Company Information
Avalara is an end-to-end transaction tax management company using its internally developed innovative, patented technology to automate statutory tax compliance. A trailblazer in delivering sales tax solutions via Software-as- a-Service (SaaS), Avalara transforms a process that was previously economically unfeasible for small and mid-sized businesses to be not just affordable to businesses of all sizes, but more accurate and lightning fast than ever thought possible.
Avalara products integrate seamlessly into more financial and e-Commerce applications than those of its competitors and are recommended by more than 2,000 software resellers and accountants. Nearly 10,000 customer businesses of every size and level of complexity rely on Avalara for accurate tax calculation, painless administration, effortless reporting and, timely remittance. Avalara calculates sales and use taxes on more than 100 million transactions per year and has customers spanning four continents that entrust it to accurately submit more than 240,000 returns and remit more than $20 billion in tax filings annually.
Avalara’s Cult of the Customer
For some companies, the concept of "cult of the customer" is just a tagline. But at Avalara, Cult of the Customer lies at the very core of its business model. "Customer service" is just a part of the equation, as Cult of the Customer embodies a deep-seated commitment to meeting or exceeding the company’s basic value proposition: delivering "fast, easy, accurate, and affordable sales tax management services – making taxing more relaxing."
History
Founded in 1999 by Rory Rawlings, Avalara has come of age as a Pacific Northwest start-up turned emerging growth company. Founder Rory Rawlings, a CPA, software developer, and integrator of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, originally created an ERP implementation and development consulting company called Advantage Solutions, Inc. He soon found that his clients needed an efficient and affordable way to calculate, manage, and remit sales and use taxes to supplant the cumbersome, time-consuming, and often error-prone manual processes they were following: the seeds for Avalara were planted.
Rory realized that many businesses were automating and outsourcing their payroll processes, so he quickly harnessed Internet technologies to provide sales tax automation solutions for small and medium-sized businesses that otherwise couldn’t afford the expensive enterprise solutions. He did such a good job of this, in fact, that he holds four patents in sales tax automation technology.
Jared Vogt and Scott McFarlane shared Rory’s vision, and in 2004 Advantage Solutions became Avalara. “We were a great combination,” CEO Scott McFarlane reflects. “Rory was the product strategist and made sure we produced the best tax engine and the most innovative technology. I was the business driver and the evangelist of our innovative approach, and Jared was the Internet guru who helped shape the business in general and our software-as-a-service delivery model.”
Today Avalara is recognized as the pioneer in the automation and outsourcing of transactional tax calculation and compliance. Worldwide, more than 10,000 businesses of all sizes rely on Avalara’s proven services, making it the trusted provider of 100 million sub-second sales tax calculations and $20 billion in filings annually. Avalara’s accolades speak clearly to its strengths, and it is recognized as only one of four Certified Service Providers (CSPs) for the Streamlined Sales Tax initiative (SST) by that body’s Governing Board.