Built-in compliance: Avalara continues to invest in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 ecosystem

Key takeaways

• Tax and compliance solutions have the biggest impact when they’re embedded into the systems where people are doing their work every day.
• Avalara has consistently invested in making it easy for Microsoft Dynamics 365 users to utilize these compliance capabilities, building them right into workflows.
• In addition to the benefits of seamless compliance — which include audit readiness, scalability, and efficiency — purchases of Avalara solutions in the Microsoft Marketplace apply to your Azure commitment.

As the tax landscape continues to evolve, businesses need flexible solutions with evolving capabilities to navigate the additional compliance complexities.

It’s particularly important for businesses that want to scale into new markets with confidence, reduce audit risk as they grow, or simply use resources more efficiently. (One survey found that manufacturers under 500 employees spend an average of 149 hours each month on tax management.)

These solutions have the greatest impact when they’re embedded into the systems people use every day, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365. That’s why Avalara continues to invest in bringing AI-powered tax and compliance capabilities to where work gets done today — because when businesses scale into new markets or broaden their offerings, “bolted-on” tax structures are often the first to fail.

A core benefit of Microsoft Dynamics 365 is ensuring everyone in your organization is working from the same data — and Avalara helps you take that same approach with your tax processes, allowing you to embed compliance right into your workflows. Even better, you can buy directly from the Microsoft Marketplace, and those purchases apply to your Azure commitment. That means Avalara also helps you use your budget effectively and centralize your cloud spend.

2026 features and enhancements

This year, we’ve introduced a wealth of key features and refinements to help Dynamics 365 users make compliance seamless.

• Avalara AvaTax diagnostic tool: Designed to troubleshoot challenges with setup, connectivity, and tax calculation issues between AvaTax and Dynamics 365, this tool provides proactive risk reduction and audit readiness by instantly evaluating the health of your environment. This results in faster troubleshooting, improved visibility, and reduced manual effort.
• Zero-touch setup and authentication: This enhancement reduces IT lift, replacing legacy API keys and individual user credentials with secure tokens to simplify the connection to Dynamics 365. It also ensures your tax calculations remain active even if the person who set it up leaves your organization.
• AvaTax home page experience for Business Central: This enhanced experience makes it easy to access common Avalara workflows and troubleshooting tools. It offers a dedicated Avalara workspace right on the Business Central home page, with grouped tiles to manage configuration, monitor transactions, review logs, and more.

Those are far from the only enhancements we’ve made over the first half of the year. Other improvements include tax code recommendations in the Avalara Taxability Code Mapping utility, leading to simplified mapping and increased accuracy; the ability to reduce manual effort by exporting exemption records in bulk to Avalara Exemption Certificate Management; cross-border support for customs duty and import tax calculations on international procurement transactions; and more.

Why it all matters

Most ERP environments were built to process transactions, not to manage the complex and ever-evolving challenges of global tax compliance. That means many organizations are constantly faced with manual overrides, hard-coded rate updates, and other work-arounds.

That can work at low volume, but add some growth — for instance, selling in new channels or launching a new product that causes transactions to spike — and cracks appear quickly. If you’re scaling revenue without compliance architecture that can scale at the same time, you’re creating invisible risk.

The situation Micro Matic found itself in illustrates the challenge perfectly. A major manufacturer that supplies dispensing solutions and equipment for beer, wine, coffee, and other beverages, the company sells across the U.S. to a wide variety of customers — including tax-exempt wholesalers and resellers.

Before Micro Matic began utilizing Avalara tools in Microsoft Dynamics 365, its tax processes involved a lot of manual work: Each month, the CFO would spend 4–5 days putting together over 350 returns in more than 30 states. It also added risk: The company paid significant penalties after undergoing audits in several states. “We needed to do a better job protecting the company,” says Micro Matic Accounting Manager Nick Carter.

Avalara helped reduce the CFO’s workload on returns to just 15–20 minutes a month — and most important, when the company was audited again in 2021, Micro Matic owed “zero dollars,” Nick says.

Avalara on the Microsoft Marketplace

Avalara augments the capabilities of Dynamics 365, working seamlessly across systems thanks to natural-language interactions and standardized protocols. It presents an opportunity to implement an integrated compliance approach with solutions that are strategic, scalable, and built into the systems your people already use. Here’s what you’ll find in the Microsoft Marketplace:

• Avalara AvaTax: Agentic Tax and Compliance — Uses autonomous AI agents to execute end-to-end tasks such as calculating landed costs, classifying items, and filing use tax. Supports U.S. and global tax types across 190+ countries, applies product-specific tax rules across 330+ categories, and updates continuously in the background.
• Avalara for Dynamics 365 for Finance — Automates sales and use tax, VAT, communications tax, cross-border taxes, and more.
• Avalara for Dynamics 365 Business Central — Integrates Avalara cloud-native tax solutions to automate global tax compliance. Calculates real-time sales and use tax, manages VAT, and handles exemption certificates.
• Avalara for Dynamics GP — Automates sales and use tax calculation, exemption certificate management, and tax filing across global jurisdictions via a lightweight, cloud-based app.
• Avalara for Dynamics 365 Field Service — Embeds automated sales and use tax compliance directly in your field service operations, syncing with work orders to calculate taxes, validate addresses, and manage exemptions in real time.
• Avalara for Dynamics 365 Commerce — Centralizes tax logic within Dynamics 365 to ensure omnichannel accuracy even in complex cross-border scenarios.
• Avalara for Dynamics 365 Sales — Seamlessly integrates Avalara AvaTax into your Microsoft CRM, tracking rates, handling exemption certificates, and keeping you prepared for audits.

Benefits that go beyond compliance

In addition to helping meet your Azure commitment and centralizing your spend with unified billing, Avalara and Microsoft Dynamics 365 advantages include:

• Alignment with Microsoft security, compliance, and operational standards: This means shorter procurement cycles and fewer internal review hurdles.
• Custom pricing and flexible terms: Partner with Avalara and receive Azure private offers, ensuring your agreement aligns with business goals and your Azure spend strategy.
• Ability to scale automation with confidence: Because Avalara solutions are optimized for Microsoft Azure, you can purchase seamlessly and integrate easily to scale tax automation across your organization.

That’s all in addition to the overall economic impact of Avalara, as found in a study by Forrester Research. Results for Forrester’s composite organization (created by combining the experiences of six interviewed businesses) included 153% ROI, payback of implementation costs in under six months, and an average of over 1,000 hours saved annually with Avalara solutions:

• 510 hours saved on tax return management
• 416 hours saved on exemption certificates
• 384 hours saved on tax research

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FAQs

Why is it important to embed compliance solutions into Microsoft Dynamics?

Embedding compliance directly into workflows increases efficiency, reduces the likelihood of errors, and can even help reduce audit risk as a business grows. As regulations shift and businesses scale, tax tools that are “bolted on” instead of built in often fail.

Is it easy for Microsoft Dynamics users to implement Avalara solutions?

Avalara makes it pain-free to build compliance into your workflows: Recent enhancements include zero-touch setup and authentication to reduce IT lift, an AvaTax home page experience that simplifies access to tools, and a diagnostic tool that provides proactive risk reduction and audit readiness.

Are there other benefits?

The benefits of embedding Avalara solutions go beyond compliance. When you buy directly from the Microsoft Marketplace, those purchases apply to your Azure commitment, helping you optimize your cloud spend. Our alignment with Microsoft security, compliance, and operational standards means shorter procurement cycles and fewer hurdles. You can even receive Azure private offers by partnering with Avalara.