CCH SureTax is designed by tax experts to help businesses comply even with the most complex sale and use tax requirements. Always up-to-date on 100,000+ annual tax legislation changes, this cloud-based sales tax automation platform aims to ensure customers accurately calculate, collect, and remit taxes to the correct authorities every time.
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Vertex
Score 8.1 out of 10
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Vertex combines tax research with technology to improve tax accuracy and
consistency on sales and purchase transactions. The automation aims to support high volume and complex transactions at speed and scale to streamline internal
processes and improve audit performance. Integrations to
ERP, e-commerce, procurement, and other billing systems enables a single tax
engine to seamlessly support a growing business. In addition to tax
determination, Vertex provides tools and services to automate and…
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Pricing
CCH® SureTax®
Vertex
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CCH® SureTax®
Vertex
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Free/Freemium Version
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No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
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Community Pulse
CCH® SureTax®
Vertex
Considered Both Products
CCH® SureTax®
Verified User
Anonymous
Chose CCH® SureTax®
I have not used or evaluated any other companies so I cannot compare.
CCH SureTax is the only sales tax management system I have used. I participated in a few demos of newer systems but they were not trusted by the business.
I currently use or have used the products above or versions of them - I use Rev.io the billing platform, not the PSA, I no longer use Sage 100, we are currently using Sage 300, more on the server version than the cloud version - but we have it configured to talk to both. So …
100% better. Avalara is a self-starter kit where businesses are forced to create and develop their own bundles and product types. The support that you get from the AvaTax is not as user-friendly. SureTax is full of seasoned experts and full of industry leaders. Law firms that …
In my opinion, both of those products are superior to Sure Tax and offer a far more robust system offering. That includes seeing tax rules and rates, running many different reports, and custom extract reporting.
We used Avalara from 2007 through 2012. We had continual connection issues with their system going down at least once a month. When your sales tax system goes down, everything within your ERP that uses sales tax also goes down. We are constantly entering quotes, orders, …
We researched them and had a few conversations because other areas of our company are using software from Avalara and we hoped to bundle but we couldn't meet their data deadlines at all so we had to keep looking around. There's really not much more I can say about it as that …
We decided on SureTax because of some prior relationships our CEO had. The technical implementation team had a much better impression of the advice and explanations and guidance we received from Avalara
As I've said a number of times, prior to discovering CCH® SureTax, I had not been aware of any company that provided the ability to accurately calculate and utilize API connectivity to allow for an almost entirely hands-off automated billing and payment of telecommunications …
Avalara is a big name but fall short of expectation their software, got the attitude that they don't care and would not see through the implementation stage. They are not good for new comers.
In my opinion, there is no comparison of Vertex customer service oriented approach to clients vs. Avalara. I think Vertex by far outshines Avalara 10 to 1. In my experience, communication with Vertex is much more streamlined and handled efficiently than with Avalara. In my …
I haven't evaluated anything else or any other products like Vertex. I have only seen some of the Comparisons between Avalara and Vertex. I don't remember much in terms of differences.
Vertex is more flexible and by using Vertex you need fewer people to maintain tax calculations. In addition, Tax rate update is maintained by Vertex, so you do not need to track and support tax rate update.
The functionality and feature set is similar. However, I prefer Vertex's UI over ONESOURCE. I have found Vertex to have certain taxability categories that ONESOURCE did not have historically.
In comparison specifically with Avalara, Vertex is better in every way. It is much more customizable and allows us to change the way our tax software is set up for our business needs. Avalara is much more constricted, and is using the SST system which can allow for simplified …
Vertex Indirect Tax Compliance package is worth getting. It has every form possible that needs to be filed monthly, quarterly, semi, or annually. It creates the uploadable file for state tax portal websites. So many other features.
For Sales tax many years ago I had used a product called Alternadev. It probably doesn't even exist anymore. It was created in someones kitchen and there wasn't much support. Other than that for sales tax I have only used Vertex. I have used Onesource but that was for property …
Vertex real time tax rate & tax determination updates is second to none. The quality of and accuracy in report generation is simple & easily understood.
The decision was made prior to my arrival at the organization but I believe that we've committed time and resources to the product and would not easily change our platform. We appreciate the efforts to educate users and create a happy and productive customer experience.
SureTax has been the perfect solution; not only are they readily available to fix any and all of your questions, but they are also extremely attentive regarding the information requested. They are the best when it comes to entrepreneurs who are entering into a space that they are not fully aware of from a state and local tax compliance perspective. They can be better from the perspective of developing their client interface.
It is easy to use, and the user interface is very interactive. A beginner can also work with ease and have no difficulty accessing Vertex. It is straightforward to understand how Vertex works. The tax calculation mechanism is good and accurate.
The product is optimized to handle invoices with large number of line items. We've fast response times even on invoices with hundreds of thousands of line items.
It is a SaaS solution which saves costs, increases maintainability and is entirely web based
REST API is efficient, logically laid out and effortless to use
In my opinion, the productivity website is clunky and limited. It's better than it used to be but still needs lots of work.
It seems a little too difficult to get an answer when sometimes all I need is a quick what taxes apply in this area.
