Avalara AvaTax Cloud Integration

Summary

AvaTax cloud is an easy to implement, multi-tenant, SaaS solution that utilizes the internet. Addresses are validated in real time and taxes calculated using a remotely hosted tax engine. The LogiSense AvaTax Cloud integration also supports:

• Transaction based taxing or invoice level taxing, configurable per branded owner

• Multiple usage taxing options:

  • Taxing usage records during rating (per UDR)

  • Taxing UDRs in batches (for improved performance)

  • Taxing usage when invoices are closed (invoice level taxing)

  • Taxing usage at the time of billing

• Feature parity with the On-prem Billsoft solution, which includes:

  • Applying service specific taxes (service tax categories)

  • Applying account specific taxes (account tax categories)

  • Tax exemption (e.g. exempting accounts from state or federal taxes)

  • Tax overrides

  • Tax inclusion (including the tax in a particular services price)

  • Tax activity logging and reporting

If you are using/installing the On-prem Avalara Billsoft integration in EngageIP you should reference the Avalara Billsoft article instead.

If the Avatax cloud service goes down (or connectivity is lost) for any reason, a new feature available in 9.3.7 or greater will monitor, notify and halt billing to provide time for review and resolution

Tax Application Process

Taxation using AvaTax relies on Jurisdiction Codes which determine the tax jurisdiction. When an address on an account contact is added or updated the JCode for the address is retrieved from AvaTax cloud and stored on the contact point address in EngageIP.

Open

International Taxing

Please follow the general Billsoft configuration detailed here: Avalara Billsoft - Installation and Configuration | International Taxing.

Batch Taxing

Batch taxing reduces system load by taxing usage in batches instead of making an API call to the tax vendor on every usage transaction. This is particularly useful in environments where usage transactions occur very frequently. A Windows service called 'EngageIP UDRBatchTax Service' runs to handle batch usage taxing operations. Several settings are available with this service which you can modify to suit your environment, configuration options include:

• Setting the batch size (default 500)

• Setting the number of threads to use (MinThread & MaxThread)

• Setting the batch taxing frequency (default every 30 seconds)

• Setting how long processed tax data should be kept in the database (default 365 days)

For more information on configuring batch taxing see the Avalara AvaTax Cloud - Configuration article.