Avalara Sales Tax Integration

SoftSlate Cloud Platform offers integration with Avalara for computing and recording sales tax, as well as address validation. AvaTax provides accurate, real-time sales tax information based on an order's point of origin, destination address, and types of products.

Here are the topics covered in this document:

How to Set Up AvaTax Integration

To set up the AvaTax integration, you must first establish an AvaTax account with Avalara. Once you have an account established and configured, enter the account information and other settings into the Settings -> AvaTax Settings screen.

Essential Settings

• AvaTax Environment: If you are testing with Avalara's sandox environmental, choose the Sandbox environment.

• AvaTax Account Number: Enter your account number you received when you signed up for AvaTax

• AvaTax License Key: Enter the license key you got when you signed up for AvaTax

• AvaTax Company Code: When setting up your AvaTax account, you'll have created a company. Enter the company code here.

Test the Avalara Connection

Once you have entered and saved the above settings, you should test the connection to Avalara to make sure it can connect. Simply click the Test Connection button to do this:

Global Tax Settings

In addition to the AvaTax settings, you have to tell the system to use AvaTax for taxes in the first place, or the integration will not be enabled. You do this from the Settings -> Tax Settings screen. Simply select AvaTax as the Active Tax Service:

IMPORTANT: You must do this or the AvaTax integration will not be active.

Also on the global Tax Settings screen, define your business's Default Order Address details. The integration will use this address as the origin address for all orders that do not have a drop shipper defined for them.

Calculating Tax

Calculating Tax Settings

Under the Calculating Tax section, you can tell the system how to behave in terms of calculating tax for orders. These settings tell the system which countries and states to use AvaTax with, whether or not to save a record of each transaction in Avalara's system, and if and when to "commit" the tax in Avalara's system. The default settings are fairly typical:

The above settings tell the system to save a record of each tax transaction in Avalara's system as each order is placed, and then to "commit" the transaction as the order's status changes to Shipped.

Other Calculating Tax Settings

Under the "Other Settings" section you can refine the communication with AvaTax further. Settings there let you tell AvaTax what to use for various other codes in each transaction that is sent to AvaTax. The Doc Code Prefix, for example, let's you distinguish transactions sent up to Avalara from SCP as opposed to other sources, which can be helpful for tracking and reporting.

Product-Specific Tax Settings

There are two product fields that the AvaTax system uses to help refine the tax rates:

• Is Taxed: this is a simple flag that tells the system that no tax should be charged for the product.

• Tax Code: this field defines what tax code in Avalara's system is sent with each product being ordered. If the product's Tax Code is populated the system will include it in the request for each order as the item's tax code. These can correspond to rates and special rules in Avalara's system, to refine the integration. To populate a product's tax code, visit the details screen for a product

Customer-Specific Tax Setting

The AvaTax API supports sending up a "exemptionNo" with each transaction, indicating that the customer may be exempt from taxes. If you are using customer accounts, you can enter a "Tax Exempt Number", which will be used to populate this field in the AvaTax integration. Under the customer's detail, Advanced Setting section, enter a value for the Tax Exempt Number field:

Address Validation

Under the Address Validation section, you have the option to enable Avalara's address validation service for the US or Canada as customers go through checkout. In addition to check off the countries in this setting, please note you have to tell the system to use Avalara for address validation on the Address Settings screen, at the bottom:

Here are some notes to keep in mind about address validation:

• The address validation happens after the customer submits their delivery address during checkout

• If the service finds that the address is valid but needs a couple small tweaks to conform with the postal service address, the system will modify the delivery address for the customer to conform with what the service suggests (the customer is not prompted to approve this)

• If the delivery address comes back as invalid, an error message will be shown to the customer during checkout asking him to double check the address

• If the customer submits the same address after getting an error, the system will accept the re-submitted address. This is because the address validation service may not be aware of every valid address

• If you have configured the system to use AvaTax to calculate taxes and the address is invalid, the system will fall back to using Basic Tax Rates to compute the tax

Handling Problems

The above AvaTax Problems Notification Code setting indicates that the built in notificaiton record with code = AvaTaxProblemsNotification should be used if there are any problems connecting with Avalara at any point. This notification sends an email to the main email address for your SCP account with details about the problem. The AvaTax service is hardly ever down but if there are any issues connecting to it for any reason, you'll receive this notification.

In addition, if the problem occurs while the system is calculating tax for a customer's order being placed, the system is designed to "fall back" to Basic Tax Rates to compute tax for the order. Basic Tax Rates allow you to manually define tax rates and jurisdictions by state, city, and postal code. The system will also check Basic Tax Rates for any countries and states that are not checked off on the AvaTax settings screen.