In my experience, sales people are WAY TOO PUSHY. They need to understand that us users aren't always the decision makers and that there can be 3 levels of approval that the "negotiations" have to go through. So getting pushy and frustrated with us users is not the way to get the service agreements extended.
Critical changes! I feel they should be more aware of changes in the states. Sometimes we get these changes from them after we file our returns! I feel they should be up on any changes that are important for returns.
Support is a big issue. Vertex used to be excellent with their support. When I called with a question I felt I was speaking to a professional who knows the product inside and out. Now when I call I get someone who says "That's a realy good question I will have to look into that" Then days go by before I get an answer. Sometimes I don't get an answer at all. This was not the case in prior years.
We switched our tax service from Avalara to SureTax years ago. Prior to this, we manually prepared the data and ran a report uploading and then got the tax result every time. With Suretax providing enough and flexable APIs, we redesigned and implemented our new application to communicate with SureTax seamlessly and automatically. This greatly reduced our workload, improves the system efficiency, and increased the data accuracy.
We are satisfied with the overall performance of Vertex. The software has provided my company with many efficiencies. We have shorted our audits and found that many audits are happy that we are using Vertex to calculate our taxes. We no longer need to worry about updating our rates each month since Vertex sends us a file to upload
SureTax is very reliable in with the integration with Microsoft Dynamics GP. It provides accurate tax calculations in accordance with tax updates. SureTax also has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to navigate. It is easy to add customers and also run reports on the website. The overall manageability of it is great!
Great program, but a lot of features are still manual. It's difficult to set recurring monthly reports in a time frame of "Previous Month" and we have to kick them off. We have to manually delete reports, there isn't an option to choose multiple at once. Data that is transferred into Vertex returns is quirky as well, taking multiple steps to update lines of data.
Our Vertex performance is good, although we are now experiencing Error 502 when adding additional data points to our transaction tester single tests. At Exchange, I was told to reach out to support....that most likely the On Demand system needed some additional CPU resource added. I have a currently open ticket, that has not yet been fixed on this matter
It has taken much longer than we would like to get certain issues - and problems - resolved. And the initial product support as we designed the implementation left much to be desired
I cannot speak from personal experience, but our IT staff has found contacting Vertex support staff to be challenging. One coworker has gone through several support tickets because he was an unrecognized contact. He has also expressed frustration that communication with support staff is conducted solely by email, drawing out issues over an extended length of time that could be more easily resolved by a brief phone call.
By training I'm referring to our engagement with Vertex Consulting's professional services group. Each person on the engagement had prior leasing industry tax experience and most if not all used O Series before joining Vertex. Consultants with industry specific tax experience provide so much more than just "training". They are able to engage in deep tax technical discussions with actual experience while in private practice. This coupled with having visibility to how numerous other leasing peers approach similar tax issues is a huge plus on top of the standard training.
Vertex has offered multiple webinars for the products we have purchased that are informative and helpful. I've also attended a few of the Vertex annual conferences where I was able to strength my knowledge of Vertex. I also found that their online library and videos can be helpful in resolving issues and answering questions.
The implementation is challenging, make no mistake but will provide much value over time. Make sure you have full support of IT and your major stakeholders in your company. I found that while many people claimed to understand tax was important, they had no idea how deep tax in entrenched throughout the lease life cycle.
I currently use or have used the products above or versions of them - I use Rev.io the billing platform, not the PSA, I no longer use Sage 100, we are currently using Sage 300, more on the server version than the cloud version - but we have it configured to talk to both. So CCH® SureTax® is just another tool in the toolbelt as it stacks up against the rest. Everything has its place and time. Sage300 handles the bulk of the accounting, Rev.io does the billing, CCH® SureTax® handles the tax. That's the simplest way to explain it. I don't have to spell out how much complexity goes behind those statements. If you're an accountant, you know.
Vertex is more flexible and by using Vertex you need fewer people to maintain tax calculations. In addition, Tax rate update is maintained by Vertex, so you do not need to track and support tax rate update.
There needs to be a time-consuming setup both in the Enterprise Resource Platform and in Vertex and the related tools as well but once this is all established, Vertex is very proficient at calculating Sales and Use Tax in the USA and in Canada with GST/HST, as well as several of the provinces where we are located. As we added plants in different jurisdictions via greenfield expansion and aquisition, Vertex was able to integrate those as long as the tax department is fully informed of the system.
positive impact on resources due to accessibility by more team members
positive impact on resources due to willingness of other team members to use this GUI - it's more inviting
positive impact on timing due to strict deadlines so I simply CANNOT be pulled off to help with other projects which often happened when deadlines were later in the month
once the prepayment module is put into production that is also going to help with tracking (for states like FL, GA etc. where the number only changes once/year because we're told SureTax will "remember" that month to month and keep it filled in on each return)
Vertex for the solution that we needed was half as much as the old tax software that we used
Our past solutions have not been able to exempt certain customers, so we were spending a lot of time manually adjusting sales orders in two systems (Netsuite and BigCommerce)
We are now able to add more complex tax rules, such as charging sales tax on digital, food, and clothing items differently than we were able to before
