You Won't Believe How Simple it is to Setup Tax Connect! No, Really, it's THAT Easy!

Thinking about purchasing Avalara Tax Connect for Epicor? If you find yourself doing a few hours (or more) of tax code research each week OR you have serious doubts of the calculations you currently do, then Tax Connect is probably going to be an option for you and will pay for itself pretty quickly. The purpose of this article is not to brag about my experience or the ROI of this product but if you want details on those sorts of tidbits you can get them by clicking on this case study.

What I want to talk about today is the simplicity of the setup. If you are feeling a little unsure of what implementing Tax Connect looks like, this should give you a better idea. I've done several setups over the years and every single implementation has had the same results - quick setup and minimal effort. I've spoken on this topic on several occasions at the annual Insights Conference in which I have always put emphasis on how easy it is to setup.

First off, you really don't need to be a finance or accounting guru nor do you have to be highly technical. With the minimal help of an Avalara or a 3rd party consultant you should be able to have your sandbox setup and ready for testing within 2 weeks, typically days if your account is setup and you have an idea of which tax codes you want to use. The most time consuming portion of this is usually selecting the correct tax codes from the list provided, but this can be expedited with a quick consulting or support call. If you only have a few different types of products or services that you sell, the process is that much easier. Generally you will only need 4-8 hours of consulting to setup Tax Connect and configure it to work with Epicor, including training. That's it!

There are 4 major setups that need to occur to get everything working properly.

1. Setup appropriate Tax Categories and link them to Parts or Product Groups.

2. Fill in the handful of fields in the company configuration.

3. Setup Avalara Company configuration.

4. Setup Nexus, and any special Tax Codes (not common).

That's all she wrote. Super simple right? The first time I setup Tax Connect I was an IT Director, with absolutely no tax accounting background. I had Tax Connect configured and live within 2 weeks. Plain and simple, Avalara's Tax Connect is probably the easiest 3rd party integration you'll ever have to configure for Epicor.

If you need help setting up Tax Connect, need help with Tax Code selection, or you would like to hear more about my experiences with Tax Connect feel free to reach out to me at jmesiano@singularcs.com