Table of Contents

1. Configuration/User Guide
2. Before You Begin
3. Configuring Acclamare to use Your AvaTax Account
4. Additional Information
   1. General Ledger Implications
   2. Special Rules for Customers and Locations
   3. Special Rules for Items

Configuration/User Guide

Avalara AvaTax is a cloud-based solution automating transaction tax calculations and the tax filing process. Avalara provides real-time tax calculation using tax content from more than 12,000 US taxing jurisdictions and over 200 countries, insuring your transaction tax is calculated based on the most current tax rules.

Before You Begin

Prior to configuring Acclamare to use AvaTax, make sure to do the following:

1. Purchase Avalara AvaTax
2. Install AvaTax at your site
3. Configure AvaTax at your site
4. On the AvaTax site, create a location for each of your warehouses and ensure that the AvaTax location name is an exact match for the Acclamare warehouse name. In order to minimize the amount of data that is being passed between the two systems, and to maximize performance, Acclamare does not pass the warehouse's address information to AvaTax. Instead, we count on the warehouse having been set up as a location in AvaTax and simply pass this code as a reference to the address. Additionally, be sure to set the Effective Date of the location so that it is prior to any existing transactions in Acclamare that you may want or need to edit.
5. Do any data clean-up at your site that may prevent AvaTax from working as intended
   1. The AvaTax integration does not use our Taxable/Not Taxable flag. Instead, taxability is determined based on whether or not the customer has an active Tax Exempt Number. Your system administrator or Acclamare support contact can assist you in determining if you have any non-taxable customers that do not have a current Tax Exempt Number.
   2. In order for addresses to be validated, which is a requirement of the AvaTax system, your site must use standardized country codes. Make sure that all of your relevant customers and documents have a country code of "US" or "USA" if they are located in the United States. A country code of  "U.S.", "United States", or any other abbreviation, will not pass this test. Your system administrator or Acclamare support contact can assist you in determining if you have any addresses that do not meet this requirement.
   3. Acclamare has always allowed for Tax Exempt Numbers to be up to 256 characters. However, Avalara limits the size to 25 characters. Be sure that all of your tax-exempt customers and locations adhere to this limit.
   4. If your site plans on using Avalara's CertCapture system:
      1. Be sure that all of your relevant addresses have an actual street address for line 1. Some sites put things like "Attention: Joe Smith" in this field. That will work for regular address validation as long as line 2 and/or 3 contain actual address information, but it does not work with CertCapture.
      2. Due to the way that tax-exemption certificates actually work, you need to verify that your customers that have one or more secondary locations are set up correctly.
         1. In order for certificates to be applied correctly, each secondary location must be owned by the customer. That customer only needs one exemption per state, regardless of the number of locations owned in that state. If all of your customers are set up this way already, you do not need to take any action.
         2. If you have some customer records that contain secondary locations that are not actually owned by the customer, you will need to make some changes to your system. The correct set up is for each location that is not owned by the primary customer should be its own customer record. These customers can then be grouped under a single customer payor. Your VAR partner can assist you in any data conversion that is necessary to covert these customers to the correct setup while also maintaining historical data.
         3. All new customer records should follow these guidelines:
            1. If the secondary addresses are all owned by the customer, then use a customer record with one or more location records.
            2. If the secondary addresses are not owned by the customer, which may be the case for buying co-ops or franchises, then make each address its own customer record. Then create a customer payor record to tie all of the customers together for payment, aging, and other system uses.
6. Run Sales Invoice Printing if necessary, and then Sales Invoice Post to make sure there are no open invoices in the system. Prior to switching to AvaTax, all of the taxes in your system have been calculated by Acclamare. After you switch to AvaTax, all of the taxes in your system will be calculated by Avalara. This step ensures that there are no mismatches in you system in which the estimation has been done in Acclamare but the final recorded calculation is done in Avalara. If this step is not performed, any invoice that is still open will not have a correct tax value recorded in AvaTax once it is posted and may lead to errors, not only in the Acclamare system, but in the taxes you report to tax collecting authorities.

Configuring Acclamare to use Your AvaTax Account

The first part of this process is done in the Installation and Upgrade Wizard, please review the section pertaining to Server Settings. The settings to be aware of are "Use Avalara for Tax Calculations" and "Address Validation Method". Once these fields have be set correctly, restart the Acclamare server and move on to the next step.

If at any time you wish to stop using AvaTax, you can use this same process to switch "Use Avalara for Tax Calculations" back to "No", restart the Acclamare server, and resume usage of the Acclamare built-in tax calculation engine.

The second step of this process is done in the Acclamare Command Center. Please review the article pertaining to Avalara Settings Maintenance. This will also be the area that is used should you need to modify your settings.

Additional Information

General Ledger Implications

At the end of the configuration process, Acclamare will create a record in Taxing Entities. This record will be used during Sales Invoice Post in order to write the correct entries for taxes to your General Ledger. Acclamare will make a best-guess as to which account to use when creating the record, but you can always change it in the Taxing Entity Maintenance screen. The record will have a "Name" of "Avalara Sales Tax Integration".

Special Rules for Customers and Locations

If you have customers (or locations) that follow specialized tax exempt rules, you will need to set their "Entity Use Code" accordingly in Customer Maintenance. If you do not provide a value in this field, Acclamare will assume a value for you during each transaction. For customers that have an active Tax Exempt Number, Acclamare assumes a value of "G" for "Resale". For customers that do not have an active Tax Exempt Number, Acclamare assumes a value of "TAXABLE".

Special Rules for Items

If you sell any products or services that follow specialized tax rules, you will need to set their "Tax Code" accordingly in Item Maintenance. If you do not provide a value in this field, Acclamare will assume a value of "P0000000" which is the code for "Tangible personal property" meaning a standard hard good.