Avalara vs. Canopy

As a non-profit that relies on volunteers, having a system that is easy to use and cost effective is crucial. Alavara fit both of those needs for us. Also, since this is a task that is completed only once a year, it needs to be simple to use, which Alavara is. And lastly, since the IRS rules are often complicated and change regularly, it is helpful to have a vendor that stays current with the changes and incorporates them into the process which Alavara does.

Incentivized

For accurate and remarkable accounting processes, Canopy is the program to embrace. One, it has the project accounting details where every resource has a detailed accounting feature. Again, matters on taxation and state compliance are professionally handled by Canopy. The tracking of the due dates for finishing a given operation is an incredible step.

Incentivized

• Sales tax rates at a "roof top" level
• Has extensive research and documentation on telecommunications industry
• Research is always up to date
• The ability to ask questions and get clarification on specific situations with no limit as to how you ask a question and often get the answer the same day

Incentivized

• As TheCPATaxProblemSolver, Canopy is a great timesaver in helping me complete IRS Offer In Compromises. An Offer in Compromise (OIC) is an IRS program that allows taxpayers to settle their liabilities for less than the full amount owed.
• I use analytics contained in the state-of-the-art Canopy tax resolution software to calculate smart recommendations based on each unique case to arrive at the best solution and prepare successful cases.
• Canopy tax has an all in one practice management software. It features Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Document Management, Workflow Management, as well as Billing and Invoicing

Incentivized

• I find it virtually impossible to access people when you have issues with anything
• In my experience, everything runs through account managers and they are non-responsive and unavailable most of the time.
• In my experience, 99% of all communication with anybody at Avalara has to be done via some ridiculous form or via email. Human contact is extremely difficult to resolve an issue that sometimes requires human to human contact.

• Canopy's time tracking feature is hard to get valuable data from without the pro version.
• Canopy's dashboard for the workflow management could be better by providing a filter option of "Show me projects I'm assigned to and on which I am assigned to the current open workstep."
• Canopy's training on the product could be better.

I have not been able to find a company that does it better than Avalara. I still have lots of problems, but we are working through them. Based on other demos i have seen and talking with peers in other companies, this is the best.

Incentivized

The UI is simple and straightforward. The site is organized in a manner that is easy to understand for beginners and experts alike. There's also tons of resoruces on Avalara University at your disposal to better understand how Avalara can work best for your business needs. I would recommend Avalara to anyone wanting to investment in the betterment of their business's sales tax function

Incentivized

I have been using Avalara for years and do not remember ever having an outage during working hours. The service is accurate and dependable.

We do have trouble tying Avalara's reporting back to our POS, but we just got a new POS system and there are bugs we are still trying to work out within the POS system. I do not believe this is an Avalara issue

Incentivized

Avalara is not consistent in giving us information timely. For instance, right now, we have a help desk ticket with them that's been open since October. They are still trying to figure it out and we haven't gotten any feedback on where they are at or what is going on. That seems to me a very excessive amount of time to be working on a problem. Was it forgotten? Is there something bigger going on? Do they need something from us? An update would be helpful.

Also, many times when we call with an issue or concern (wrong tax rate for instance) we generally feel like the help desk assumes it's of our doing instead of theirs and doesn't truely listen when we explain the problem because we end up repeating it over and over as well as sending examples. We expect more respect on our end.

Incentivized

We had to contact the company many times because of the problems we were encountering. They were not helpful in any way

Incentivized

I wasn't here when they first started with Avalara.

Incentivized

The documentation online we informative and helpful. The videos from the Avalara institute and the help tab if we have any questions and the search too were helpful. We like the ease of using the click here for more information tool about nexus and the information for the ECM Pro training were helpful. Whenever we have a question we normally get an email along with the tool as to where to find our answer. We also like that it shows information about nexus status of the states we maybe approaching and we can look more into it.

Incentivized

The implementation team from Avalara was very knowledgable and did a good job of passing along information so that we could maintain the system and be able to make future changes ourselves. We had asked for some custom tax setup and they worked with us to get additional taxes set up that they didn't previously have. They worked with us to pull our documentation on tax rules and make sure those were included. I had hoped more scenarios would be there out of the box to cut down on the configuration time.

Incentivized

TaxJar is integrated with Kaseya autotask, and this integration is very inefficient and was not easy to set up. Neither TaxJar nor Kaseya support was helpful at all, "rude" is the only word to describe that, whereas Avalara has always tried to be helpful and has been very friendly to work with. TaxJar has no similar capability to retain their tax-calculated transactions and file the returns; TaxJar would calculate the taxes in Kaseya autotask and you would still have to manually import the data into TaxJar if you wanted to subscribe and have them file your returns. Needless to say that was a non-starter.

Incentivized

Canopy is a hyper-CRM that does more than just track client interaction. It also does filing sharing in a way that's relevant to the client and constantly drives to client back to interacting with our firm.

Incentivized

There is no change that has to happen as your company grows, Avalara continues to do it's job for any size company

Incentivized

• We went from two staff members down to one staff member dedicated to monitoring and reconciling sales tax with the G/L.
• It takes the one staff member less time to monitor sales tax than having to go through and calculate and file in each state.
• Avalara gives us confidence that the returns are filed accurately and timely every month.

Incentivized

• Canopy has allowed us to reduce our dependence on an administrative assistant to communicate with our clients effectively through the document request feature in an engagement. It has a reminder system built in which frees our time.
• The storage provided is robust enough that we have been able to eliminate our file server. We store all our client information in their individual record. Making some files visible to the client and and some not visible allows us to work remotely more effectively and not deal with problems with VPN over hotel networks.
• Canopy combines multiple products into one platform that is seamless and consistent. It has helped us eliminate multiple programs used previously to complete these functions.

Incentivized