped/provided, then the buyer has not yet received anything in return for their prepaid consideration. Accordingly, the buyer should not be taxed based on the value of something not yet received.
@josecgomez @bderuvo @Banderson
The avalara engine does look on its own for the tax exemption certs when doing the sales tax calculation right? In other words, the customization y’all did to display tax exemption certs and dates and what not was strictly informational right?
I guess the real question I am getting at is this:
When avalara goes to calculate sales tax, if my customer record and ship to don’t have anything in the tax exempt box, it will always go to calculate sales tax and IF it finds a valid cert for tax exemption it will return 0 for the sales tax owed, right? In other words, we don’t have to fill the tax exempt box out in Epicor for avalara sales tax calcuation to work for tax exempt customers, right?
Hopefully I am being clear… If not, please let me know and I’ll try to calrify.
Thanks in advance for anyone that can help. Trying to clean up some cloud conversion data and wondering if I should remove or keep the tax exemption code on customer and ship-to records given we are going to go live with avalara and I am slightly confused on exact behaviors of Avalara tax calculation.
I understand that filling this box out would save you from making a chargeable call to Avalara tax calc API, but other than that, the tax api handles that cert lookup when the tax-exempt box is left blank, right?
Right it was informational
Avalara automatically looks at certs if it has some regardless of except textbox.
Right on thank you sir! 
Training the users that they need to verify both Billing & Ship to addresses is harder than the rest of Avalara if you have a competent accounting team.
Do I need to run a process to get the tax types into epicor from avalara? My test connection came back good. I created a test quote with no luck getting the taxes to calculate. I think I’m missing something simple and notice I don’t have any tax types in epicor yet.
The tax types will populate as you use avalara.
Make sure to read through the setup guide and understand the other configurations you need to setup and assign.
Product Tax Categories for parts/product groups and Misc Charges and Tax liabilities for customers and shipto.
Thanks, we’ve asked for a setup guide from Epicor and Avalara and no one seems to have one so I’m trying to mirror what we did in our Pilot environment for testing. I know I’m missing something simple to get it to work in Live.
@Kpressler Take a look here: Knowledge Page - EpicCare (epicor.com)
There are tax connect setup guides that we received when we purchased tax connect. Not sure I have them anymore.
@Kpressler
Hi Kristin. Perhaps these will help:
Epicor Tax Connect Configuration - Epicor 10.2.400
Tax Connect Configuration Guide for Kinetic - Version 2023.1 Controlled Release
Good luck!
Are any of you using the new features that were added to Tax Connect along with the Kinetic 2022.2 release? The new features greatly enhance the connectivity to Avalara’s ECM functionality. If you have any opinion on the usefulness of the new features, please share!
Also curious to know if anyone has been able to use Tax Connect Global capabilities effectively to address VAT compliance issues?
